Sky broke up with me three weeks and one day ago. After school this afternoon, me and Natalie and Hannah and Kristen were in the alleyway. They were smoking and talking. I wasn’t listening. I was just looking at the flecks of late January snow, swirling in the yellow street lamp. The sky was glowing the way it does right before it’s going to get really dark. I was holding Sky’s sweatshirt that he’d let me borrow one night when we snuck out. I’d started wearing it to school back then and had joked that I’d never give it back. Now I never will. I finally pulled it out of my locker that day to take home and put in the back of my drawer where I keep memory things that make me sad. But it was snowing and I was cold, so I put it on. It smelled like him.
At that moment, Sky came out of nowhere down the alley. He looked startled to see me. He said, “Hey,” and kept walking. I looked down because my eyes were filling up with tears, but I didn’t want him to notice. When he passed, I whispered, “Hi,” and watched his back. I loved him still and hated him all at once.
Then I saw. He stopped under one of the streetlights and put his arm around her. A girl with blond hair and big boobs that were bursting out of her shirt, which was super tight and pink with an anarchy symbol on it. She was only wearing that tee shirt even though it was snowing out. Sky took off his same leather jacket and put it around her. And they kissed. With his hands under the jacket. I knew I shouldn’t look, but I couldn’t move my eyes. My throat clenched so that I could barely breathe.
The girl saw me watching and pointed toward me, but before Sky’s head could turn, I looked down. The next thing I saw, she was leading them off into this old yellow car, a cool car, and big enough to have sex in, I’m sure.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump in front of the stupid yellow car. I felt like I could burst into flames.
Hannah said, “He’s an absolute asshole, Laurel. Do you want me to kill him? Because I will.” Kristen offered me a cigarette, which I usually don’t smoke, but now I did, if only to find a way to suck something in. I asked Kristen who she was, and Kristen said her name is Francesca, and she graduated last year, and she works at Safeway. While they tried to make me feel better by talking about how I’m so much prettier and cooler and nicer than her, I thought of her running people’s ice cream and chocolate milk and hamburger meat and Jim Beam through the checkout line, and then running out through the snow in her uniform, where Sky would be waiting in his truck to take her home. And I thought of your poem.
—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.
Write it. Write it. Write it, Laurel.
Yours.
Dear Jim Morrison,
I played “Light My Fire” last night and tried to wake myself up from the fog I’ve been in. I bounced around my room a bit, but it didn’t sound like it used to in the car with Sky, or at the Fallfest park, because I kept thinking about how they found you in a bathtub dead. Cause of death: unknown. It’s hard not to know.
In the picture of you, the famous one that’s on all those tee shirts and posters and stuff, your eyes are fierce. They burn into us, calling us forward and pushing us back at once. Your arms are out, making you into a cross. Your chest is bare, vulnerable, but strong like an animal’s. I read about how when the Doors were recording an album, you would only sometimes show up to the sessions, and when you did, a lot of the time you were drunk. There would be piles of chicken bones and apple juice containers and empty rose wine bottles everywhere. And sometimes you’d yell at people. It’s sad when everyone knows you, but no one knows you. I am guessing that you might have felt that way. They see what they want you to be. And if you wear leather pants, and have a beautiful body, and drink lots of expensive wine, and if your voice sounds like the edge you strike a match on, then these things are blocks that you have given them to build the person they want.
I thought May was what she wanted to be. I thought she was free and brave and the world was hers, but I’m not sure anymore. Jim, I want people to know me, but if anyone could look inside of me, if they saw that everything I feel is not what it’s supposed to be, I don’t know what would happen.
Right now I am in Algebra. I think Evan Friedman is sort of playing with himself again. Britt is staring down into a compact she has hidden in her lap, trying not to look at him. They are broken up for the second time.
