Love Letter

Ian:

"What was that?" Amanda asks me as soon as we are driving back to the cabin.

"What?" I ask.

"You were flirting with her," she says, drawing out the word flirting.

I look at her even though her eyes are on the road as they should be. I was the one who had taught her how to drive.

"That was not flirting," I say.

"Whatever," she says, giving up on arguing on this with me. "So she is the next muse?" she asks, cutting to the point.

"Yes," I say.

"Interesting – well, Kelly and I have plans to do lunch in a few days; maybe I can sit up another meet and greet type thing with you and Lynne." She says.

"Thanks, but I think I have enough to start writing," I say, thinking of the journal in my side pocket. I did not need to see Lynne again, I kept telling myself, even though my thoughts kept tugging back into how it would be nice to bump into her. I had more than enough to start writing. I had no clue what was happening to me.   

"It wouldn't hurt," she says, and I know my sister well enough she is thinking about more than Lynne just being a muse for my novel.

"No... Thanks, though," I say. 

I settle into bed that night, slipping out Lynne's journal.

I go back and forth playing devil's advocate with myself.

"Take it, read it," the one side said – while the other side kept saying, "no don't ... this is too far for a novel."

It takes my fingers a while to it open and starts reading it. This was a violation of privacy, and I felt guilty as I read the words she had written out a few years back.

As I start, I find out it is her senior year of high school. I am glad that I had gotten a more mature journal than what one from middle school would have been like. The first page talks about how she is nervous for the first day and is glad it would be her last first day at Light Falls High School.

With all the people at the welcome home party, I expected Lynne to be a popular girl at the school, considering how small the town was and how much money her family had. I read about thirty pages and felt that Lynne was a very awkward teenager growing up. Her social skills almost seem nonexistent, or how she explains herself looks like that. 

Luke is a reappearing person in her journals. The two of them having history bothers me more than it should. He, too, was not into sports and was in the marching band. Seeing him tonight, I assumed he was a jock and played basketball. Reading what she wrote, she thought that senior year was when Luke went from geeky to having good looks.

I was surprised to see Luke without braces and the completely gone acne. He had been vacationing with his family all summer which left little for me to do. I was not the only one who noticed the new and improved Luke. I was expecting him to act like he didn't remember who I was (which is impossible with the size of the class); however, he met me in the library just like he had every year before this. He was still the geeky kid I had known since being little – he was just new and improved.

Imagining Lynne eating in the library every day is a little unnerving. Looks and facades could really make you think something else. I knew that she was beautiful and had money; those two things in high school usually screamed popular. I mean, of course, I saw how she thought about everything she was going to say. She thinks about facial expressions, so maybe it all came back to high school and not having any friends and embarrassing incidents.

All night I watched her and tried to find out what her personality was. Still, I knew if I was being honest, it was because I was interested in her. Not only for the novel but because of more, I should drive back to New York. She had me entrapped with her. Even now, thinking how she thought about everything could come back to a lack of confidence, which is shocking since she is beautiful.  

I keep reading to find that her senior year is very boring. She skipped the homecoming dance but went to the football game, which was only due to Fred and Zach being the team's stars. She notes Luke going to homecoming with Clarissa, who Lynne writes nice things about. But most of her journal is her writing about the books she had been reading that year. It was just like cliff notes online, but in her words.

She had a system down-ranking the books; I wished a little bit that one of mine was in there so I could read what she thought. Judging by her age, I guessed my first book when I was 20 came out at the end of her senior year. Her family, besides the twins, is barely mentioned in it.

I scan through the pages skipping most of the book reviews until I come across the top of the page that has HOLIDAY BREAK in block letters at the top.

The holidays are here – my more minor favorite part of the year. The month of December is when I remember dad the most. Nothing is like how it used to be, and the holidays are now just a black hole without him here. Mom is on every type of medication you can think of for her nervous breakdowns and anxiety problems. Victor, of course, has helped her with some of her problems, but I know the holidays are just as hard on her as they are for us kids. No one wants to openly talk about it, and I am glad since I don't know what I would say. Would I say - That I had wished God had taken me instead of my dad? They would probably commit me to a psych ward just like Kelly wanted to do with mom with her first nervous breakdown. It was pretty scary walking into mom a few months after dad's death with her holding the knife to her chest. Everything on the island was on the floor, and glasses were taken out and smashed on the ground when we got home from school. Blood was smeared from her feet being cut from the broken glass. I remember she wasn't even crying from the pain that her feet had to be in. It was like she couldn't feel physical pain but just mental pain. We called Dr. Barnes, her psychiatrist, to come over to help. We didn't want to deal with mom afterward if we had called the ambulance even though Kelly was crying in the living room, saying we needed to commit her to the psych ward. Fred talked first and said no one would know about this because he did not want Grandma Judith to become our sit-in mother at the house. That was the year of Kelly's senior year – I thought when she was graduated, she would pack and move just like I had been planning since dad's death. Still, instead, she stayed home going to the local community college. I always wondered if she ever told Lisa and Keith of mom's breakdown, but none of us talked about it after that day with one another. This was just the first of many that occurred. Of course, Dr. Barnes talked to Kelly about how it would probably help have each of us kids sit down sessions with him. She agreed to them, and they had set up meetings with him for all of us every other week at the house. It was quite the bonus for him to take on the four of us kids. He could have probably cut back half his cliental with how mom has to be paying him. I walked into our first session and said: "I can diagnose us all: we have daddy issues" I didn't say anything for the rest of the hour. I agreed to the sessions as long as Luke (his son) never found out how broken and messed up my family really was. I have always wondered if Dr. Barnes made his son be friends with me throughout school – because he knew that I really had no one. It was nice to have him gone for the summer – I quit sessions with him, and it's nice not having to talk to him about life every week.

The rest of the block about the holidays is about her books throughout the winter break. She noted that Victor must have done the holiday shopping since she got a visa credit card as a gift that year instead of makeup or something she would never use. I was hoping to find out more about Lynne's personal life and learned more than I was ever anticipating. It made me feel guiltier.

Off with his head, I imagined Lynne screaming when she found out what I had done. I would lose all of her respect, and she would never talk to me again. I had to get this journal back before she noticed.    

Amanda complained about how I needed to get out of the cabin the next few days, but I had been writing nonstop.

When I hit a stopping point, I cave to her demands.

"You still up for going into town?" I ask her.