Postscripts (Chapter 2: Tish)

I recognise Louisa’s handwriting straight off. After all those years of sitting next to her in every class we shared, it’s almost as familiar to me as my own. What I can’t work out is what her rounded, looping letters are doing spelling out my name and address on the front of a slightly battered white envelope. When Mum said there was a letter for me, I’d figured it was something like a notice for an overdue library book that had gotten buried and forgotten in my room somewhere. Something boring and unwelcome. Not the first hint of contact from the best friend I haven’t heard from in three weeks.

As I sit on my bed, staring at the envelope Mum had just handed me, I can’t help but feel a creeping kind of dread. When Louisa had stopped answering my messages, I’d put it down to how busy she must be, but surely it took so much less time to send a quick text than it took to handwrite a whole letter. I fiddle at the seal, convinced that there must be some massive, horrible secret contained in the envelope, something too significant for the instantaneous nature of technology to handle. Not that my worries made any kind of real sense, when I let the more logical side of my brain squash them, but the presence of the envelope was definitely less than expected.

When I was a little kid, I always used to open envelopes painstakingly, trying to keep the paper as undamaged as I could. But today, I don’t bother being careful as I open Louisa’s letter. I’m more curious than I am concerned, and once the envelope’s in tatters I unfold the lilac-coloured lined paper as quickly as I can.

They say letter-writing’s a dying art form, the letter begins. After only a few sentences, I can’t help but be struck by how much the words just sound like Louisa, and I can almost hear her voice in my head as I read. It’s her, right there on paper, and it’s almost enough to make the weeks of not hearing from her evaporate in my mind. I’ve been missing her, ever since she left just after Christmas last year, but for a moment it’s almost like she’s there, telling me about how she’s been going.

There is a loneliness about her writing, though, that seems a little out of place compared to the Louisa I know. Which, I suppose, is fair enough considering. When I reach where she signs her letter off, the quiet, hopeful sadness in the sentence, I’m really looking forward to hearing back from you, makes me despise the couple of hundred kilometres between us as much as I had in the days right after she and her family had moved.

I want to write back. I know this as soon as I finish the letter, and I’m already deciding on whether loose-leaf paper from one of my school folders would be okay to write back to her on. I didn’t own any fancy stationery sets like the one she’s used, so it’ll have to be that or printer paper.

Just as I’m starting to form how I’m going to begin my return letter, my bedroom door crashes open and slams shut in surprisingly rapid succession, as my cousin Meg storms her way into the room. She throws herself onto the bed on the opposite side of the room with a sigh that contains so much tween angst that I’m afraid talking to her will result in some kind of near-fatal injury.

I’m pretty certain that I wasn’t this moody when I was twelve. I suppose that it’s a bit different for Meg than it was for me, because I didn’t really have anything that serious going on. I know that she has pretty valid reasons for being difficult, and comparing her to when I was twelve is a little unfair.

When I was twelve, my parents didn’t take off to the other side of the world for six months, leaving me behind to stay with my cousins. I hadn’t been forced to suddenly share a room with an awkward seventeen-year-old and lose most of my chances for privacy. I hadn’t had to start high school without my parents there to reassure me, and I didn’t have to live in a different town away from all my friends.

Meg had shrugged all this off when she and Christopher had first moved in with us, after their parents had gone to Scotland because their grandmother – on the side I wasn’t related to – had gotten sick. So far, the trip has taken so much longer than they’d intended, and I think the novelty of staying with us has worn off for Meg. She’s constantly irritable, and even though I know I should be trying to comfort her, to understand her, she’s still impossible to live with.

The five years age difference between us is large enough that I can still remember her as a cute little kid, so the angsty attitude she has now is still a little difficult to grasp. Even as Meg’s grown up, I’ve still been thinking of her as the kid cousin who always thought I was really cool, but now she’s the almost-teenager who glares at me and whose bad moods seem to leech into the atmosphere of the whole house. Without Louisa here, I haven’t gotten out as much as I normally would, and between that and Meg’s infectious moodiness I’ve spent a lot of time this summer moping about.

I look across at my cousin. “Hey, Megsy,” I offer awkwardly. It hasn’t been all that long since I was her age, really, but I still struggle to get on her wavelength. The start of year seven feels like a long time ago. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” she says, her voice muffled by her pillow. Her bare feet hang over the end of my rickety old single bed. Even though she’s only twelve, she’s still taller than me. Getting my double bed had more to do with my old mattress being old than it did with me growing out of it. Meg’s mousy hair, not unlike my own before I’d dyed it, falls in front of her eyes as she lifts her head to look at me darkly. Pushing her hair from her face, she adds, “Except for the fact that Chris’ friends’ll come out here, but mine won’t. It’s not that far to come from Casterwick.”

I give her a grimace that hopefully looks sympathetic. “I’m sure Mum could drive you, if you ask. It’ll have to be on one of her days off, but she won’t mind.”

Meg shrugs. She props herself up on her elbow, and stares at the headboard of her bed. “Maybe.”

“So who’s this friend of Christopher that’s coming?” I ask, hoping it’s not the wrong thing to say. Or at least, that it’s not going to make Meg any angrier. I’m not so good at tiptoeing around her, apparently.

“Some guy from school.”

“Some guy, or some guy?” I ask. Christopher and I have a history of meddling in each other’s love lives. Or, to be more accurate, we have a history of trying to catapult the other into having a love life. Although after last year, when I tried and epically failed to set Chris up with Louisa’s sister, Evie, I did work out that I was possibly trying to set him up with the wrong people.

If my cousin was out there with a boy, then wingman duties called. Whenever I so much as mentioned one of my male friends from school to Christopher I get interrogated, so there was no way that I was missing this opportunity to pester him.

Meg rolls her eyes. “If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, then ew. How should I know?”

“I dunno.”

With a sigh, Meg flips herself over to lie on her back and stare at the ceiling. Her blank expression distracts me for a moment, and I wish there was some way for me to be there for her. I’m so out of my depth with Meg. If Louisa were here, she’d know what to do, but I’m lost.

At the thought of Louisa, my gaze tracks back to the letter sitting on the doona beside me. Talking to Meg had momentarily made me forget about it, and about what I was planning on writing back. I let myself feel a moment of sheepish guilt, then consider my options. With Meg across the room, there’s no way I’ll be able to concentrate enough to be able to write a letter. Or at least one that isn’t full of rambling angst.

So I pick up Louisa’s letter and leave the room. There should be some paper in the hallway cupboard, where I’d stashed last year’s yet-to-be-dealt-with school books at the end of the semester. It’s probably my best bet for finding paper, and perhaps I could hide in the guest room, which really is Christopher’s room, these days, and write my letter.

And if I happen to go past Christopher and his friend on my way to the cupboard, then I can suss this guy out and have a perfectly valid reason for being there.

I open my bedroom door, feeling satisfied with my plan. Wrapped up in my own thoughts, I don’t pay all that much attention to my surroundings as I step out into the hallway, Louisa’s letter still clutched in one hand.

I turn to head towards the cupboard, but instead slam straight into the chest of somebody walking in the opposite direction.