It’s been five weeks and two days since Sky dumped me. I would like to say that I am getting over him, but obviously I am not. Sometimes after school I walk the long way to the parking lot around the track and I see him making out with Francesca near the bleachers, or getting into her car. I want to run and scream at him. I want to pound my fists against his chest as hard as I can, and I want him to put his arms around me and hold me so that I stop. I want him to kiss me again and make it clean. But now he’s behind the thickest glass wall, like no matter how hard I ran at it I couldn’t break it. I could only shatter myself.
Francesca is awful. She wants to beat me up. Yesterday, when I walked out of school through the alley, she was standing at the end of it with two other girls I’ve never seen before. When I saw her, I started moving fast with my head down, just wanting to get past, but they circled around me.
Francesca said, “I saw you watching Sky and me.”
My heart was about to spring out of my chest. I was trying hard to keep it in, because I didn’t want it to land on the asphalt at her feet, next to the golden ring someone had dropped in the crack. And I really didn’t want to cry.
“Let me tell you something, little girl,” she said. “He doesn’t want you anymore.”
It wasn’t fair of her. I knew he didn’t want me. She didn’t know how badly that hurt. I hated her. I could feel the tears burning in the back of my eyes, but I couldn’t let myself cry in front of her. I couldn’t.
So I said, “Don’t you think it’s a little lame that you still hang out at the high school?”
Her face turned red and she said, “I’ll kick your little ass. I’ll kick your ass so hard, no one will recognize your pretty little face.”
I had to think fast. My body felt swervy and my brain was connecting all of these dots that shouldn’t connect. But one thing I knew was she is bigger than me by far and definitely could beat me up.
So I said, “Why don’t we play a game instead?” I pushed past her and walked out into the street. I called back to her. “It’s called the dead game. Whoever lasts the longest when a car comes wins.”
I lay down and closed my eyes. I heard a car coming from a ways away. I heard it getting closer, though it was not that close yet. I could last much longer.
I heard her say to her friends, “Oh my god. This girl’s a total freak. Let’s get out of here.” And I knew then that I’d won. I knew that she was scared of me now, instead of the other way around.
I heard the car getting closer. And then I heard Sky’s voice out of nowhere. “Laurel! What the fuck are you doing?!” he was shouting.
I rolled out of the way in time and I ran and I ran, and I remembered the night I got good at the game. May had always been the best, the bravest. Carl was almost as good as she was, but not quite. And Mark was just behind him. I had been last. As soon as I’d hear a car turn down the block, I’d want to run. I’d try to wait an extra second, but when I got up and pulled the blindfold off, I’d see the car was still so many houses away and feel stupid that I thought it was about to hit me. I knew that Mark would never love me because I was afraid, and they could all see that. I thought if only I could be fearless like May. If only I could be flushed and daring and beautiful in the twilight like she was. I thought if I wasn’t such a wimp, then it would all be different. He might love me back.
Then something changed. It was after May started taking me out with her to the movies. We were playing the game, and I lay down for my turn. I felt a new
kind of quiet. Like nothing could touch me. Waiting, just waiting for the car to come. And when I heard it turn down the block, I wasn’t scared of anything. I could hear exactly where it was. I didn’t need my eyes. I could see the street, the car traveling. It was in front of the Fergusons’. The Padillas’, the Blairs’, the Wunders’—I knew just how close and just how far. It came in front of Carl and Mark’s. I heard May screaming, “Laurel! Get out of the way!” But I didn’t need to go yet. I waited one last second. Then I rolled and ran and saw the car whizzing right by. When I walked up to the sidewalk, May said, “Laurel! What’s wrong with you?!” She looked really scared. The way I was always scared for her. I thought Mark would be proud. I thought we’d high-five. But he was white as a ghost. May hugged me.
She said, “Don’t ever do that again!”
“But I won, right?”
May said, breathlessly, “Yeah. You won.”
After that, I don’t think we ever played again. And after that, I knew that Mark would definitely never love me. I’d changed.
