Love,
Evie
P.S. I miss you. I miss Amélie, too, even if I’ve never met her.
SUNDAY, JULY 28TH
Dear Cilla,
Mom isn’t cooking so much lately. Dad isn’t staying so late at work. He joined a summer Ultimate team, too. Mom still hides in her room, but she mostly hovers around me, a mixture of apologies and awkward small talk and silly questions.
Here’s what she asked me yesterday: “Don’t the hydrangea bushes look pretty today?” I nodded and smiled, which she took as some sort of encouragement. She asked me about my summer reading and said she liked the color of my flip-flops.
She talked about how it was supposed to rain and asked me if I wanted to go to book club with her. (NO!) She hasn’t mentioned June since last week, though. Maybe she’s not changing her mind, after all.
Love,
Evie
P.S. I miss the way you fiddled with your starfish ring when you were nervous. I used to hate all that clinking and twirling, but I don’t think I would anymore.
MONDAY, JULY 29TH
Dear Cilla,
June e-mailed me again this morning. She hasn’t missed a day yet. It used to annoy me, but now I’m glad she hasn’t stopped. Because I wrote back this time.
We met at the pool. It was hot today, just like it was last year, the day the pool was closed and I first saw her at the park.
She wore a jade-green bathing suit and matching jade earrings. She has a neon-green streak in her hair now and her braces are off. Her teeth looked shiny and super white. It made me feel self-conscious about my crooked bottom ones.
June didn’t say anything about my teeth, though. She didn’t say anything about my hair, either, which is super long now, and really straggly. Or my bitten-down nails.
She said hi.
I said hi.
She didn’t yell at me for ignoring her for ages and ages. I apologized, though. I knew I needed to.
She didn’t even ask what happened to you. She knew it was bad news and she knew I didn’t want to talk about it.
We just sat there on our towels, propped back on our elbows, staring at the pool together. At the other girls I used to be so jealous of, the ones who don’t have to worry about liking a girl or being judged for it.
I wish I could go back to when worrying about what they thought was my biggest problem. Even to when worrying about what Mom and Dad thought was my biggest problem.
June and I stayed until I remembered I’d forgotten sunscreen and my back started to burn. We went out for ice cream (I got a double scoop, one peppermint stick and one mint chocolate chip, as usual) and I told her everything.
“Cilla’s gone,” I said.
“I know.” June held my hand then, and I didn’t push her away.
“Mom and Dad lied to me. All this time.”
“They shouldn’t have,” June said. She didn’t call them names. She just listened.
“I miss her so much.”
Then I cried. I got salty tears all over my ice cream. June’s melted down her arm. But that was okay. We could get two more cones. We couldn’t get this moment back.
After I’d finished crying, June waited for me to say something else. It was like we were at a fork in the road, and she was letting me decide which path to take. I decided to walk away from grief, if only for today.
I asked her about the last day of school. She told me that Nolan broke up with Miri in the middle of the cafeteria. That student council sold the yummiest strawberry cupcakes to raise money for a new sign. That Joey Witter got in trouble for bringing his pet snake into class. She imitated Mr. Barrett’s face when he almost sat on it.
I laughed.
For the first time in two months, I laughed.
It felt weird, like I was speaking a foreign language.
I liked it, but I felt guilty at the same time. Like by laughing I was betraying you. Like by smiling I was telling you I didn’t care that you were gone.
That’s not true. I promise. I’m still sad.
Is it okay if I’m not sad all the time, though?
Love,
Evie
P.S. I still miss you.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 6TH
Dear Cilla,
Tonight I watched a Red Sox game with Dad. We didn’t talk much, but I cheered a few times along with him. He looked at me and smiled a few times, too.
Mom came into the room at one point with a batch of brownies. It was the first thing she’d baked in a few weeks, and at first I didn’t want to eat one. I wanted to tell her that baking a whole roomful of brownies wouldn’t make up for what they’d done.
Then I looked at Mom. She was biting her lip. Her hand (and the plate) were shaking.
I took a brownie.
“Yummy,” I said.
Mom watched the rest of the game with us.
The Red Sox won by two.
Love,
Evie
P.S. I miss you more than I’d ever miss brownies.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 9TH
Dear Cilla,
“Hate the sin, love the sinner.” I heard someone say that once. I guess it’s better than “hate the sin and the sinner,” but I don’t know why anyone needs to hate at all.
At dinner last night, Dad told me he didn’t like me being with June. It was the first time he’d said her name since they admitted to reading my letters.
I knew all that baseball-watching bonding time was too good to be true. Because then Dad said that homosexuality was a sin.
I started to get up from the table, but he reached out for me. I backed away.
“I think loving a girl is a sin, but I don’t hate you for it,” Dad said. Like that made things any better. I waited for Mom to speak up, but she didn’t say anything. I guess her suggestion for me to call my “friend” was the extent of her acceptance.
