Yours,
Laurel
Dear River,
In chorus today, Hannah held my hand almost the whole time. I kept thinking, Don’t look at Sky. But I couldn’t help lifting my eyes, just once, to where he was like a mirage across the room, and remembering how his chest felt rising up and down with breath. I would have given anything to go back to his arms around my body. I would have given anything to be someone different, someone he wouldn’t have left.
After class, Hannah was waiting for me, but I told her I’d meet her in the alley. When the room cleared out, I sat down, putting my head against my knees and trying to stop breathing so fast.
Eventually I walked out to the alley and found Natalie and Hannah with Tristan and Kristen. When they saw me, they all got quiet and looked at me, in that way that makes you certain about why you never wanted to talk about anything in the first place. If it had just been about Sky, they would have found something to say. But it was more than that. It was May. I guessed that Natalie and Hannah had told them that I’d finally admitted that I had a sister who’s dead.
After a few moments of silence, they forced themselves to chatter. Tristan lit a cigarette with his giant kitchen lighter. When he and Kristen had to leave to get ready to go to dinner with her parents, they both squeezed my hands, like they were trying to transmit a secret I’m sorry. But I didn’t want any pity. I didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t a normal kind of thing where I could just cry and be sad and let them stroke my hair. There were too many mixed-up feelings—and what’s starting to grow, more and more, is this ball of anger in my stomach that I can’t control. I know that it’s not what I’m supposed to feel. And I feel even guiltier for feeling it. But I can’t help it.
When Tristan and Kristen left, I was about to go, too, so that I wouldn’t be late again to meet Aunt Amy. But then Hannah said, “Hey. About your sister. I’m sorry that there’s nothing good to say. And I’m sorry that we didn’t say anything sooner.”
The way that she said it, so kindly, made me wish that I could tell her everything. “I’m sorry, too,” I answered, “that I didn’t talk to you guys about it before.”
Hannah said, “I mean, words can’t be good enough for a lot of things. But, you know, I guess we have to try.”
Then Natalie said, sounding very serious, “It’s, like, really sad that people die.”
We all laughed at once, because this was so obvious. It was an accidental, perfect example of what Hannah had just said.
“Are you drunk?” I asked her, which made us laugh harder.
When it finally got that after-laugh quiet, I said, “I’m so glad I have you guys.” And I am.
I thought about what Hannah said, how words aren’t good enough for a lot of things, but we have to try. And maybe I should try harder. I just don’t know what they’d think of me if they knew what I told May that night. If they knew what I’d let happen the nights before that. I worry that I’d lose them, too.
The night you died, River, your brother and your sister and your girlfriend found you collapsed outside of a club. You’d taken too many drugs. Your sister tried to breathe life into your body. Your brother called 911. He shouted and shouted into the phone, begging for someone to come. Begging for someone to save you. But by the time the ambulance came, it was too late.
When they found May’s body in the river, the coroner said it didn’t look like her anymore. That’s why Mom and Dad decided to cremate her. I never saw her. I’ve never seen anyone dead.
I guess you know what it’s like to fail someone. To fail everyone. River, you were a star so bright. One that people made wishes on. Until you took so many drugs that you took your life. Do you think that everyone gets to be a star like that? Do you think that everyone gets to be seen? Gets to be loved? Gets to glow? They don’t. They don’t get to do it like you did. They don’t get to be as beautiful as you were. And you just wanted to burn up.
Yours,
Laurel
Dear Elizabeth Bishop,
The art of losing isn’t hard to master. I’ve done it. The days feel transparent, like I am walking through that kind of barely yellow sun coming through a shield of clouds—too thin. Empty light. It doesn’t land.
Sky broke up with me three weeks and one day ago. After school this afternoon, me and Natalie and Hannah and Kristen were in the alleyway. They were smoking and talking. I wasn’t listening. I was just looking at the flecks of late January snow, swirling in the yellow street lamp. The sky was glowing the way it does right before it’s going to get really dark. I was holding Sky’s sweatshirt that he’d let me borrow one night when we snuck out. I’d started wearing it to school back then and had joked that I’d never give it back. Now I never will. I finally pulled it out of my locker that day to take home and put in the back of my drawer where I keep memory things that make me sad. But it was snowing and I was cold, so I put it on. It smelled like him.
At that moment, Sky came out of nowhere down the alley. He looked startled to see me. He said, “Hey,” and kept walking. I looked down because my eyes were filling up with tears, but I didn’t want him to notice. When he passed, I whispered, “Hi,” and watched his back. I loved him still and hated him all at once.
Then I saw. He stopped under one of the streetlights and put his arm around her. A girl with blond hair and big boobs that were bursting out of her shirt, which was super tight and pink with an anarchy symbol on it. She was only wearing that tee shirt even though it was snowing out. Sky took off his same leather jacket and put it around her. And they kissed. With his hands under the jacket. I knew I shouldn’t look, but I couldn’t move my eyes. My throat clenched so that I could barely breathe.
The girl saw me watching and pointed toward me, but before Sky’s head could turn, I looked down. The next thing I saw, she was leading them off into this old yellow car, a cool car, and big enough to have sex in, I’m sure.
I wanted to scream. I wanted to jump in front of the stupid yellow car. I felt like I could burst into flames.
Hannah said, “He’s an absolute asshole, Laurel. Do you want me to kill him? Because I will.” Kristen offered me a cigarette, which I usually don’t smoke, but now I did, if only to find a way to suck something in. I asked Kristen who she was, and Kristen said her name is Francesca, and she graduated last year, and she works at Safeway. While they tried to make me feel better by talking about how I’m so much prettier and cooler and nicer than her, I thought of her running people’s ice cream and chocolate milk and hamburger meat and Jim Beam through the checkout line, and then running out through the snow in her uniform, where Sky would be waiting in his truck to take her home. And I thought of your poem.