After You

Willow

Alfie,

It was never supposed to happen like this. Any of it.

On the face of it, I should never have fallen in love with you. If we played by the rules of playground stereotypes, I'd have been the girl on Finn's arm from the start. On the surface of it, we belong in a cheesy American teen drama. I'd be the cheerleader and he'd be the jock. The blonde-haired, blue-eyed airhead and the effortlessly-cool sportsman with not much going on between the ears.

I was never one to play to stereotypes. Typical American cheerleaders don't spend half their time engrossed in a book, and Finn is neither a sportsman nor an idiot. He's just a good person.

I feel as though I shouldn't be speaking about him to you. That's daft, because – and I keep trying to remind myself of this – you aren't reading these letters. It's a silly therapeutic exercise that came to an end weeks ago, and yet I can't seem to let go of it. I can't let go of you, despite what everyone else seems to think.

There's a rumour going around that I cheated on you before you died. At lunchtime today, people were whispering and pointing. I've never been whispered and pointed at before, and it's not an experience I wish to repeat. A Year Nine girl I've never seen before walked past, and I heard her mutter to her friend, "She's the reason Alfie Rees killed himself". That's what people are saying. They blame me for your death, because they think Finn and I were secretly together, even when you were alive.

I feel bad for Finn. He may not be having as much bullshit thrown at him about this as I am, but I think I'm taking it out on him. I don't want to, but I can't help it. In a roundabout way, I'm trying to help him – with a little self-preservation thrown in for good measure. The more distance I put between us, the less people will talk. That's the idea, anyway.

In reality, I'm missing him.

God, I shouldn't be saying this to you. It doesn't matter if you won't read it; it still feels like an insult to your memory. At the same time, you're the only person I would ever have trusted enough to say these things to, if you weren't my boyfriend.

I've been thinking about our relationship a lot lately. I think all this stuff with Finn has thrown some kind of grenade into my brain and left all my thoughts so jumbled. I don't even write like I used to any more. If I compare this letter with the one I first wrote to you back in September, you'd never believe they were written by the same person. I don't want to admit it, but I cringe a little.

That person wasn't me. The sycophancy; the saccharine metaphors and the descriptions of us as star-crossed lovers. All that rubbish about our love being too intense and bright for the world; it seems laughable. I'm seventeen years old. My knowledge of love is limited to what I've read in books, and we're not living in 1700s Yorkshire. I can't live my life through tragic quotations and flowery language, and I think that's the problem. What we had together was based on reminiscence for a time neither of us experienced. Two hipster kids against the world, fighting the mediocre mainstream one obscure philosophical musing at a time.

What I have with Finn is real, and now, and alive.

Shit. I'm breaking up with a dead person, aren't I? Maybe everyone is right after all. Maybe I am just a terrible person. Even if I didn't cheat on my boyfriend when he was alive, I'm breaking up with him now that he's dead.

I could leave all of this unsaid. I could just move on, be with Finn and never look back and what we had together, but – as usual, it seems – I'm being selfish. If I don't say this, it'll stay in my mind forever. Yet another oppressive mind-grenade to weigh me down for the rest of my life. Plus, in a way, I feel like I owe you this at the very least. I used to promise that I'd love you forever, and now I'm realising that I never even knew what love meant. My promise to you was empty, and for that, I am sorry.

But I can't be sorry for wanting to be with Finn. I can't be sorry for wanting a relationship where I can be myself, with none of the pressure to preen and pose and write elaborate love notes to you every other day. I know that pressure came from me, rather than you, but it was a by-product of being with you. You were the cool hipster teen who could melt down words and turn them into masterpieces. I could only ever try to keep up, hoping that if I drank enough disgusting coffee and carried myself with enough disdainful apathy, you'd notice me.

None of this is your fault, and it's wrong of me to paint it like it is. You never asked me to follow you around like a lost puppy; you never asked me to throw myself in Jessica's seat in class one day and start talking about books, because I heard that's what you like. So much of this is my own doing, but I can't take responsibility for your death. I can't live the rest of my life as a slave to your memory, for fear of being accused of disrespecting you.

I don't want this to become tit-for-tat, and I know that I've lied to you, to everyone else and to myself. I built up a persona and a relationship based on lies, and that is wrong – but you lied too. The first thing you ever said to me was a lie.

I know you always hated Wuthering Heights.

Truth be told, so did I.

Willow