Love Letters to the Dead (4 page)

He said, “Hey. What’s up?” His voice sounded like gravel turning to grains of sugar.

I started thinking of how to answer. I know that “What’s up?” is just something people say, but it’s a very hard thing to say anything back to. It’s like the only response is “nothing.” I didn’t want to say “nothing” because, actually, a lot was up.

Instead I said, “I saw you the other day.” Each word felt like its own stone, falling to the bottom of a lake.

He nodded, his head tilted a little. Like he was trying to figure out what I was.

“I’m Laurel,” I added.

“Sky.” He smiled.

I was about to say
I know
, but thought better of it. When my eyes finally focused, I saw he was wearing a Nirvana tee shirt. This seemed perfect. So I said, “I love Kurt Cobain.”

“Yeah? What’s your favorite album?”

“
In Utero
.”

“Right on. Everyone says
Nevermind
. That is, everyone who doesn’t really listen.”

I smiled and scrambled in my head to keep the conversation going. “Yeah. I really like how he’s … how Kurt sounds like, like he’s exploding from inside.” I couldn’t actually believe I said that.

But Sky nodded, like he knew what I was talking about. And that’s when I suddenly realized that he was looking at me like he wanted to touch me. I tugged on May’s tight orange shirt. My skin was burning. I had to get away before I broke out in flame.

“I’m just going to Bio.”

“’K,” Sky said. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

I nodded and walked away, my heart pounding. I told myself not to turn around. But I did. And his eyes were still on me. I felt something spark—the mystery of what he saw when he looked at me.

In class, while Mr. Smith was talking about covalent bonding, I kept replaying it and noticing new things each time. Like the way one of Sky’s sleeves was a little bit turned up over his arm. How the hairs on his biceps were standing up. The freckle on his eyelid. I thought of what Hannah had said, about how he transferred here. I wondered from where, and I wondered if he’d ever been in love before.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Amy Winehouse,

I remember one night after May got back from sneaking out, she came into my room and lay on my bed and whispered, “You have to hear this song!” She put her earbuds in my ear, and as she fell back against the pillow, I heard your voice for the first time.
I go back to black,
you sang. The swinging rhythms of the song sounded bright, but there was a hurt in your voice under its honey—although it’s not as simple as that, really. You had a way of singing that could mix together so many feelings. And I could tell that the words you sang came out of the real you. That they were true.

It turns out my new friend Hannah loves you, too. Hannah and I have PE together eighth period, and she’s always forgetting her gym clothes. Since we went to the fair together two weeks ago, a lot of times now I pretend I forgot mine even if I didn’t so that we can walk around the track together and talk instead of playing kickball or badminton or whatever with everyone else. Hannah wants to be a singer, and sometimes when we are walking around the track, she sings your songs to me. Her favorites are “Stronger Than Me,” “You Know I’m No Good,” and, of course, “Rehab.” She likes to shout
“No, no, no”
and shake her red hair back and forth. The way that you didn’t want anyone controlling you, that’s part of Hannah’s spirit, too.

Hannah acts fearless, but you can tell that underneath, she keeps secrets.

She’s the sort of girl who guys fall in love with, but she doesn’t act like a pretty girl. She acts like she’s trying to find a way out of herself. She always has at least one boyfriend, sometimes two at once.

Hannah told me her parents died when she was a baby, so she and her brother used to live with her aunt in Arizona. But her brother got in too many fights at his school, so the aunt sent them here to live with their grandparents.

When Hannah first moved here in seventh grade, she dated one of the most popular eighth-grade soccer boys. Then she dated another soccer boy and another, and then by the time she was in eighth grade she dated a couple of guys in high school. Even though Hannah could have hung out with anyone at her new middle school, even the popular girls, Hannah said that she picked Natalie because she could tell that Natalie “got it.”

“What’s ‘it’?” I asked.

Hannah shrugged. “What it’s like to be different, even if you don’t want everyone to know it. Like, I knew that I could have Natalie spend the night, and she wouldn’t be too weirded out by the fact that I love my horse and live with my grandparents who are going deaf and have a mean brother who likes to yell a lot.”

Hannah also told me about this guy, Kasey, who she’s “messing around with.” That’s what she says. She met him at her job at Japanese Kitchen when he was there with a bunch of his friends for someone’s birthday. (It’s a good place to go for birthdays, because the chefs cook in front of you and do fire tricks at the table.) He’s in college, so honestly, it’s really strange for him to want to date a girl so much younger. It makes me a little bit nervous for Hannah because of this older guy who May used to date, named Paul. When I asked Hannah why she was dating someone in college, she just laughed and said, “I’m precocious.”

I guess Kasey actually likes Hannah more than just to mess around with, because he sends her flowers—red tulips, which are her favorite. She likes to show them off for everyone at school. Principal Weiner is getting tired of Hannah having deliveries in the office, but Hannah says that the flowers are from her uncle for her to bring to her grandma, who’s sick at home. The principal asks why he doesn’t just send them to the house, and Hannah says that it’s because no one answers the door there, so they would just wilt in the sun. The principal knows Hannah’s lying, but she can’t say much, on account of Hannah’s grandma being sick and her grandpa being too hard of hearing to understand the principal if she tries to complain, and probably too tired to care much, anyway. So as it is, Hannah carries Kasey’s flowers from class to class, puts them on her desk, and slumps down behind them so that the teachers can hardly see her. And she leans over to Natalie’s desk and makes silly faces.

