August 17th, 2004

Dear Will,

This is the last letter I’ll write you from California. This time next week, we’ll be in Atlanta. It’s funny, while I was living here I imagined you’d likely have moved west as well, to be as far away as possible from everything that happened, but now that we’re moving I think it’s much more likely that you stayed on the east coast, where you all grew up and where Meg is. The things our brains do, when we’re not managing them…

I won’t be taking these letters with me. I’ve decided to bury them, the way you bury your sketchbooks. Maybe someday we can come back and dig them up again. If I’m feeling up to it, I’ll make a riddle map.

Mom and Dad keep asking me if there are any last-minute things I want to do before we leave, places I want to say goodbye to and all that. They know I’ll say no, but they have to ask. I try not to tell them how I really feel–that the sooner I stop breathing the air of this town the happier I’ll be. I know I’m being unfair to it, but to me this place reeks of loneliness and despair. I may as well have painted all the walls and sidewalks with every fearful and miserable thought I’ve had; the memories of them shout back at me, wherever I look. I may not be happy in our new house, but at least I’ll have clean walls and fresh air. And maybe in my new school, I’ll actually be able to talk to some people. I’m not asking for friends, just for a little casual social exchange every now and then. Everybody here remembers when we first moved in, and how super-careful everybody was of me, and they can’t stop treating me like I’m dying or something.

Actually, that’s not fair either. If I talked to them, they might treat me normally after all. I know what you’d say–you’d say you can’t expect them to treat me like a normal person if I act like a rabbit. But I can’t see to get past it. I know they all wonder what happened to me, and even if they were polite enough not to ask as soon as we got a conversation going, I’d see them thinking it. It wouldn’t be comfortable for any of us.

So at my next school I’m going to give it a shot. I’m going to try to stay out of people’s dreams, and I’m going to try not to get upset if there’s any glass around. Maybe if I’m lucky, I can pass for a really really shy girl, and someone will be sympathetic and try to bring me out of my shell. Of course then I’d feel like a liar. I don’t know. It’s never simple.

What would high school be like if we were together? They’d tell all kinds of stories about us, for sure, but that wouldn’t bother me, or you either. I bet we’d have at least a couple of people who wanted to know us. That’s something I’ve noticed: you can be as strange as you want, and if you’re confident and comfortable, somebody will want to attach to you. I don’t think I’d mind. We could even talk to them about our dreams–they’d only half believe us, and when they went away to college they’d talk about us as these two, really weird, but hypnotic kids they knew, who had them convinced they could do all kinds of strange things. I don’t mind being outgrown, and I think it would be interesting to see how the normal kids react.

I imagine you there all the time, sitting across the room, and I imagine exactly what you’d say in class, and what kind of look you’d give me when the teacher says something you disagree with. It’s getting out of hand, and I don’t think it’s good for me. I’m going to stop it, once we get on the airplane to Atlanta. I’m going to stop writing these letters, too. I wasn’t absolutely sure of that until just now, but it’s pretty clear, listening to myself, that I need to get my head out of the past. We’ll be together again someday, but it does me no good to keep pretending you’re here. It’s all going to end, and I’m going to try to live better once we cross the country. New city, new life.

So, since this is the last time I’m going to let myself say it: I miss you, Will. Nothing’s been right since I flew away from you. I’d rather be hunted for the rest of my life than live another three years like these ones. That’s not much good, since I probably will have to live another three years like these ones, but it’s the truth.

That’s all. There aren’t many more ways I could say it. I miss you, I love you, and I’m going to try very hard not to think of you so much. Starting now.