Letters

Letter 17

November 25th, 2004

Dear Dad,

            I’m still stuck on mom’s suicide. I know I shouldn’t be thinking about it, but it changed me a bit. She was a good mom, but she just blows a fuse a bit more often. Now, she doesn’t have to get mad at anyone anymore.

            Uncle Alex asked if I was okay. He wanted to know if I was okay enough to participate in school today. I said yes. I didn’t want to get anymore surprise projects, missing assignments, and extra homework.

            My friends were really nice today though. They asked me if I was okay, even though I tried really hard to keep a smile. They just knew I was faking it. I told them what happened and they were really nice trying to cheer me up. Daxus admitted that he wasn’t good with being sympathetic, so he told me a joke:

What did Vincent say when he lost his car?

Where did my van Gogh?

It’s my new favorite joke now.

            I ran into the same guy who called my flower shirt “gay”, this time I wasn’t wearing a flower shirt, but he said, “gay” anyways. Richard and Daxus heard him and Richard yelled at him. Everyone stared at us and Richard held back his fist and was shaking in anger. Even his face was red. This almost started a fight, but Daxus stepped up to the guy and told him about my situation. Daxus came back to me and I asked what that guy had said to him. “Not nice things” he said. Daxus just pushed us out of the crowded hallway.

            I don’t have school the rest of the week after today. I have tomorrow off because of Thanksgiving. I remember that we’d celebrate Thanksgiving in Australia even though it’s an American holiday. We were so used to celebrating it in America for so many years, that we decided to celebrate it in Australia too, right after I turned 15. We couldn’t find any turkeys in the grocery stores near us, so you joked about stealing an emu and eating that instead, but we got a chicken instead and pretended it was a turkey. You’d call it a turkey for the rest of the day and your friends got so confused about how this holiday worked. I skipped school that day just to celebrate it and the school was totally okay with that.

            Uncle Alex called me after school. He asked if my friends were coming over. I asked them and their reply was, “You were upset, so I didn’t want to bother with asking you” I told them that I didn’t mind. They came over and Uncle Alex took us to the sea food restaurant again. He thought that I needed some extra attention today.

            I ordered the same fried fish. Richard ordered fried fish too, Daxus ordered crab, and Uncle Alex ordered a sea urchin. I asked Uncle Alex why he ordered that. His response was, “Sometimes it’s good to try new things”

            Richard said, “Sometimes?” I knew the answer to this, so I told him that there are risks when trying new things. Some things don’t have much of a great risk. Like how some people are allergic to peanuts. If the risk of being allergic to them was higher, then you probably wouldn’t want to try eating them.

            After dinner, we went to Uncle Alex’s house and watched a movie downstairs. Uncle Alex made popcorn and provided us with blankets and pillows. Before he ran upstairs, he told us that if we ever needed him, just ask. Daxus almost fell asleep during the movie and he was leaning on me half of the time. After the movie was over, Daxus was completely asleep and I didn’t want to bother with waking him up. I panicked a little and whispered to Richard, “What do I do?”

            Richard got up and threw a pillow at Daxus. This woke him up, but Daxus was half asleep and he didn’t care. He walked into the wall and into the door frame when they had to leave, so I helped him get to Uncle Alex’s car.

            Richard asked Uncle Alex if he could drop him off first, because he had something to give to Daxus and me. Uncle Alex was okay with that, so when we got to Richard’s house, Richard went in and out with two homemade pumpkin pies. He said that his parents wanted us to have a nice thanksgiving. He added that we could come over anytime for any fruits because they have barrels of apples and oranges.

            We got Daxus’ place and we were lucky that he didn’t fall asleep, but I fell asleep when we got back to Uncle Alex’s house. I had a nice short nap, but I woke up when Uncle Alex was calling out my name. I didn’t feel like taking a shower at all, but I kinda did force myself into writing this.

Your son,

Rico