Letters to the Lost, Page 2

  If we’re calling a spade a spade, she’d be more popular if she weren’t best friends with the senior-class train wreck.

  When I found the letter this morning, I expected to read it and start crying. Instead, I want to find this loser and punch him in the face. Every time I read it, I get a bit more furious.

  Did you ever think that my words weren’t meant for you to read, either?

  The fury helps cover up the little part of me that wonders if he’s right.

  The hallways are empty, which seems impossible. Where are the rest of the slackers? Why am I always the only late one?

  Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t here. I’m physically in the building. It’s not like I’m going to turn into a model student once a teacher starts doing the Charlie Brown at the blackboard.

  By the time we reach the language arts wing, we’re half running, skidding through turns. I grab hold of the corner to help propel me down the last hall.

  I feel the burn before I feel the collision. Hot liquid sears my skin, and I cry out. A cup of coffee has exploded across my chest. I slam into something solid, and I’m skidding, slipping, falling.

  Someone solid.

  I’m on the ground, eyes level with scuffed black work boots.

  In a rom-com, this would be the “meet-cute.” The boy would be movie-star hot, first-string quarterback, and class valedictorian. He’d offer me his hand, and he’d coincidentally have an extra T-shirt in his backpack. I’d change into it in the restroom, and somehow my boobs would be bigger, my hips would be smaller, and he’d walk me to class and ask me to prom.

  In reality, the guy is Declan Murphy, and he’s practically snarling. His shirt and jacket are soaked with coffee, too, and he’s pulling material away from his chest.

  If the rom-com guy was the star quarterback, Declan is the senior-class reject. He’s got a criminal record and a frequent seat in detention. He’s big and mean, and while reddish-brown hair and a sharp jaw might turn some girls on, the dark look in his eyes is enough to keep them away. A scar bisects one eyebrow, and it’s probably not his only one. Most people are afraid of him, and they have reason to be. Rowan is simultaneously trying to help me up and pull me away from him.

  He looks at me with absolute derision. His voice is rough and low. “What is wrong with you?”

  I jerk away from Rowan. My shirt is plastered to my chest, and I can guarantee he’s getting a great view of my purple bra through my pastel-green shirt. For as hot as the coffee was, now I’m wet and freezing. This is humiliating and horrible, and I can’t decide if I want to cry or if I want to yell at him.

  My breath actually hitches, but I suck it up. I’m not afraid of him. “You ran into me.”

  His eyes are fierce. “I wasn’t the one running.”

  Then he moves forward sharply. I shrink away before I can help it.

  Okay, maybe I am afraid of him.

  I don’t know what I thought he was going to do. He’s just so intense. He stops short and scowls at my reaction, then finishes his motion to lean down and grab his backpack where it fell.

  Oh.

  There probably is something wrong with me. I want to yell at him all over again, even though all this was my fault. My jaw tightens.

  Temper, Juliet.

  The memory of my mother hits me so hard and fast and sudden that it’s a miracle I don’t burst into tears right here. There’s nothing holding me together, and one wrong word is going to send me straight off an edge.

  Declan is straightening, and that scowl is still on his face, and I know he’s going to say something truly despicable. This, after the chastising letter, might be enough to turn me into a sopping mess.

  But then his eyes find mine, and something he sees there steals the dark expression from his face.

  A tinny voice speaks from beside us. “Declan Murphy. Late again, I see.”

  Mr. Bellicaro, my freshman year biology teacher, is standing beside Rowan. Her cheeks are flushed and she looks almost panicked. She must have sensed trouble and gone running for a teacher. It’s something she would do. I’m not sure whether I’m annoyed or relieved. A classroom door hangs open behind him, and kids are peering into the hallway.

  Declan swipes at drops of coffee clinging to his jacket. “I wasn’t late. She ran into me.”

