Young Writers Society

9th August, Monday

Hi, D.

It's been a while, hasn't it? I mean, a year is a pretty long time, and I was thinking about you today, because it was raining out and you know how weird the world gets when it rains. I swear it shrinks, inch by inch, until I feel like I'm being strangled by a sock. It'd be weird, getting strangled by a sock. Imagine the post-mortem reports, though. I bet the world'd get a laugh out of that.

Anyway, it's been a while since we just talked, and a lot's been happening that I thought you should know about. I'm sorry I never reply. But, see, that would mean I send these letters in the first place--which I can't, and you should understand that. It's close to impossible. And it's your fault I can never reply in the first place. You should know that. It's all your fault.

We made the news today, D. Remember Gretchen? The florist's daughter we all used to bob around like she was a sailboat we were all kind of ... moored to? Hair like tangerines, face that looked as though it belonged in a renaissance portrait? Well, she got married to that scum who lives by the mill not soon after you left. I never told you, did I? I was dead disappointed, you see, because Gretchen was supposed to get married to me. We'd decided that--real long ago, remember? You were going to be my best man--we were going to rig a battleship and duke it out with your pappa, because he might say no to it, you being a girl and all. But you were going to be my best man and you even drafted out your speech and made me one of those flower wreath things that could work as a ring, you said. Man, that was cool of you. I never thanked you for that, did I? I never asked Gretchen either, because--and this was hard for me to admit to myself, too, back then--I was just a thirteen-year-old wimp with a pencil-scrawl for a moustache, and she was ... well, she was older, and cooler, and she was the florist's daughter. Maybe she'd have appreciated the wreath? I dunno. It withered and died a couple of days after you left.

I guess we just grew up too late to be on time for any of that.

I don't know why I'm telling you this. Maybe it's because talking to you's always been my way of talking to myself, unclogging all the bits of morass that seem to forever get stuck in my ear canal and make it hard for me to hear myself clearly. Maybe it's the safety of knowing that even if you did read this, you'd know exactly what to say. But I can't send this letter to you. I can't. I can't.

Gretchen died today.

I was in the kitchen when I heard the news. You've seen our kitchen, haven't you? It's what Louisa Alcott'd call a tiny affair, but I honestly think it's always cheating on us with its size. It's gotten worse since you left--it's tinier, I swear, and the seashell-blue tiles are all chipping away so that our walls are a mouldy wonderland, and the sink's always choking up, choking back on tears--mum's tears, maybe, she's real out of it these days--and the rafters are hanging closer to my head than ever. It smells like clay. You'd hate it. You never did like clay anyway.

It was especially bad this morning--foggy, ghost's breath hanging over our nostrils and smelling like cheap paint. Mum made me wash the dishes and I was supposed to wipe all the tiles afterward, because she's seeing someone--I never told you about that, either, did I? Gosh, there's so much you don't know now. Makes me wonder how much I don't know either. Anyway, so I was scrubbing the dishes in the kitchen and trying to ignore Mum and her ... her beau doing whatever they were in the living room--it sounded disgusting, honestly--and then the mailman comes round back instead of up front like he always does, to where I'm all slouched over the sink, next to the window, and he rapped the window real hard. I nearly rocketed out of my bones and spilled part of myself into the washing stand. I say nearly, because--I didn't, of course. Like shit I'd let myself fall like that. Though in retrospect, I kind of wish I had.

The mailman, he didn't have his mailbag with him. Said he'd got news, though, but he didn't have any newspapers tucked under his hat or his arms or any parts of him that I could see, either. The news wasn't for me, he said, and he wanted to talk to Mum. I told him, very clearly, that she was busy and wheedled it out of him. And then, D, then if you'd believe it, I started to cry. I don't know why. I mean--I know it's normal to cry when you find out someone's passed on, but, you do know, I've never cried before over someone passing. And the worst bit is, I didn't feel sad about Gretchen passing on at all. I wish I did, because that would have meant grief, and grief is bearable, but the guilt over not feeling anything, anything at all, is much, much worse. I cried because it didn't affect me. I cried even though I didn't mean it. All manly tears, of course, the silent kind that you only allow yourself to cry in front of company--though I've seen mum crying those kinda tears when he hits her, too, you know, and I've wondered if tears don't have a gender after all.

So I cried, and the postman looked at me oddly, at this beanpole of a boy but a wimp of a man and I swear he almost smiled but didn't and he patted me awkwardly on the shoulder. Why do people pat other people when they want to comfort them? It's like they're trying to pat down their edges so they won't stick out anymore, so that other people won't stab themselves on your pain. It makes no sense. He gave me a piece of paper right after--a formal invitation (I kid you not, an honest-to-goodness invitation) to Gretchen's bloody funeral. Then he left and I broke a plate and mum came rushing into the kitchen and her fucking beau followed her and now I'm going to the funeral tomorrow. I don't want to, because I don't feel anything. But the guilt just might make me go.

You'd better be taking care of yourself now. I hope you are. It'd be nice to see you again, if you're alive. I miss the you you were. Dunno if I'd like you now, but honesty is a valued trait, eh? At least that's what your old man used to say. I liked that guy. Nobody tells the truth in this town anymore.

Write to you later.

Love, H.

--

10th August, Tuesday

I might actually send you this one.

Something's happened. I'd've to send you the last letter to explain, but see: Gretchen died yesterday. I don't know how and her parents won't talk. Nor will her husband. And nor will she.

Yeah. She died yesterday. Today, she's alive. We were coming back from the burial--I swear I saw her, all cold eyes and unmoving in the casket--but there she was, her face alive and her cheeks rosy, beautiful as ever, coming up the path to meet us. The only thing odd about her was her smile. She looked like she'd exchanged her teeth for brambles--not literally, but something about her seemed to stab into all of us. I was too afraid to faint. And for a while, we all just kind of stood there, in existential slather, and she smiled and laughed, but nobody spoke. It would've been inappropriate then.

This is going to sound dramatic as hell, D, but when we got into the car and began driving towards town, I swear I felt something in the air twinge. I'd like to say something along the lines of it being change or some other sop, but I know it wasn't. It's like the night we saw that man on the riverbank--you remember? The guy whose wings dragged behind him as he walked, black as pitch, like those of a crow's.

And here's the thing, D. I'm so scared to write this down. It's still raining out. I'm so scared.

Gretchen had the wings, too.