P.S. I Miss You

by Jen Petro-Roy

Like Ethan thinking mean things about me and June.

  June had been right. Being out together was scary. It shouldn’t have been, though. It should have been normal. We aren’t monsters. Or aliens. We aren’t even sinners. We’re two girls who like each other.

  It’s not the worst thing in the world. And if Katie and Maggie accepted us right away, maybe the rest of the kids in school would, too.

  Maybe I could do something brave again.

  This time in public.

  So I started to inch my hand closer to June’s. Every nerve ending on my skin felt like it was on fire. My hand moved closer and closer. My heart beat faster and faster.

  Then I saw something out of the corner of my eye. At first I thought I was still imagining things. Then I felt like I’d been electrified.

  Mom and Dad had just walked into Tony’s Pizza! They were staring up at the board (like they don’t order the same cheese pizza all the time) and hadn’t seen me yet. I yanked my hand away and dove under the table. Now Henry was looking at me like I was a freak.

  June looked like I’d stabbed her in the heart. (Okay, maybe not that bad, but she did look hurt.) I felt like I’d stabbed myself in the heart.

  I don’t want to have to hide from Mom and Dad for the rest of my life. I don’t even want to hide from them for the rest of middle school.

  I don’t want to live my life wondering when they’re going to “shame” me away.

  I don’t want to be ashamed.

  So I’ve decided that we’ll skip step three of “The Plan” (we really should have come up with a fancier name) entirely. I might not have found Anna yet, but I need to see you now. Right away. We’re even skipping the movie so I can get to Saint Augustine’s sooner.

  Maybe together we can convince Mom and Dad to accept the Morgan girls the way we are.

  Love,

  Evie

  P.S. I’ll see you soon!

  P.P.S. In case you were wondering, Mom and Dad didn’t see me. I think.

  SATURDAY, JUNE 1ST (REALLY EARLY)

  Dear Cilla,

  I’m writing this from the car. It’s dark and we’re on a back road now, with no streetlights at all, but I borrowed Katie’s phone so I can see. I know you’re not going to get this letter in the mail, but I have to write down what happened.

  I guess writing is how I make sense of things now. And I really need to make sense of what I saw.

  After I finished my last letter, I went home. I had to pack, and I had to make some excuse about why I’d be away all night. Mom and Dad weren’t back yet, though. There was a note on the fridge saying they’d gone to a seven o’clock movie.

  I left my own note that I’d be sleeping over Maggie’s. I hope they don’t call to check up on me, but even if they do, we’ll hopefully be long gone by then. Depending on how fast Maggie’s sister drives (which, judging by how fast she’s going now, is very, very fast), we should be there by morning.

  I packed my stuff quickly. All I needed was a change of clothes and a pillow for the car. My toothbrush, too. I don’t want my breath to smell like pepperoni and onion rings when I see you again for the first time in almost a year.

  I still had an hour before Hannah said she’d be ready to drive us all, so I decided I had time for a little more investigating. The filing cabinet in Dad’s office was locked, but I found the key right away, in the middle drawer of his desk. You used to keep the key to your diary in your middle drawer, too. (Fine, I’ll apologize again for reading it.) Dad’s filing cabinet was boring, though. Bills, instruction manuals for the fridge and the smoke alarm, stuff like that. Until I got to the bottom drawer.

  That’s where I found it, wedged in the very back of the very last folder. It was wrinkle-soft and torn on the bottom right edge, but it was still intact. A picture of a newborn baby. She had wispy brown hair and green eyes, just like you. She was beautiful, even though she kind of looked like an alien. An alien with a big bald spot, just like an old man.

  There was a name written on the back of the picture, in Mom’s loopy handwriting: Amélie Evelyn.

  I remember how much you love the movie Amélie. I’ve watched it with you probably two dozen times. You have a poster of the garden gnome from that movie over your bed. Your bed here, I mean.

  You named your baby after Amélie. And after me.

