Since I wasn't able to send it in, I decided I'd let you all read it. Tell me what you think! Shout out to my good friend Rebecca at The Silver Flute for proof-reading it.
April 9th 1978
Dear Sarah,
Did you get my last letter? I waited and waited but you never replied. Sometimes I wonder why I keep writing, because you never reply. How's the weather up there? It's spring again here, but without you, it's boring. A new family moved in next door this week. I was hoping they had a boy my age. A boy would run through the woods and catch toads with me. (Do you remember our toad Frank Sinatra? I still keep him in the fish-tank at the fort.) All the new family has are baby twins. Even a girl my age would've been better. Mom says I have to be nice to them anyways. I'm never going to show them our fort though. Never. Because that's our place. I guess now it's my place. I don't like to go there very much anymore.
Do you remember the time we ran through the field outside the house? The sun was shining, but it was crying, too. Little silver pearls of rain dropping from the sky onto the ground, the leaves. You. Me. When I close my eyes I can see it so vividly, like it's a photograph that's been burned into my eyes. You had flowers in your hair--a daisy chain. Do you remember making flower crowns together? Do you remember running through the woods and building the fort with old rusty sheets of metal that someone left out there? We patched the holes with moss—remember how hard you laughed when a piece of it fell on my head and I screamed because I thought it was a cricket? (I still hate crickets, by the way.)
MORE THINGS I REMEMBER:
- Your freckles
- The time we stole popsicles and hid under our porch to eat them
- The way Bobby's voice cracked when he sang “Hark The Harold Angels Sing” and we laughed so hard that we dropped our candles and almost set fire to the church
- The color of the sky when you left. It was yellow, like a sick dandelion.
I think remembering things is very important. Mom is always forgetting things, like how old I am or whether or not she left the stove on. I have to do a lot of remembering for her now. But the funny thing is … I think she forgets on purpose. Sometimes, I think she's trying to forget you so hard she forgets everything else, too. Which is why I have to do the remembering for both of us. Forgetting things scares me. What if someday I forget the way your laugh goes high in the middle and drops at the end? What if I forget the exact shade of glacier-blue your eyes were?
Mom is calling me now—I'd better go. I hope you get this letter. I left the last one leaning up against the headstone, but maybe it got blown away by the wind. I'll put a rock on top of this one so it won't get lost before you can get it.
Promise you won’t forget me.
Love you lots and lots,
Kenzie
PS- Are the angels the ones who deliver the letters there in heaven?
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