  Mr. Bellicaro purses his lips. He’s short and has a round gut that’s accentuated by a pink sweater-vest. He’s not what you’d consider well-liked. “No food is allowed outside the cafeteria—”

  “Coffee isn’t food,” says Declan.

  “Mr. Murphy, I believe you know the way to the principal’s office.”

  “Yeah, I could draw you a map.” His voice sharpens, and he leans in, glowering. “This isn’t my fault.”

  Rowan flinches back from his tone. Her hands are almost wringing. I don’t blame her. For an instant, I wonder if this guy is going to hit a teacher.

  Mr. Bellicaro draws himself up. “Am I going to have to call security?”

  “No.” Declan puts his hands up, his voice bitter. His eyes are dark and furious. “No. I’m walking.” And he is, cursing under his breath. He crumples his paper cup and flings it at a trash can.

  So many emotions ricochet around my skull that I can barely settle on one. Shame, because it really was my fault, and I’m standing here, letting him take the blame. Indignation, for the way he spoke. Fear, for the way he acted.

  Intrigue, for the way the darkness fell off his face when his eyes met mine.

  I wish I had a photograph of his face at precisely that moment. Or now, capturing his walk down the shadowed hallway. Light flashes on his hair and turns it gold when he passes each window, but shadows cling to his broad shoulders and dark jeans. I haven’t wanted to touch my camera since Mom died, but all of a sudden I wish I had it in my hands. My fingers itch for it.

  “For you, Miss Young.”

  I turn, and Mr. Bellicaro is holding out a white slip of paper.

  Detention. Again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  You’re right.

  I shouldn’t have interfered with your grief.

  I’m sorry.

  That doesn’t mean you were right to read my letter. I still kind of hate you for that. I’ve been trapped here for fifteen minutes, staring at a blank piece of paper, trying to remember how it felt to write to her, to know my thoughts were more permanent than a conversation.

  Instead, all I can think about is you and your “Me too” and what it meant and whether your pain is anything like mine.

  Not that it’s any of my business.

  I don’t know if you’ll even read my apology, but I need to say the words to someone. Guilt has been riding my shoulders awhile now.

  Not guilt because of you. Because of someone else.

  I owe this “someone” an apology, but I don’t know him any better than I know you. I’m certainly not going to start writing notes to two strangers. For now, this is the best I can do, and I’ll just have to hope that the guilt catches up.

  Have you ever heard of Kevin Carter? He won a Pulitzer for a photograph of a dying girl. It’s a pretty famous photo, so maybe you’ve seen it. A little girl was starving in the Sudan, trying to reach a feeding station. She needed to stop to rest because she was barely more than a skeleton held together by a stretch of skin. She needed to rest because she wasn’t strong enough to get to the food in one trip.

  So she rested in the dirt, this tiny little girl, while a vulture sat nearby, waiting.

  Do you get it? Waiting. For her to die.

  I think of that picture sometimes. Of that moment.

  Sometimes I feel like the girl.

  Sometimes I feel like the bird.

  Sometimes I feel like the photographer, unable to do anything but watch.

  Kevin Carter killed himself after he won the Pulitzer.

  Sometimes I think I understand why.

  I need a cigarette.

  Moths flutter around the porch light, pinging against t
he glass bulb. It’s almost midnight on Thursday, and the neighborhood is nearly silent.

  The house behind me is not. Alan, my stepfather, is still awake, and my mother’s out with friends, so I’m not ready to go inside yet.

  Alan doesn’t like me much.

  Trust me. It’s mutual.

  The letter had been sitting in my back pocket all night. I have no idea when she wrote it, but it had to have been within the last forty-eight hours. It wasn’t there on Tuesday night, because I looked. Melonhead was riding me then because I was late, and no one ever wants to hear my excuses.

  “I had detention,” I said when I finally showed up.

  He was pouring fuel into one of the mowers in the equipment shed. It was hot as hell in there, and his shirt was sticking. The space isn’t all that big, and it always smells like a mixture of cut grass and gasoline. I like it.