I think Natalie sort of hates the flowers and hates that Hannah gets them. Because she’s always saying how she doesn’t believe in flowers or things like that. But I don’t know if that’s completely true, because she’s making Hannah a painting of tulips in her art class. Natalie showed it to me after school the other day, but she told me not to tell Hannah about it. It’s a surprise. Natalie is really a good painter. The first petal of the tulip already had more shades of color than you could count.

I am at Dad’s this week, which means I usually take the city bus home, because he works too late to pick me up. But today, instead of going right home after school, I walked with Natalie and Hannah to get Dairy Queen. On the way there, Natalie and Hannah kept wanting to flash people. I was scared of doing it at first, but I tried to remind myself to swallow what scares me, the way I learned to do when I’d go out with May. And I ran really fast afterward. I outran Natalie and Hannah every time. They’d catch up to me a few blocks later, still screaming and giggling. And then I’d scream and giggle, too, and the worst part was over, and I was happy to be one of them.

Hannah bought us our ice cream (she looked proud to be able to do this), and then she had to leave to go to work. Even though she’s late for class a lot, Hannah’s always on time for her job. Before she went, she said she and Natalie are going to spend the night at Natalie’s house tomorrow, which is Friday, and that I should come. I was so happy when she asked, because it means that we are becoming real friends.

Dad came back from work a few minutes after I got home from Dairy Queen. He works at Rhodes Construction, fixing the broken foundations of houses and things like that. When May and I were kids, Dad used to walk in the door in the evening and we’d run to hug him. I loved how he’d be covered with sweat and dirt, like he’d been on an adventure. Mom would be making dinner, the smell of fried meat and chili filling up the house. She cooked like a baker, Dad always said. She didn’t throw in ingredients and taste later. Each was perfectly measured.

But life isn’t like that. You can’t be sure how it’s going to come out, even if you do everything right. They turn around on you, lives do. Dad used to come home and look strong from the day of building. Now he looks tired, like a bulldozer ran him over. When May and I were kids, he used to be good to climb on. But now it’s like I’m afraid if I get too close to him, I’ll trip and spill out all the sadness he’s keeping hidden.

He used to love to play jokes on all of us, like switching salt with sugar (he did this so much that we got used to shaking it out on our hands and licking it to determine which was which). Mom got annoyed by it, but May and I thought it was funny. He’d hide his alarm clock on the weekends, under a couch cushion or something, and we’d have to go running through the house to find it when the alarm went off. Or sometimes he’d poke holes in the apples in the fridge and stick gummy worms in. This was our favorite, because it meant candy. He doesn’t do that sort of stuff anymore, but he still kisses my forehead when he walks in the door. Then he asks about my day, like he knows he should, and I do my best to make it sound good.

Tonight I made microwave mac and cheese with little mini hot dogs for us for dinner, which is our favorite. We still have food in the freezer from May’s memorial nearly six months ago, but I don’t think either of us wants to eat it.

“So you’re making friends?” he asked over our mac and cheese.

“Yep.” I smiled.

“That’s great,” Dad said.

“Actually, I was going to ask you, can I spend the night at my friend Natalie’s tomorrow?”

Dad hesitated a moment, and I crossed my fingers under the table. Finally he said, “Sure, Laurel.” He paused and added, “I don’t want you cooped up with me.”

Then he turned on the baseball game—he’s a Cubs fan, because he grew up in Iowa near their farm team—and I watched with him while I did my homework. Dad used to give me “baseball is like life” lectures, but he doesn’t do that anymore. Now we just watch in silence. I guess some things turned out too sad even to be explained with a bases-loaded strikeout.

Yours,
Laurel

Dear Kurt,

Last night, I got drunk for the first time. When I got to Natalie’s for the sleepover, we walked to the grocery store, which felt too cold in that air conditioner way. We walked half shivering down the liquor aisle, and Natalie pulled a bottle of cinnamon After Shock off the shelf and into her halfway-on hoodie. Then we took it to the bathroom and peeled off the label so it wouldn’t beep. I ignored my quick-beating heart and tried to act normal, like I’d done this sort of thing before. I didn’t say anything about the woman’s feet with mom sneakers and a little girl in the next stall. Then we just walked right out.

We went back to Natalie’s house, where we were alone, because her mom was on a date that night. Natalie said that means she doesn’t get back till morning. We climbed up onto her flat roof with the bottle. The After Shock had cinnamon-flavor crystals in the bottom, and when I first took a sip it burned like someone lit a sweet fire in my mouth. I swallowed fast and didn’t make a face, and I didn’t tell them that it was my first time ever drinking. I thought if May did it, I could, too. How bad could it be? So I let the liquor burn down my throat and into my stomach. It made me laugh and got my body loose, until I forgot to be afraid. We lay down on our backs to watch the planes pass overhead and made up a song about them. I don’t remember the words, though I keep trying. I do remember that Hannah’s voice sounded like the cinnamon crystals, sweet and full of fire. I think she really could be a singer.

I am not sure what happened next, but then we were down from the roof and Natalie and Hannah had gone into the backyard to jump on her old trampoline. I was in the front yard on a hammock swinging, and the stars were buzzing toward me.