Love Letters to the Dead (22 page)

Your plane didn’t have quite enough fuel, and your maps were off by a little bit. Radio communication was bad. When you sent a message to the Coast Guard on Howland—
We must be on you, but we cannot see you. Fuel is running low
—were you in a panic? They answered back twenty minutes later, but didn’t know if you’d heard them. And then they got your last message, full of static, an hour after that. They sent up smoke signals to you, but we’ll never know if you were close enough to see them. They sent out search parties, and we’ve been searching ever since. It’s a testament to how much we loved you that we are still looking seventy-five years after your death. But sometimes I can’t help wonder what would be different if we finally had an answer.

Today is Monday, my first day back at school after the breakup with Sky. Dad finally said that he thought that he should make an appointment with the doctor, and I knew I couldn’t go on playing sick forever. So when it was time to switch to Aunt Amy’s yesterday, I said I was feeling better. This morning I put on a sweatshirt that I hadn’t worn since eighth grade and pulled my hair back. At lunch, I didn’t feel like eating my kaiser roll or even a Nutter Butter. I went over to our table and sat down with Natalie and Hannah. Before they could start asking questions, I blurted it out. “He broke up with me.”

They went into a chorus of
Oh my god, are you okay, how come?
After something really bad happens, the next worse thing is people feeling sorry for you about it. It’s like confirmation that something is terribly wrong. I tried to hold back the tears that were burning behind my eyes, but they came out anyway. Natalie and Hannah rushed to put their arms around me, and Hannah pulled my head against her shoulder and started to stroke it. “He has no idea what he lost. You are the best, most beautiful girl ever. What a complete idiot asshole, Laurel.”

“No,” I said, my voice muffled by her shirt. “I think it’s me.”

“What? No it’s not. It’s not.”

“I can’t go to chorus today,” I told Hannah. “I can’t see him.”

“Okay, it’s all right,” she said. “You don’t have to go. We’ll ditch.”

So in eighth period we snuck off campus, walking through the little flecks of swirling snow that were melting against the blacktop, and went to the sketchy Safeway to get some liquor that we would drink at Natalie’s house before her mom got back from work. We climbed up onto Natalie’s roof, bundled up with blankets, and passed the bottle of cinnamon After Shock between us. Hannah was trying to make me laugh and trying to think of a new boyfriend for me, suggesting friends of Kasey’s that made Natalie wince, and then Evan Friedman—“He and Britt are on the outs again, and I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

But I could hardly pay attention to what they were saying. There was only one thought that I could hear, that kept repeating itself in my head, over and over.
She’s dead.
And then it happened. Maybe because I was grateful for Natalie and Hannah, or maybe because I was too tired and too sad to try to be like her anymore—I just said it out loud.

“My sister’s dead.”

It was silent for a moment. Finally, Hannah nodded. “I know,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

It didn’t make sense. “What do you mean you know?”

She hesitated, and then she said, “Tristan told us. He and Kristen used to hang out with some kids from Sandia, and they said that a girl from there died. It wasn’t that hard to figure out that she was your sister.”

“What?” I was suddenly angry, like when your parents yank the blankets off in the morning to make you get out of bed. In the cold January air, my skin felt so thin that it was almost transparent. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?”

Natalie answered, “You never talked about it. We were just waiting until you were ready, I guess.”

And then Hannah said, “I mean, you’ve never had us over to your house or anything like that. We just thought that you didn’t want us to bring it up.”

I stared at them. My body drained of everything, including the anger that had been so palpable only a moment ago. They’d known this whole time, and they hadn’t treated me any differently than they did. I wondered what they saw when they looked at me.

Hannah passed me the bottle, and I took another sip. “What was she like?” Hannah asked.

“She was beautiful,” I said. “She was … she was great. She was funny, and smart, and she was basically perfect.”
And she left me,
a voice screamed from inside my head.

I looked at my phone. “Shit, it’s three o’clock! My aunt!” Hannah passed me the mouthwash out of her purse, and I climbed topsy-turvy down the ladder in a rush and ran back to school, slip-sliding over the coating of snow on the sidewalks that was starting to stick. When I arrived, half an hour late, Aunt Amy’s car was one of the few still in the parking lot.

“Where have you been?!” she asked.

“I was just—I—”

“Your cheeks are all red,” she said, and put her hands against them. “You’re freezing!”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I … this kid, he fell on the ice and I had to help him inside.”

Aunt Amy gave me a look like she didn’t know if she believed what I was saying. “Lying is a sin, Laurel.”

I looked back at her. “Yeah, I know.”

She was quiet for a moment, tucking her silver hair behind her ear as she tried to decide whether to trust me or not. My stomach knotted with guilt.

“Can we go?” I finally asked.

She nodded, and her old white Beetle pulled off through the parking lot.

When we got home, it was like I’d never been so tired. I told Aunt Amy I still wasn’t feeling well and went to lie down. For some reason I started thinking of this game called the dead game that May and I used to play with Carl and Mark, the neighbor boys.

In the summer, after a day at their pool, we’d go home for dinner, and then afterward they’d ring the bell to ask us to come play basketball in their driveway. May would look beautiful, giggling and dribbling the ball, her bikini top still on and bleeding through her tee shirt. She liked to run across the court, but when she got to the basket she’d pause and laugh and never make the shot. But sometimes Mark would pass the ball to me. I would concentrate until I couldn’t see anything else, and I loved the swish that meant he’d high-five me afterward. I loved his hand against mine, if just for a moment.

