Love Letters to the Lost: A Camp Cretaceous Story

Chapter One: Falling

You're not sure why you started writing him. You could just call him, or better yet, text. But you don't.

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I dreamt about you last night

(Nothing amorous, if that's where your teenage mind is going).

Nope: just a feedback loop of the night you fell from the monorail— (pteradons clawing at your falling body)

Screech! Screech! Screech!

When I close my eyes, I can still hear their screams, thousands of miles from Isla Nublar.

Will it ever stop?

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Of all the people too, it doesn't make sense. You weren't that close to him, despite your months together on the island, or at least not as close as you were to others: Sammy, Kenji, even Brooklyn on a good day.

But you don't write to them. They DM, they zoom, they visit on the occasional weekend. But snailmail? Hardly.

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Do you miss it?

It's kind of sick how much I do.

And for what?

The hunger: for food, for home, for a nice warm bed?

How about the very real threat of watching your friends be eaten by an indominus rex?

The anxiety, the ptsd. The dirt (GAH so much dirt)

Those were all the bitter handouts of isla nublar .

And yet it also gave me other things... a sweetness to pair with the cyanide:

Skies glittering with so many stars you wonder if they're real.

That warm tropical breeze, quiet except for humming lightning bugs—-- or whatever genetically modified version they keep there.

Nights around a campfire;

Cotton candy morning skies;

And, of course, each other.

That's the most precious of the island's gifts: real friends,

Among them, you.

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It's a good thing you never mail the letters. There's no filter when you take the pen to paper, nothing to hold you back. You're afraid to reread them, all those scattered thoughts and feelings spilling on the page. Things you never realized you felt, or at least conclusions you've never come close to acknowledging on a conscious level

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A senior asked me to homecoming.

A boy I knew before the island.

Star athlete--football in the fall, baseball in the spring.

Everyone used to say we were perfectly paired:

the Olympic track star with the All American sports hero.

But I'm just not feeling it anymore. That was a different me.

Conversation with him(with all of them)

Feels empty,

Misinformed,

Tedious.

It's not that I expect them to understand

Of course they can't,

But they could try!

Do they really expect me to care about a footrace after all I've seen?

I'm sorry if I sound mad. I'm not.

After all, they haven't changed.

I have

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Mom wants you to go. She wants you to dress up for a party, stay out late. Break a few rules.

You're sorry to disappoint. She sees you with your pen in hand for the hundredth time and finally asks,

"Are those letters for a friend?"

You weigh your answer, silent a little too long. "Yes."

"Does he ever write you back?"

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I wonder if you think of me

The way I think of you

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"Of course."

"I never notice them in the mail."

You don't have an answer, so you say nothing. Sipping instead from your steaming hot tea.