  Mom and Dad have had this picture the entire time. Even after I asked them about the baby, they still lied to me. They told me they didn’t know where she was or what she looked like. They told me they didn’t want to stir up trouble.

  They told me to leave things alone.

  Mom and Dad are liars. Bible-ignoring, commandment-disobeying liars. Okay, maybe “Thou shalt not bear false witness against your neighbor” is only the eighth commandment, but it’s still pretty darn important. Especially when I’m not their neighbor, I’m their daughter! And the secret has to do with my niece! My flesh and blood.

  What if you haven’t seen this picture? What if they know more? They’re hypocrites.

  (And I shouldn’t care what hypocrites think about who I might or might not like!)

  Okay, we’re stopping for food now. Katie wants some pretzels. June and Maggie want two of those convenience store cinnamon buns. We’re going to get an energy drink for Hannah, too. She looks like she’s about to pass out. I don’t think I’ll be able to eat, though. I’m too angry.

  Love,

  Evie

  P.S. Maggie told Hannah that we’d mow the lawn for her all summer if she drove us to Saint Augustine’s. I hate mowing the lawn, but it’ll be worth it when I see you.

  MONDAY, JUNE 3RD

  Dear Cilla,

  You’re not going to write back. You’re never going to write back.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 5TH

  Dear Cilla,

  You can’t write back.

  You can’t hold a pen or a pencil or type on a computer.

  You can’t seal up your words in an envelope and press a kiss on the outside.

  You can’t sit in a desk chair and tap your pen against the table in that tap tap tappity tap rhythm you used to do that I hated.

  You can’t give me advice.

  You can’t come home.

  You can’t do anything.

  Because you’re gone.

  Gone.

  It hurts to write these words. Last year, when Katie’s grandpa died and I went to the funeral, her grandma kept saying that her “heart hurt.” Back then, I thought she meant she was having a heart attack, that she was feeling all the symptoms we learned about in health class: a tight chest, pain in your arm or jaw, indigestion.

  Now I know that having your heart hurt isn’t just a feeling you have in your body. Because yeah, my body does hurt. Ever since that morning at your school, I’ve felt like I’ve been punched in the stomach and run over by a truck.

  At the same time.

  It feels like there’s a fist inside of my chest, squeezing my heart so hard that it’s shriveled to the size of a raisin. But even though it’s raisin-sized, the pain is the size of Mount Everest.

  My body does hurt. But that’s not the worst part.

  There’s something else that hurts, too, something I can’t even describe. It’s not something that’s in me; it’s something that’s gone.

  I feel hollow inside.

  You know how some amputees can feel phantom pain in the limb they’ve lost? I read an article once about a soldier who lost his leg in Iraq. Every time it rained for the rest of his life, his knee hurt. He didn’t even have a knee anymore and it still hurt!

  That’s what I feel like now. Like there’s this huge hole that someone carved out in my stomach, and even though it’s empty, everything inside of it aches.

  Maybe that’s where my soul was. Now that you’re gone, it doesn’t want to stay around anymore and is reaching up toward Heaven to be with you.

  That sounds ridiculous.

  Me writing this at all is ridiculous.

  Love,

  Evi
e

  P.S. I miss you so much.

  FRIDAY, JUNE 7TH

  Dear Cilla,

  This is ridiculous, but I had to write again. Writing is what I do now. It’s the only thing I can do now. I can’t talk to anyone. Not Katie or Maggie. Not even June. Definitely not Mom and Dad.

  No one else knows what it’s like to have their sister die. No one else has had a sister die in childbirth and then been lied to about it for almost nine whole months.

  NINE MONTHS.

  So I’m writing to you. Because you’re the only thing that makes sense to me right now.

  I’m not writing on stationery anymore, though, even though I do have one sheet of paper left. One single piece, mocking me with its bright colors and happy roses.

  I won’t use it, though. I’m using this notebook instead. My old, ripped notebook from last year with the torn black cover and half the pages ripped out. It’s not pretty, but it matches how I feel inside.

  Dark.

