Dear Kurt,
After the first night at the movies, I would watch Aladdin at home on DVD. I watched it over and over. Whenever I’d remember things I didn’t want to remember, I would put it on so that I could replace Billy with the movie I was supposed to have seen that night, how Aladdin ran around the city, stealing things, saying, “One jump ahead of the slowpokes.” How he and the princess rode on the carpet, singing, “A whole new world…” I would practice being like them, just soaring over everything.
The next time May took me to the movies after the first time, she walked into my room in Mom’s apartment and asked, “Do you want to go to the movies tonight?” with a wink. At Mom’s she could have just gone off by herself. When I used to ask her to take me wherever she was going, she’d say I was too young. But now she wanted me with her. I didn’t know what to say. I felt like if I let her leave without me, I would never get her back. I told myself what happened with Billy wasn’t that bad. I told myself that’s what people do. If I pretended it never happened, I thought maybe it never would have.
So Friday nights became movie nights. It started late that fall after she met Paul and lasted into the spring. We’d go after the Village Inn dinners, with Mom’s or Dad’s ten dollars. When we’d be in the car on the way, May’s lips would get dark as she put her lipstick on. She’d smile and pass it to me and say, “Do you want some?” I’d watch my lips turn dark, too, as I smoothed the crayon-tasting color over my mouth. It was like make-believe. I thought if I stayed close enough to May, the power of her would rub off. So I’d try to use the crimson as an eraser, to take away the feeling of being scared. For both of us. We’d listen to songs and sing loud. I would ignore the sick feeling in my stomach. I would try to be happy. I was with my sister. She liked me, and we were friends again.
And sometimes, May and I really did go to the movies. Sometimes there was no Paul or Billy to ruin everything, and we’d buy Sour Patch Kids and sit in the back of the theater and whisper.
But other nights, when we’d walk up and I’d see Billy standing outside with Paul, my heart would go sick with dread. May and Paul would go off in Paul’s car, and once they were gone, Billy and I would get into his car, parked on the field of blacktop, and he’d drive off somewhere. I got good at it after a while, riding on the carpet above the earth, or riding with the car engines to the ocean.
Billy would start to touch me and say, “I can’t help it. You cast a spell on me.” I wondered if I did cast a spell on him by accident. What if somehow I made him do it, by wishing to be like May, by wishing that she’d take me with her when she used to leave at night?
Sometimes Billy would hang around with me outside of the theater, waiting for May and Paul to come back, so that I wouldn’t look like I was always alone, I guess. When May would ask me if I liked the movie, I would rush past my answer, asking her for stories instead, imagining parties she’d been to with the music so loud that it got into your heartbeat. A lot of times, her breath would smell like alcohol, or her eyes would be glazed over. But she was always smiling, so I thought she was happy. I wanted her to be happy.
When I would come home and get undressed at night, I pretended like I was peeling off my skin. Taking away the dirty parts so I would be new again. Soon there weren’t many clothes left to wear anymore, and I kept asking Mom for new shirts. I felt bad about it because we weren’t supposed to get that many new shirts, on account of not having a lot of money, and she kept asking what about your old shirts, and I said that in middle school they didn’t wear rain forests or deserts or even tie-dye. And I didn’t tell her that they were all thrown away, balled up in the trash of the McDonald’s near the apartment.
But the frog I couldn’t throw out. I saved him, in the back of my secret drawer. He was the only one who knew what happened. And the frog was my favorite. The shirt he used to live on was gone now, but he still had the bottom half of a snap on his belly to remind him of the home he got broken off from.
The night May died was after a movie night. Things were different with Billy that time. “You’re getting to be a big girl,” he had said. “Let’s try what big girls do.” It used to be that he would just want to touch me places. And then he’d want me to watch while he did something. But this night, he wanted me to do it. He said I couldn’t stop until it was done. I kept waiting for it to be done, but it seemed like it never would be. I couldn’t go anywhere else in my mind. All I could see was that, waiting for it to be over.
After, I was waiting outside the theater. Paul’s car pulled up, and May got out. Her breath smelled like liquor, and she looked like she had been crying. But when we got in the Camry, she tried her best to smile and turned up the music. She said let’s not go home yet. She said let’s go to our spot. And when I reached out to touch her arm, she stopped singing and turned to me.
She said, “Laurel, don’t ever let anything bad happen to you, okay?” She looked back at the road and said, “Don’t be like me. I want you to be better, okay?”
I swallowed and nodded. I didn’t know what to say. When we got to the bridge and crawled out into the middle, I looked at her. “May?” I said. “I’m scared.” I wanted her back.
“What are you scared of?” she asked.
“I—I don’t know.”
“Here,” May said. “Do you want to make a spell? Go get one of those flowers.”
I crawled across the bridge, and pulled one of the little blue flowers out of its crack, and brought it back to her. May pulled its petals off, one by one, and held them in her hand. “Beem-am-boom-am-witches-be-gone!” her voice slurred as she flicked her fingers, scattering the petals to the wind. She laughed a little and looked at me like she was searching for something.
I tried to smile back. But then I blurted out, “Billy says that I am going to be pretty like you.”
“What do you mean? When does he say that?”
“Just, just when you leave sometimes. When he—he takes me in his car with him.”
I could see her face change. She was scared. It made me even more terrified. She started crying. She grabbed on to me and held me too tight. “What happened, Laurel?” she whispered. “What did he do?”
“No. Never mind,” I said, desperate to push it away. “It’s okay.” I was grasping for anything to make her stop crying. I just wanted her to be magical again and protect me from everything. “May, remember? Remember when you could fly?”