Mom took a bite of salmon and chewed it about a bazillion times. “We don’t hate June, either. And we didn’t hate Cilla. We just want to protect you both.”
“Wanted,” I said. “Past tense. You wanted to protect Cilla.” It hurt me to say it, but it was worth it to see them flinch. “And you can’t protect us. I might be under eighteen. I might legally be your property or whatever, but I’m my own person. Cilla was her own person.”
Was.
“I can do what I want,” I added. “Or like who I want.” It didn’t feel like me saying the words. I felt like someone else, someone proud of who she was.
Someone who wasn’t ashamed of what other people thought.
I acted the way I wanted to be. Because maybe then, this bravery will start to feel more natural.
I acted the way I bet you wanted to act all along. It was hard, though. Really hard.
I’m starting to realize how hard everything was for you. And why you ran away instead of fighting.
I’m going to fight, though.
I told Mom and Dad that I didn’t know what was going to happen with June, but that I liked her.
I told them about how I don’t think I can ever trust them again.
I told them I wasn’t sure about God.
I think I shocked them with that last one, but they didn’t yell or scream or faint. They listened. They grimaced, but they did listen.
Then they started talking.
“Honey, you’re young,” Mom said. “You don’t know anything about the future yet. Who knows how you’ll feel in a few weeks. You don’t have to be one of those people.”
“I like girls. I like June,” I said. “I am one of those people.”
“Why don’t you talk to Father O’Malley?” Dad asked. “He might be able to help you.”
“He’ll point you to some passages in the Bible,” Mom said. “Important ones.”
“I’m not talking to some old guy in a robe about who I like.” I stomped my foot on the ground like a kindergartner, then realized that wasn’t helping my case. “This is me and I’m not going to change. Either accept me or don’t. B
ut you can’t send me away, too.”
Mom and Dad looked like I’d slapped them in the face. Mom’s already really pale, but she kind of looked like a ghost then. And not the nice kind of ghosts from Harry Potter, either. The scary kinds that haunt you.
The ones that are haunted themselves.
They told me they aren’t going to send me away.
But then Dad said I’m too young to date.
And Mom said I shouldn’t tell anyone about “what” I am.
I don’t know if I’ll be able to change them. That makes me sad.
But at least they didn’t scream at me or lock me up.
Progress?
Love,
Evie
P.S. They miss you, too.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 14TH
Dear Cilla,
Today’s June’s birthday. She’s finally twelve, just like me!
I feel guilty that I’m not throwing her a big party, but when I told her that, she said she didn’t want a party at all. I’m not sure if she’s lying, but I’m trying to trust her. Because I’m still too sad to plan—or even go to—a huge party. It would feel like the balloons and streamers were laughing at me.
I bet I’d get mad at everyone else for having fun, too. I still feel guilty for having fun sometimes. I went for a bike ride with June yesterday and laughed while I was coasting down Tanglewood Hill. Then I started crying at the bottom. I pretended a fly had flown into my eye, but June totally wasn’t fooled. (She still pretended she believed me.)
I bought her a cake, though, a chocolate one with vanilla frosting from the supermarket bakery. I used my own money to buy it and asked them to write HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JUNE! on it in big green letters. (To match her hair.)
The cake ended up saying HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JOHN! I bet the bakery worker was the same person who made the Beauty and the Beast programs.
We ate the whole thing and then watched a horror movie. It was fun.
Is that okay?
Love,
Evie
P.S. I do miss you.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18TH
Dear Cilla,
It’s weird, but I keep thinking about my First Communion. I remember being so excited to wear that frilly white dress. Mom said I could get a new one, but I wanted to wear the same one you did, the one with a lacy skirt and pearls around the neckline.
I remember lining up with all the other kids in my CCD class outside the church. The trees were blossoming above us as we walked up the front steps. Then we all walked down the aisle, two by two. I had to stand next to Miri, who kept bragging about the gold cross necklace her parents had given her that morning. The whole time we were walking, I kept looking over at her and that shiny necklace. I wanted a gold cross, not the boring daffodils Dad had given me that morning.
Then I saw Mom and Dad on the right side of the church, below their favorite stained-glass window, the one with Jesus on the cross. The looks of pride on their faces made me feel better than a shiny new necklace ever could. I didn’t think I could feel any happier, ever in my whole life.
Until they gave me my own cross that afternoon.
I wish things were that simple again. I miss believing that Mom and Dad are always right. I miss going to church and having it just be part of my routine. I miss knowing that God will fix everything, and that if he doesn’t, he has a reason.
There was no good reason for you to die, though.
And Mom and Dad aren’t always right.
I know that now, no matter how much they try to convince me otherwise.
Love,
Evie
P.S. We still have that old dress in the attic. I went up to look this morning, and it looks so small. You were so small then. So was I. It feels like forever ago.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 20TH
Dear Cilla,
We looked through a bunch of photo albums tonight, ones I brought down from the attic. I used to think Mom was old-fashioned for always printing pictures off her phone, but now I’m glad for the bazillion albums that were stacked up there.