  Gloomy.

  Sad.

  Angry.

  I don’t know whether I’m more sad or angry. It switches all the time. Right now I’m angry. I’m furious. Not at you, though. I’m not mad at you anymore. I was once, but that was before I found out the truth.

  The truth that Mom and Dad aren’t just hypocrites. They aren’t just bad parents who were ashamed of their daughter for a teeny, tiny sin.

  They’re evil. They’re liars. They’re sinners.

  I thought them keeping Amélie’s picture from me was awful, but this is a million times worse. It’s like when places have those Guess How Many Jelly Beans Are in the Jar? games and I guess something like fifty but it’s really four thousand and fifty.

  This is Jelly Bean Jar–worthy.

  I will never talk to them again for the rest of my life.

  Love,

  Evie

  P.S. Why did you have to die?

  TUESDAY, JUNE 11TH

  Dear Cilla,

  I need to tell you what happened. I need to tell me what happened. Maybe then it won’t feel so much like a dream.

  Or a nightmare.

  We got to Saint Augustine’s School for Girls as the sun was rising. No one was around, so we had time to figure out where to park and what exactly to do. Because besides getting there and finding you, we didn’t have much of a plan.

  There was a half-eaten cinnamon bun and a bottle of water left from our pit stop in the middle of the trip. So even though I still felt sick, I ate the food. I drank the water. I needed something to do until people started to come out of their dorm rooms.

  We figured that the dining hall was the safest bet. Everyone eats in the morning, right? And you never skipped breakfast. Well, except for the beginning of your pregnancy, when you were barfing all the time.

  You never “skipped” breakfast. Not never “skip” breakfast.

  “Skipped.” Past tense. You’re in the past tense now.

  I hate the past tense.

  But when girls started filing out of the dorms, all in matching blue-and-gold-plaid skirts and crisp white button-down shirts, you weren’t there. I looked really closely, too. I looked at everyone. There were tall girls and short girls. Girls with short hair and long hair; blond, brown, black, and red hair. I didn’t see your long brown curls, though.

  Hannah was asleep in the front seat of the car, but Katie, Maggie, and June were as awake as I was. (I think they’d had energy drinks, too.) Maggie suggested trying the arts building, since you loved theater so much. Katie shot that down and I agreed. No one would be rehearsing at eight in the morning.

  Then June suggested the registrar’s office, which made total sense. You were a registered student. They’d have to tell me where your room was. I am your sister, after all.

  The registrar’s building was the one on the front of the brochure. The one that looks like Hogwarts, with the gray stone walls and tall turrets. I felt about two inches tall walking through the doorway, but I made sure to straighten my spine and hold my head up high, all that posture stuff Mom used to nag us about.

  The stuff she’ll never nag you about again.

  I was afraid the office would be closed on the weekend, but there was a lady behind the desk. A nun, actually. She was as old as Grandma and smelled like oranges and mint. She wore jeans and a regular collared shirt, but still had on her black veil. Huge green eyes glared at me behind a pair of cat’s-eye glasses. She was nice, though. She listened to me tell her about how I really needed to see you. She patted me on the hand when she said there was no student by your name registered there.

  I described you, like maybe she was confused. Or you were using some alias so you could really escape Mom and Dad’s influence.

  Nope. Nothing. Nada.

  She had no clue who you were. I was about to set up camp on the floor (if I’d brought a sleeping bag, I would have unrolled it right then), when Katie yanked on my arm and pulled me out the door. June dragged me down the hall and Maggie pushed me out the front door. At first I protested, but then Katie said that the secretary was super old and probably senile, that she didn’t know what she was talking about and we should explore the campus more.

  I think I knew deep down that Katie didn’t know what she was talking about, but I still followed them.

  Down the tulip-lined path through the quad.

  Around two girls playing catch.

  Around the corner of a fancy brick building with ivy growing up the walls.

  By the parking lot next to the girls’ dormitories.

  Straight into Mom and Dad.