Then when it started to turn to dusk, before the streetlights came on and we’d have to go in, May would usually say it was time to play the dead game. It was the perfect time of night, when parents would be watching TV and the light was low and sticky. She loved the game because she always won.

She got the idea for it that summer before she started high school, just after Mom moved out. Once our basketball game was over, we’d started playing truth or dare. May thought that Carl’s and Mark’s dares—stuff like flashing the neighbors’ houses—were boring, so she said she had a better dare, for all of us.

The dead game worked like this. You’d lie in the middle of the road on your back with a blindfold—it had to be the dead middle, we made an
X
with chalk—and wait for a car to come. Whoever could last the longest before they got up and ran out of the way won. The thing is, since you had the blindfold on, you could only know if a car was coming by the sound it made on the road.

Sometimes, the car’s driver would see us in the street and screech the brakes. But lots of times, because it was dusk, the driver couldn’t see. May would wait just a second too long before she rolled away. The first time we played, I thought the car would really hit her. I ran out into the street in front of it, waving my arms up and down, until it came to a screeching stop. An old woman got out and started yelling at us. When she was gone, May turned to me. “What’s wrong with you? Don’t you get it? That’s not how the game works.” The point was that when you were the dead one, you and only you knew exactly when to run. My cheeks turned hot with shame.

So after that, when it was May’s turn, I would stand on the sidewalk, curling my bare toes into the cement, still warm from the day’s sun. I would try not to look at the street. I would look instead at the coming stars and wish for May to be okay. But at the last minute, I couldn’t help it. I always looked down and saw her body there, motionless. When she’d roll away in time, I would wipe the hot tears from my eyes. And then she would be so alive, grinning and panting in the summer night air, high on it.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear River,

In chorus today, Hannah held my hand almost the whole time. I kept thinking,
Don’t look at Sky.
But I couldn’t help lifting my eyes, just once, to where he was like a mirage across the room, and remembering how his chest felt rising up and down with breath. I would have given anything to go back to his arms around my body. I would have given anything to be someone different, someone he wouldn’t have left.

After class, Hannah was waiting for me, but I told her I’d meet her in the alley. When the room cleared out, I sat down, putting my head against my knees and trying to stop breathing so fast.

Eventually I walked out to the alley and found Natalie and Hannah with Tristan and Kristen. When they saw me, they all got quiet and looked at me, in that way that makes you certain about why you never wanted to talk about anything in the first place. If it had just been about Sky, they would have found something to say. But it was more than that. It was May. I guessed that Natalie and Hannah had told them that I’d finally admitted that I had a sister who’s dead.

After a few moments of silence, they forced themselves to chatter. Tristan lit a cigarette with his giant kitchen lighter. When he and Kristen had to leave to get ready to go to dinner with her parents, they both squeezed my hands, like they were trying to transmit a secret
I’m sorry
. But I didn’t want any pity. I didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t a normal kind of thing where I could just cry and be sad and let them stroke my hair. There were too many mixed-up feelings—and what’s starting to grow, more and more, is this ball of anger in my stomach that I can’t control. I know that it’s not what I’m supposed to feel. And I feel even guiltier for feeling it. But I can’t help it.

When Tristan and Kristen left, I was about to go, too, so that I wouldn’t be late again to meet Aunt Amy. But then Hannah said, “Hey. About your sister. I’m sorry that there’s nothing good to say. And I’m sorry that we didn’t say anything sooner.”

The way that she said it, so kindly, made me wish that I could tell her everything. “I’m sorry, too,” I answered, “that I didn’t talk to you guys about it before.”

Hannah said, “I mean, words can’t be good enough for a lot of things. But, you know, I guess we have to try.”

Then Natalie said, sounding very serious, “It’s, like, really sad that people die.”

We all laughed at once, because this was so obvious. It was an accidental, perfect example of what Hannah had just said.

“Are you drunk?” I asked her, which made us laugh harder.

When it finally got that after-laugh quiet, I said, “I’m so glad I have you guys.” And I am.

I thought about what Hannah said, how words aren’t good enough for a lot of things, but we have to try. And maybe I should try harder. I just don’t know what they’d think of me if they knew what I told May that night. If they knew what I’d let happen the nights before that. I worry that I’d lose them, too.

The night you died, River, your brother and your sister and your girlfriend found you collapsed outside of a club. You’d taken too many drugs. Your sister tried to breathe life into your body. Your brother called 911. He shouted and shouted into the phone, begging for someone to come. Begging for someone to save you. But by the time the ambulance came, it was too late.

When they found May’s body in the river, the coroner said it didn’t look like her anymore. That’s why Mom and Dad decided to cremate her. I never saw her. I’ve never seen anyone dead.

I guess you know what it’s like to fail someone. To fail everyone. River, you were a star so bright. One that people made wishes on. Until you took so many drugs that you took your life. Do you think that everyone gets to be a star like that? Do you think that everyone gets to be seen? Gets to be loved? Gets to glow? They don’t. They don’t get to do it like you did. They don’t get to be as beautiful as you were. And you just wanted to burn up.

Yours,
Laurel