We started with me and you when we were kids, then looked at the ones when we were older: you playing on a baseball team in middle school, way after all the rest of the girls switched to softball.
You, caught in the act of popping a ginormous pink bubble-gum bubble.
You and me in front of Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World, then just you, giving Mom a thumbs-up in the line for Space Mountain. (I totally chickened out, as usual.)
You after My Fair Lady, holding the flowers Alex gave you.
You and Alex, before the winter formal last year. I still think that purple dress is the prettiest dress I’ve ever seen.
That day, I thought you were the prettiest person I’d ever seen.
Mom said the same thing. “She looked so beautiful that night.”
“She always looked so beautiful,” Dad said.
Then the impossible happened: Mom and Dad apologized to me. It was the first time they’d said the words since everything had happened.
“I’m sorry.”
They cried. I cried. It wasn’t the bad kind of crying, though, the kind that makes me feel like a black fog has entered my body and is poisoning me from the inside out.
It felt like someone had popped open a release valve, and all that fog was spilling out of me.
It’s been more than a year since you went away. It’s been almost a year since you died.
Maybe it’s time for us to breathe clean air again.
Love,
Evie
P.S. We all miss you.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29TH
Dear Cilla,
I know now that you’ll never get these letters. I know they’ll stay in this notebook forever. I know it will hurt every time I look at them, just like it hurts every time I write them.
It hurts because you’re gone. It hurts because I still don’t know why you didn’t write back from Aunt Maureen’s. It hurts for a lot of reasons.
I’m still going to write, though. Because it makes me feel better. Because it’s the only connection to you I have left.
I heard Mom and Dad praying the other night. Well, I think I heard them praying. They were murmuring the same way they do when they’re saying the rosary. When I got closer, though, I realized they weren’t talking to God. They were talking to you, telling you what they’ve been doing lately and how much they miss you.
Maybe these letters are my own form of prayer.
Maybe “I miss you” is my amen.
Love,
Evie
P.S. I miss you.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3RD
Dear Cilla,
Today was the first day of eighth grade. School this year is weird. Everyone knows about you now. They know that you got pregnant and that you died. They know Mom and Dad lied to me about it.
This means that everyone is avoiding me. Either they think I’m a total freak or that death is contagious.
The only people who talk to me now are Katie, Maggie, and June. Ethan, too, at lunch. It’s a little bit lonely. (Which I know is a strange thing to say since I basically avoided everyone for a whole month.)
Maybe that’s why Mom and Dad didn’t tell anyone about you at first. About the pregnancy, I mean. Maybe they were afraid of being treated like this. Of being avoided or shunned. Of people feeling sorry for them.
Not that that’s an excuse.
But maybe that’s what started all of this. Shame and guilt and standards, the same icky stuff that got in the way of me and June being together. Because we are together now. She’s my girlfriend still, even after all the awful stuff that happened.
At school, she sometimes brings me a little present. Something small, like a new pencil or a bracelet she made. Not that a bunch of beads on a string is going to fix what happened, but it shows she cares.
She got detention for me, too. When Danny Donato told me my parents were weirdos, she screamed at him until Mrs. Abbott had to literally pull her
out of the room.
(Later on we agreed that they are weirdos, but it was the principle of the thing.)
We hold hands, too. Not all the time, and not in the hallways, but at lunch. Before school. At Tony’s Pizza. We haven’t kissed again, but that’s okay. I don’t think I want to right now.
Someday, though.
Because I’m okay with liking girls now.
That’s who I am.
Love,
Evie
P.S. I miss you.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 6TH
Dear Cilla,
Mom and Dad invited June over for dinner tonight. Mom made a big dinner, too. A fancy one, like she used to make when she and Dad had dinner parties for their friends.
She hasn’t done that since you died.
It’s getting easier to write about what happened now. You died. It happened. It’ll never be over, but it did happen. I think we’re all realizing that now.
Mom and Dad started seeing a therapist together. They’re making me see one, too, and even though I protest a lot, it’s not so bad. Colleen is young, maybe in her thirties, and really nice. She listens to me and doesn’t get angry when I talk about religion or my feelings or … anything, really.
I think it’s helping. It’s helping Mom and Dad, too. I don’t know what they’re talking about with their therapist, but I heard Dad laugh the other day. They keep trying to spend time with me, which is kind of annoying, but not so bad. Especially since they’ve stopped bugging me about church and June. Especially since they’re not making comments about what I “should” be doing.
Especially since they invited June over.
They were actually nice to her. Mom asked June questions about the musical (June’s planning on trying out for Shrek) and we all talked about what kind of sets I would design for the show. Dad asked her about California. They looked at her weirdly a bunch of times, like she was a bank robber and they were trying to see where she’d hidden her loot, but they didn’t say anything mean.
We didn’t hold hands. I didn’t want to push it.
P.S. I Miss You Page 16