Love Letters to the Dead (3 page)

Dear Amelia Earhart,

I remember when I first learned about you in social studies in middle school, I was almost jealous. I know that’s the wrong way to feel about someone who died tragically, but it wasn’t so much the dying I was jealous of. It was the flying, and the disappearing. The way you saw the earth from the air. You weren’t scared of getting lost. You just took off.

I decided this morning that I really need even the tiniest bit of the courage that you had because I started high school almost three weeks ago, and I can’t keep sitting alone by the fence anymore. So after I looked through all of my old clothes, which are terrible no matter how much I try to pick the most inconspicuous ones, I went and opened May’s closet and looked at it, full of bright, brave things. I remembered her body filling them. She would leave in the morning with her backpack slung over her shoulder, and it seemed that everything outside of our door must have rushed forward to greet her. I took her first day outfit—a pink cashmere sweater with a Nirvana patch on it and a short pleated skirt. I put it on. I didn’t look in the mirror this time, because I knew it would scare me out of wearing it. I just paid attention to the swish of the skirt against my bare legs and thought of how May must have felt in it.

In the car with Dad on the way to school, I could feel his eyes on me. Finally, as he pulled up to the drop-off line, he said carefully, “You look nice today.”

I knew that he recognized the outfit was May’s. “Thanks, Dad,” I said, and nothing more. I gave him a little smile and jumped out of the car.

Then at lunch, I walked through the cafeteria to the outdoor tables and watched everyone swirling together, looking happy, like they should all be part of the same movie. I saw Natalie from my English class with this blazing redheaded girl. They sat down at a table together in the middle of the crowd. They both had Capri Suns and no food. They looked like the sunlight had landed on purpose right in their hair. Natalie had her pigtail braids and drawn-on tattoos and wore a Batman tee shirt that was tight across her chest. The redhead had on a black ballerina skirt and a bright red scarf, with lipstick to match. They weren’t dressed like the popular girls, who look clean and cut out of a magazine. But to me, they were beautiful, like their own constellation. Like one that maybe I could belong in. They looked like girls who would have been May’s friends. They shooed off the soccer boys who swarmed around the redhead.

I wanted to sit by them so badly I could feel it in my whole body. I started to walk toward them, thinking maybe Natalie would notice me. But I got nervous and walked back to sit down by the fence. I stood up and sat down again.

I remembered what you said—
There’s more to life than being a passenger.
I thought of you soaring through the sky. I thought of May rushing out in the morning. I ran my hands over her sweater I was wearing. And I walked over. When I got close to the table, I sort of just stood there, a few feet away. They were in the middle of leaning in and trading Capri Suns, so they each got a new flavor, when they felt a body and looked up. I think they thought it would be another soccer boy, and Natalie looked annoyed at first. But her face turned nice when she recognized me. I tried so hard to think of something to say, but I couldn’t. The voices rushed around me, and I started to blank out.

But then I heard Natalie. “Hey. You’re in my English class.”

“Yeah.” I took my chance and sat down at the end of the bench.

“I’m Natalie. This is Hannah.”

“I’m Laurel.”

Hannah looked up from her Capri Sun. “Laurel? That’s the coolest name ever.”

Natalie started talking about the “lame-os” in our class, and I was doing my best to follow along, but really, I was so happy to be there I couldn’t focus on what she was saying.

By the end of lunch, they’d liked my skirt and my whole outfit and asked me if I wanted to go to the state fair after school. I couldn’t believe it. I called Dad on my new cell phone that is supposed to be just for emergencies (although I can tell already that it won’t be). I said that some girls asked me to hang out after school, so not to worry if I wasn’t home yet when he got back from work, and that I’d take the bus afterward like usual. I talked fast so that he wouldn’t have time to object. I’m in algebra now, and I can’t wait for the bell to ring. The numbers on the board don’t mean a thing, because for the first time in forever, I have somewhere to go.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Amelia Earhart,

When we got to the fair, it was good like when I was a kid and sticky like it should be—full of stands selling cowboy hats and airbrushed tee shirts and the smell of state fair food. We were all starved, and the way Natalie and Hannah said it—“I’m starved”—it was easy to say it like them. To fit in.

When we got in line for frilly fries, Hannah started flirting with this guy in front of us. He had a white tank top, slicked-back hair, and a stare that made me think he wanted to bite her. Hannah’s red hair is straight as a board, or so she told me, but she puts it into curlers every day. Her bouncy red curls fall around her face, and her big eyes look like she’s always seeing something incredible. Her lips look like she’s half smiling at something that no one else could get.

I was worried about not having any money and thinking I’d say I wasn’t so hungry after all, but when we got to the front of the line, Hannah let the guy pay for us. He was making me nervous, leaning into Hannah like he was. I kept thinking that he was going to do something, but when we got our fries, she just said thanks and walked off, leaving him staring after her. I think she was showing off a little, but Natalie didn’t act impressed. She just said, “Um, hair gel much?”