  I didn’t like the way Melonhead looked at me, a disgusted glance, as if I were just another slacker.

  “You can make up your lost hour on Saturday,” he said.

  “I can make it up on Thursday.”

  “No, you’ll make it up on Saturday.”

  I held up my slip. “I’m only assigned to work Tuesdays and Thursdays.”

  He shrugged and turned toward the door to the shed. “You’re assigned to work from four till eight. It’s ten past five. You can make up your hour on Saturday.”

  “Look, man, I can stay until nine—”

  “You think I want to stay late for you?”

  Of course not. He wanted to get home to his wife and kid so he’d have more stories to bore me with next time. I punched the wall beside my mower and swore. “You think I want to be here at all?”

  He stopped in the doorway, and for a second, I wondered if he was going to take a swing at me. But he looked at me, and his voice didn’t change. “You should be grateful to be here. If you want me to sign your slip for eight hours, you’ll show up on Saturday.” Melonhead began to turn but paused. “And watch your language. I don’t want that talk here.”

  I opened my mouth to fire back at him, but he just stood there, sunlight at his back, and I knew he’d be on the phone with the judge in a heartbeat if I pushed it.

  I hate that he can hold this over my head. I remember the sentencing, thinking that mowing a cemetery would be easy, that no one would hassle me. I didn’t realize this program would involve a guy who’d get a power trip from ordering me around.

  I half crumpled the slip in my fist. “You can’t make me work on Saturday.”

  “If you don’t like it, show up on time.”

  Tonight I showed up early, hoping I’d earn a gold star and a free pass. No dice. But I did find a letter from the cemetery girl.

  Part of me wonders if I’d be better off without it here in my hands. It’s depressing and intriguing and frightening all at once.

  I don’t know the photograph she’s talking about. I didn’t know the first one, either, with the scream and the flowers and the blood and the gun. I almost don’t need to see them, because her words zoom in on the details with a painful focus.

  But now, reading her lines about the vulture and the little girl, I want to go look it up.

  The side gate rattles, and I fold the letter up to slide it under my thigh. I’m expecting my mother, but then I hear the sniff, and I know it’s Rev. He’s allergic to everything, including most people.

  “You’re out late,” I say. Rev is more likely to drag me out of bed at six in the morning than to come calling near midnight.

  “They took in a baby this afternoon. She won’t go to sleep. Mom says it’s separation anxiety. Dad says she’ll settle soon. I said I needed to take a walk.” He’s not irritated. He’s used to it.

  Geoff and Kristin are foster parents. They live on the other side of the block, but their backyard is diagonal from ours, so we’ve always gotten a firsthand look at the kids who roll through their house.

  Rev was the first. He showed up ten years ago, when he was seven and scrawny, with Coke-bottle glasses and allergies so bad he could barely breathe. His clothes were too small, and his arm was in a cast, and he wouldn’t speak. Geoff and Kristin are the nicest people on the planet—they’re nice to me, and that’s saying something—but Rev ran away from them anyway.

  I found him in my closet, curled up in the back corner, peeking at me through shaggy hair while clutching a ratty, old Bible.

  I had a box of Legos in there, so I thought he was there to play. Like kids routinely showed up in my closet or something. I don’t know what I was thinking. I folded myself in there with him and started building.

  Turned out he was scared of Geoff and Kristin because they’re black. His dad had told him that black people were evil and sent by the devil.

  The irony here is that Rev’s dad used to beat the crap out of him.

  He usually quoted the Bible while he did it.

  Geoff and Kristin adopted Rev five years ago. He says it was no big deal, that they’d been the only parents he’d known for years anyway, and it was just a piece of paper.

  But it was a big deal. It settled something inside him.