  We turned a corner and there they were, getting out of our old silver minivan with the Choose Life bumper sticker on the back. Mom looked like she’d just woken up. She probably had, since she always falls asleep during car rides longer than an hour.

  It looked like they’d driven all night, just like we had.

  I’d been holding hands with June, and I dropped hers right away. I felt guilty, but by then it’d be even more awkward to grab it again. Because Dad was hugging me so tightly I couldn’t breathe. Mom was hovering like a mosquito, buzzing around and around.

  I wanted to swat her away, but I wanted to know what was going on even more. I had no idea how they’d found me, but however they had, all that hugging and crying were not normal. They should be yelling at me for running away and lying.

  Or for holding June’s hand.

  But no, they were crying. Crying so much that when Mom joined the boa constrictor–strength hug, my shoulder got soaked and snotty.

  That’s when they told me the truth. Well, after a lot of confusion and “um”-ing and telling my friends to go wait on a bench across the quad.

  So now I know the truth: that secretary wasn’t senile. You didn’t go to Saint Augustine’s. You didn’t even enroll. You were all still deciding what to do when you went into labor.

  Labor that started out fine, but that ended up not so fine.

  Labor where the baby was “in distress.”

  Labor where your heartbeat dropped and the baby’s heartbeat dropped.

  Labor where you lost a lot of blood.

  When Mom said the word “blood,” I flashed to this mental image of you in a hospital gown stained red. Red like blood. Red like cherries, your favorite fruit. Red like your favorite T-shirt, the one you wore practically every week last year.

  The doctors tried to save you, but they could only save Amélie. Mom held my hand while she told me this, squeezed it so tightly I had to pull away. I reached out again a second later, though. I needed something to hold on to that was a part of you, because with every word Mom said, you slipped further away.

  I keep thinking of the time you fell off your bike in middle school. You were trying to do a wheelie and flew right over the handlebars. You scraped your nose and your right shoulder and both of your knees. Blood was everywhere, but Mom wiped you off and put Band-Aids all over you.

  You were fine then. Your cuts healed. The only evidence left wa
s that scar on your knee I always said looked like a shamrock.

  There’s no Band-Aid big enough for this.

  Love,

  Evie

  P.S. I miss you so much it hurts.

  WEDNESDAY, JUNE 12TH

  Dear Cilla,

  Mom and Dad told me more on the car ride home. Or they tried to. After a while, I stuck my earbuds in and turned the music up really loud. I found the angriest songs on my playlist, the ones with loud guitars and booming bass. The ones that pounded their way into my head.

  That’s what I wanted. Something else to fill up my head. Something to turn off my brain and block my ears.

  It didn’t work, though. Because even though my ears were filled with the screech of electric guitars and the banging of drums, I’d still heard what Mom and Dad had said when we got in the car, when I asked them how you could have died in childbirth. I mean, we don’t live in the pioneer days. Don’t people know how to deliver babies by now?

  “She got an infection,” Mom said. She sounded like she had something caught in her throat. “And the hospital near Aunt Maureen isn’t the best.” Whatever was in her throat got bigger, like one of those foam bath pellets that inflates in water.

  Except this was inflating from her tears. They dripped down her face, some traveling a zigzag path and others going straight, like even her tears didn’t know what to do in a situation like this.

  “What do you mean ‘isn’t the best’?” I didn’t realize I was screaming until I heard my voice fill the car. “It’s a hospital. It has doctors and nurses. They went to school to learn how to do that. Why didn’t their teachers fail them if they’re so bad at their jobs? And why did you send her to that hospital anyway? You know Aunt Maureen lives in the middle of nowhere!”

  “Things happen,” Dad said. “God had a plan.” But for once, he didn’t sound like he believed what he was saying. He sounded like he’d just dropped his cell phone in a puddle. “We didn’t realize the hospital was so bad. We didn’t think about complications—” Dad made a choking noise. Now the thing was in his throat. “Cilla got an infection and started bleeding. Before they knew it, things got bad. Really bad. Fast.”