I heard Sky’s voice, echoing after me. What the fuck are you doing? I just kept running, faster than I knew I could, sucking the cold air into my lungs. Down neighborhood streets, through the shadows cast by crooked tree branches, past the houses in a row that seemed like they would be safe inside. Until all I could hear was myself breathing, as loud, it seemed, as an ocean.
Luckily for me, Aunt Amy was late to pick me up, so by the time I ran back to the parking lot, she wasn’t there yet. Sky and Francesca and those other girls were gone. Aunt Amy felt bad for being late, so she asked me if I wanted to get fries. I did. And then I wished I could go home, home where Mom would be making enchiladas for dinner and May would be setting the table, folding the napkins into diamonds like she would.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Kurt,
You had a daughter, and now you’ll never get to know her. You won’t see what she’s going to be when she grows up. You won’t be there to make dinner together when she comes back from the pool in the summer smelling like chlorine. And when she rides her bike with no hands and flies over the handlebars, you won’t make it better. You won’t be at her chorus concert, with all the other parents on the sweaty gym floor, watching her face when she closes her eyes and lets her voice out. You won’t watch her walk through new snow in your backyard or lie down to make an angel. You won’t see her fall in love for the first time. And if her heart gets broken and she curls under the flannel sheets she just washed and cries, you won’t hear her. When she needs you, you won’t be there. Don’t you care? How could you do that to her?
Do you know what she’ll have instead of her father? Your suicide note. Did you think of that when you wrote it, that those words would shadow her whole life?
You wrote that you have a daughter, full of love and joy, kissing every person she meets because everyone is good and will do her no harm. You said that terrified you, because you couldn’t stand the thought of her growing up and becoming like you were.
But did you think about the fact that when you wrote those words, when you took your life, you stole the innocence you loved her for? That you forever changed her heart full of joy? You were the first to do her harm. You were the first person to make the world dangerous for her.
I don’t know why I’ve written you all these letters. I thought you got it. But you just left, too. Like everyone does.
I walked into May’s room tonight, once Dad was asleep, and I tore your poster off the wall. I tore it to shreds and I threw it out. And I sobbed until I couldn’t sob anymore. And now, that particular poster is gone forever. And I’m sorry.
It can’t be undone. We can’t put it back, and we can’t bring you back to life, and I hate that. And I hate you for it, too. There, I said it, I do. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wonder if your daughter has forgiven you, because I don’t know if I could.
The truth is, I don’t know how to forgive my sister. I don’t know how to forgive her, because I don’t deserve to be angry at her. And I’m afraid that if I am, I will lose her forever.
Yours anyway,
Laurel
Dear Heath Ledger,
The Dark Knight was on TV tonight. I watched it with Dad. One thing that we can still do together is watch movies. Those and baseball, but the season doesn’t start again for another few weeks. When the movie ended and the credits came on, Dad said, “The world has changed, hasn’t it?” before he got up to go to bed. That sentence seemed to carry the weight of everything we can’t talk about.
Dad used to be happy. A man with a family. Superheroes used to be indestructible. They didn’t lose the loves of their lives, or let good people die, or give up on their morals, or have to grieve. And storybook villains used to be simply evil. Not humans twisted into something terrifying. But The Dark Knight is like a grown-up version of a superhero story. Batman is broken, too—he loses the woman he loves, and he has to frame himself for murder in order to save hope for the city. You play the Joker, the evil figure, and you are brilliant at it.
The movie scared me, to tell the truth. You scared me. I want to say what I could take from it, but I can’t. All there is is this deep-in-my-stomach feeling of terror, and this fear that there is no really happy ending anymore.