  He wears contacts during the day now, but his hair is still on the longish side. My sister, Kerry, used to say he hides behind it. When Rev was eight, he told Geoff he didn’t want anyone to ever be able to hurt him again. Kristin signed him up for martial arts the next day. He’s kept up with it, almost to the extreme. If the glasses and the allergies and the shyness had you thinking loser, you wouldn’t say it to his face. He’s built like an MMA fighter. Add a best friend with a record—me—and most kids at school give him a wide berth.

  Also ironic, because Rev is about as aggressive as an old golden retriever.

  I move over to give him room to sit down, and he drops onto the step beside me.

  “What were you reading?” he says.

  He must have seen me from across the yard. I hesitate before answering.

  And that’s ridiculous. He knows every secret I have. He watched my family fall apart, including my mother’s misguided attempts to glue the pieces back together. He even knows the truth about Kerry, and I thought I was going to take that to the grave with me last May.

  I still hesitate. I feel like maybe I’m breaking a confidence if I tell anyone about the cemetery girl.

  Not like I even know who she is.

  I deliberate for another moment. Rev doesn’t say anything.

  Finally, I pull the slip of paper out from beneath my leg and hand it to him.

  He reads silently for a minute, then hands it back. “Who is she?”

  “I have no idea.” I pause. “The daughter of Zoe Rebecca Thorne.”

  “What?”

  I turn the letter over in my hands, sliding the paper between my fingers. “I found a letter sitting against a gravestone last week. I read it. It was talking about . . .” I hesitate again. No matter what Rev knows, it was easier to talk about life and death with an anonymous reader. I have to clear my throat. “It was about losing someone suddenly.”

  “And you thought of Kerry.”

  I nod.

  We sit there in silence for a while, listening to the moths dance against the lightbulb. Somewhere down the road, a siren flares to life. Just as suddenly, it’s gone.

  Rev says, “But this is a different letter?”

  “Yeah. I wrote back to the first one.”

  “You wrote back?”

  “I didn’t think she’d read it!”

  “What makes you so sure it’s a girl?”

  It’s a good question. I’m not entirely sure. Then again, his first question was Who is she? “What makes you so sure it’s a girl?”

  “The fact that you wouldn’t be sitting here mooning over a letter from a guy. Let me see it again.”

  I do. While he reads, I play his words back in my head. Mooning? Am I mooning? I don’t even know her.

  “‘Sometimes I feel like the girl,’” he quotes.

  “Exactly.
”

  “This is notebook paper,” he says.

  “I know.” The cemetery is local. It has occurred to me that she might be another student at Hamilton High School.

  “Dude. She could be, like, eleven.”

  Okay, that hasn’t occurred to me.

  I snatch the letter back from him. “Shut up. It doesn’t matter.”

  He sobers. “I’m just yanking your chain. She doesn’t sound eleven.” He pauses. “Maybe that letter was left for you.”

  “No, she was pretty pissed that I wrote back.”

  Now he hesitates. “I don’t mean that she left the letter for you.”

  It takes me a second to figure out his tone. “Rev, if you start preaching at me, I’m going in the house.”

  “I’m not preaching.”

  No, he’s not. Yet.

  He still has that old Bible I found him clutching in my closet. It was his mother’s. He’s read it about twenty times. He’ll debate theology with anyone who’s interested—and I’m not on that list. Geoff and Kristin used to take him to church, but he said he didn’t like that he couldn’t live by his own interpretation.

  What he didn’t say was that looking up at a man in a pulpit reminded him too much of his father.

  Rev doesn’t walk around quoting Bible verses or anything—usually—but his faith is rock solid. I once asked him how he can believe in a providential god when he barely survived living with his father.

  He looked at me and said, “Because I did survive.”

  And there’s no arguing that.

  I’m wishing I hadn’t told him about the letters now. I don’t want a religious analysis.

  “Don’t call it God, then,” he says. “Call it fate. Don’t you find it interesting that of all the people who could have found that letter, you did?”

  This is one of the things I love best about Rev. He’ll never force anything on anyone. I nod.