After we ate, we went over to the fence to smoke cigarettes. I’d never smoked, and I didn’t know how. I’d seen May do it before, so I tried to copy her. But I guess it was obvious. Natalie laughed so loud that she started coughing. She said, “No, like this,” and she showed me how to keep the smoke in and then suck it down my lungs. That is how you inhale. It made me really dizzy and sort of sick-feeling. By the time we were done, I was walking pretty much in zigzags.

So when Natalie and Hannah were ready for rides, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to go. There was this one, a special ride that costs extra, where they put you in a harness and pull you up, higher than any building in the city. And then they drop you, and you go flying over the whole fair. I finally told them that I’d forgotten to bring money, but Hannah said that she had some from her job and explained that she works a few nights a week as a hostess at a restaurant called Japanese Kitchen.

“She’s so pretty,” Natalie said, smiling at her, “that they hired her even though she’s only fifteen.”

“Shut up,” Hannah said. “It’s because they could tell I would be an excellent employee!”

When she counted out her money, it wasn’t quite enough, but she said that if we flirted with the guy who ran the ride, he’d let us go for less. When we got to the front of the line, my heart was pounding. Part of me hoped the guy would say no, because I was honestly terrified. But Hannah did her best smile, and he agreed to give us a discount. I thought of you and how brave you were in your plane. And how you made other people around you brave, too. And suddenly, all three of us were harnessed together, and he was hoisting us up. While we were waiting to be dropped, we could see all of the tiny people in the fairgrounds. I forgot to be scared. I was thinking about how each one of them, so small from high up, was like their own island, with secret forests and hidden thoughts.

And that’s when he dropped us! With no warning. We were flying. I couldn’t have felt more perfect. Sailing through the late afternoon sun and the smell of roasted corn and frilly fries and funnel cake, above all of the islands. So fast that when I opened my mouth, a whole world of air would come in. Next to the girls who could be my new friends.

I thought of you, watching the earth always changing from above. The tall grass swaying. The rivers like long fingers and the fog from the sea sucking up the shore. And how, when you disappeared down there, you must have become a part of it.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Kurt Cobain,

All weekend I had been worried that Natalie and Hannah might forget about me in school on Monday, but today in English, Natalie passed me a note that said
lame-o!
with an arrow pointing toward the guy sitting next to me, who was drawing naked boobs on his poem handout. I looked over at her desk and smiled to show that I got the joke. And at lunch, I saw Natalie and Hannah wave to me from their table. My heart leapt. I threw away my lunch bag with its kaiser roll in a quick toss and went to sit by them. Hannah was licking Doritos cheese off her fingers and passed me the bag.

I tried not to look, but after a while, my eyes found Sky. I saw him see me with my new friends. I wondered if the sun landed right on me like it did on them. I imagined growing brighter and let myself look back at him a moment too long.

Hannah caught me. “Who are you looking at?”

I mumbled, “Nobody,” but my cheeks got hot and probably red like an unfortunate truth meter.

Hannah insisted, “Who?! Tell me!”

I didn’t want to risk losing my new friends, so I said, “Oh. Um, I think his name is Sky.”

Hannah’s eyes picked him out, and she said, “Ooooh. Sky. Yeah. Mr. Mystery.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

Hannah shrugged. “He’s one of those guys everyone knows of, except no one actually knows him. He somehow manages to seem popular without having, like, any actual friends yet. He transferred here this year. He’s a junior. But he’s totally hot. I’d do him.”

Natalie hit her shoulder. “Hannah!”

“What?” she said. “I didn’t mean I’m gonna. He’s Laurel’s.”

I blushed again. I mumbled that he wasn’t.

Hannah looked over her shoulder and said, “We’ll make him yours. He’s looking at you.”

When I glanced back, he still was.

I realized then that this could be who I am. Right there, with the cement burning my legs under the middle school jeans I’d cut off this morning, short enough that they would pass the longer-than-your-fingertips test only if I shrugged up my shoulders, and May’s silver-white shirt that shimmered in the light.

It was as if an invisible band started playing the sound track to a new life. I heard you. I wondered if this was how May felt when she was in high school. It must have been, because it was her music. All the songs we’d listened to together, playing at once. The world she’d disappeared into was here. I looked up from my blush, away from Sky, whose eyes were still on me, and turned to Natalie and Hannah. I laughed out loud, full of the secret someone I could become.
Hello, hello, hello.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Kurt,

May’s clothes must have worked like magic, because since I started wearing them, things have been happening. I sat with Natalie and Hannah at lunch all week. Then today, Friday, I was walking down the hallway to Bio, just making my feet follow the lines of light on the floor. Suddenly I looked up, because I was about to bump into someone. It was him. Sky. I could have reached out and touched him.