It’s the second week of March. Spring should almost be here, but the air has held on to its cold, wind coming in gusts to scare off the buds that might want to start blooming. It’s been a long time since I’ve written one of these letters—almost a month. I guess after I tore up Kurt’s poster, I didn’t feel like it anymore. Until I watched The Dark Knight and started thinking about you. I first got to know you from that movie 10 Things I Hate About You, and I always remember that scene where you jump up on the bleachers and sing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” to the whole girls’ soccer team to capture the heart of the girl you like. But after that, even though you got a lot of offers, you wouldn’t do any more teen movies. Instead, you ate ramen noodles in your apartment and waited. You didn’t just want to be famous, you wanted to be true to yourself. And eventually you got more roles, better ones, and you became the kind of grownup that made growing up seem okay, like you don’t have to lose your spirit in order to get older. You became the kind of father that any daughter would have wanted to have. When they found you in your apartment, dead from too many pills, I really did think it was an accident. I don’t think you meant to go.
I read about how you were planning to buy a garage for your daughter in Brooklyn so that you could make it into your own private drive-in theater together. When I think about that, it almost makes me cry. How you would have parked there with her, the two of you in the front seat passing popcorn and eating Red Vines and laughing at a cartoon flickering on the screen—the sort of story that ends like it’s supposed to, unlike the ones that haunt us as we grow up.
This month has passed by in a blur, but I guess there are a few new things to tell you about. One thing is that Hannah decided that she thinks bruises are pretty. She’s started painting them onto her cheekbone with eye shadow. They look real, too. Natalie tells her not to, but she loves her so much that she only kisses them and tells Hannah she’ll make it better. Sometimes we want our bodies to do a better job of showing the things that hurt us, the stories we keep hidden inside of us.
The other thing is that Hannah got her provisional license, and on Saturday we drove through the mountain roads to this guy Blake’s house. Hannah met him at her new job at the Macaroni Grill. He’s a busboy there, and she’s a hostess. She got a new job because Natalie got so angry every time she talked about Neung that finally she swore she’d never see him again and quit Japanese Kitchen. But she still has Kasey, and now Blake, too. She doesn’t like taking Natalie over to the boyfriends’ houses anymore, but she still doesn’t like to go alone, so I went with her.
When we parked in front of Blake’s little mountain shack, I felt immediately nervous. It wasn’t locked, so we walked right in. It s
melled like cherry-flavored cigars, and all the windowsills were lined with glass bottles covered in dust.
When he came out of the bedroom, I froze. Hannah says he’s twenty-two, but to me he looked even older. And not older-in-college like Kasey. Older like Paul was, May’s boyfriend, and Paul’s friend. His black hair was grown long into his face, and he had a midnight shadow, much darker than five o’clock.
He moved right past us and opened the fridge. He pulled out some Tecates and tossed them to us. I didn’t catch mine. It flew past me and onto the carpeted floor, which I felt that I was sinking into. I tried to move my feet, but they wouldn’t budge.
Hannah bent over and picked up my beer. I felt my fingers close around it.
“Laurel, are you all right?”
“What? Um, yeah. Sorry.”
I watched Blake put his arm around Hannah, and all I could see was May, walking up to Paul. Watching her smooth hair swinging behind her. His eyes devouring her.
Blake’s roommate was sitting on the couch, which was upholstered in brown velvet and looked like it had been there since the seventies. The roommate doesn’t speak. Not because he can’t, but because he took a vow of silence a year and nine days ago. He hasn’t said a word since. After Blake explained this, he pulled Hannah off and they disappeared into his room, leaving me alone with the roommate, who was reading a book called The Birth of Tragedy. I guess Blake must have told me the roommate’s name, but I forgot.
I forced my nail under the tab of the beer and popped it open with a crack that sounded as loud as an explosion. I sipped it. The roommate’s eyes kept glancing up over the top of the page at me. I tried to count all of the little bottles sitting on the windowsill, but I kept losing track. My feet stayed just where they were, glued to the rug.
I wondered if where we were was like the places where May would go with Paul when he’d take her away those nights. It was so different than I’d thought when I pictured her driving off somewhere magical. I imagined her now in the room with the curtains drawn and fluorescent lights on, lying on the dingy cream-colored rug and smoking cigarettes, letting the smoke trail out of her dark lips.