Love Letters to the Dead

Natalie had a no-duh sound in her voice when she answered. “Because of love, of course. The more you love something, the harder it is to lose.”


I raised my hand before I could even think about it. “I think it’s like when you lose something so close to you, it’s like losing yourself. That’s why at the end, it’s hard for her to write even. She can hardly remember how. Because she barely knows what she is anymore.”

The eyes all turned back to me, but after that, thank god, the bell rang.

I gathered up my stuff as quickly as I could. I looked over at Natalie, and she looked like maybe she was waiting for me. I thought this might be the day that she would ask if I wanted to eat lunch with her and I could stop sitting at the fence.

But Mrs. Buster said, “Laurel, can I talk to you a moment?” I hated her then, because Natalie left. I shifted in front of her desk. She said, “How are you doing?”

My palms were still sweaty from talking in class. “Um, fine.”

“I noticed that you didn’t turn in your first assignment. The letter?”

I stared down at the fluorescent light reflected in the floor and mumbled, “Oh, yeah. Sorry. I didn’t finish it yet.”

“All right. I’ll give you an extension this time. But I’d like you to get it to me by next week.”

I nodded.

Then she said, “Laurel, if you ever need anyone to talk to…”

I looked up at her blankly.

“I used to teach at Sandia,” she said carefully. “May was in my English class her freshman year.”

My breath caught in my chest. I started to feel dizzy. I had counted on no one here knowing, or at least no one talking about it. But now Mrs. Buster was staring at me like I could give her some kind of answer to an awful mystery. I couldn’t.

Finally Mrs. Buster said, “She was a special girl.”

I swallowed. “Yeah,” I said. And I walked out the door.

The noise in the hallway changed into the loudest river I’ve ever heard. I thought maybe I could close my eyes and all of the voices would carry me away.

Yours,

Laurel




Dear River Phoenix,

May’s room at my dad’s house is just like it always was. Exactly the same, only the door stays closed and not a sound comes out. Sometimes I’ll wake up from a dream and think I hear her footsteps, sneaking back home after a night out. My heart will beat with excitement and I’ll sit up in bed, until I remember.

If I can’t fall back asleep, I get up and tiptoe down the hall, turn the handle of the door so it doesn’t creak, and walk into May’s room. It’s as if she never left. I notice everything, just the same as it was when we went to the movies that night. The two bobby pins in a cross on the dresser. I pick them up and put them in my hair. Then I put them back in the same exact cross, pointing toward an almost empty bottle of Sunflowers perfume and the tube of bright lipstick that was never on when she left the house, but always when she came back. The top of her bookshelf is lined with collections of heart-shaped sunglasses, half-burned candles, seashells, geodes split in their centers to show their crystals. I lie on her bed and look up at her things and try to imagine her there. I stare at the bulletin board covered with dried flowers pinned with tacks, little ripped-out horoscopes, and photographs. One of us when we were little, in a wagon next to Mom in the summer. One taken before prom where she wore a long lingerie dress she found at Thrift Town, the same rose in her hair that is now dried and pinned there.

I open May’s closet and look at the sparkly shirts, the short skirts, the sweaters cut at the neck, the jeans ripped at the thighs. Her clothes are brave like she was.