I walk over. “What’s this?” I ask, lifting the lid.
“Oh, uh…”
But I widened my eyes, taken aback, and drop the lid on the floor.
The box is filled with black envelopes. With silver writing.
“Oh, my God.” I reach in and fan the envelopes, seeing my writing on every single one.
He kept them.
He kept them?
I don’t know why, but I guess I never thought he actually saved them. Why would he? Thinking back, I can’t even remember what they said. Couldn’t have been too interesting if I can’t recall.
The other three boxes are probably filled with letters, too.
“I can’t believe I wrote you this much,” I say, a little horrified. “You must’ve been so bored with me.”
“I adored you.”
I look up, seeing him stare at the floor. An ache weaves its way through my chest.
“I adore you,” he corrects himself. “I’ve read them all at least twice. My favorites, a lot more than that.”
His favorites. And then I recall. The letters I’d found at the Cove. When he stayed there—away from home—he took those with him. The rest stayed here.
I feel guilty now. “They’re in my desk,” I confess. “I lied. I didn’t burn them.”
He gives me a little nod. “Yeah, I hoped so. I have mine, too, that you threw all over the place at the Cove. In case you want them back.”
I give him a small smile, grateful. Yes, I do want them back.
I replace the lid, kind of curious to open a few letters and relive all the embarrassing things I shared with him over the years. Kissing with tongue the first time, the music I suggested that I thought was so epic but realize now it was kind of lame, and all the arguments we got into.
Remembering back, I was pretty hard on him. I mean, using an Android phone doesn’t make him an introverted burner who probably won’t ever have a job or a valid driver’s license at the same time. I didn’t mean that.
And I’m sure he didn’t mean what he said when he called me a Steve Jobs cultist who worships inferior technology because I’m too much of a bubblehead high on apps to know the difference.
On second thought, no. I like the truce we have going on today. The letters can wait.
I walk over and sit down on his bed, bringing up my legs to sit cross-legged. He kicks off his shoes and lies down sideways on the bed, supporting his head on his hand.
I take the sandwich and peel off the top crust while he pops a grape in his mouth.
I stare down at the food. I’m hungry, but I’m also tired and suddenly feel like I don’t give a shit. One of us has to start talking.
He wants something true? Something he doesn’t know?
“I didn’t have many friends in grade school,” I tell him, still keeping my eyes down. “I had one. Delilah.”
He’s quiet, and I know he’s staring at me.
“She had this shaggy blonde hair that kind of looked like a mullet, and she wore these frumpy corduroy skirts,” I went on. “They looked thirty years old. She wasn’t cool and she didn’t dress right. She was alone a lot like me, so we played together at recess, but…”
I narrow my eyes, trying to harden them as the image of her comes to the forefront in my mind.
“But I got tired of not hanging out with the popular kids,” I admit. “I’d see them hanging on each other, laughing and surrounded by everyone, and I felt…envious. Left out of something better. I felt like I was being laughed at.” I lick my dry lips, still avoiding his eyes. “Like I could feel their eyes crawling over my skin. Were they disgusted by me? Why didn’t they like me? I shouldn’t have cared. I shouldn’t have thought that kids who shunned me would be worth it, but I did.”
I finally raise my eyes and find his green ones watching me, unblinking.
“And in my head,” I continue, “Delilah was holding me back. I needed better friends. So one day I ran off. When recess time came, I hid around a corner so she wouldn’t find me, and I watched her. Waiting for her to go off and play with someone else so I could do the same and she wouldn’t look for me.
I swallow, my throat stretching painfully.
“But she didn’t,” I whisper, tears welling in my eyes. “She just stood against a wall, alone and looking awkward and uncomfortable. Waiting for me.” My body shakes, and I start to cry. “That was the day I became this. When I started to believe that a hundred people’s fickle adoration was worth more than one person’s love. And for a while it felt kind of good.” Tears stream down my face. “I was lost in the novelty of it. Being mean, slipping in a quick insult, making a joke of others and of my teachers…I felt respected. Adored. My new skin suited me.”
And then more images creep in, still so vivid after all this time.
“But months later, when I’d see Delilah playing alone, being laughed at, not having anywhere to belong…I started to hate that skin I was so comfortable in. The skin of a fake and shallow coward.”
I wipe the tears, trying to take in a deep breath. He’s looking at me, but the heat of shame covers my face, and I’m worried. What does he think of me?
“And when I started writing you a year later,” I go on, “I needed you so much by that point. I needed someone I could be the person I wanted to be with. I could go back. I could be the girl who was Delilah’s friend again. The girl who stood up to the mean kids and didn’t need a spirit animal, because she was her own.”
I close my eyes, just wanting to hide. I feel the bed shift under me and then his hands cupping my face.