The Supremely Silly Summers of Maggie Rose Porter

Chapter Three: Sheila (The Letter)

Hey everyone! Here's chapter three, where Jake and Maggie start constructing the letter for Sheila Lamone. Hoope you enjoy! Please don't forget to comment and give feedback :) Thanks so much guys!!

CHAPTER THREE: SHEILA (THE LETTER)

On the corner of Hawthorne and Elm Street, there's a little General Store called The General. It was built a ton of years ago, before Jake or I, or even Isabella, were born. Grampa said it was originally constructed for tourists who came by the island on vacation, hence the postcard and souvenir rack out front, but you could get pretty much anything there. But on that particularily hot day in July, Jake wasn't just looking for "anything." No, he had something much more special in mind. That is, someone.

"How about this, Mags?"

I turned around to see Jake holding up a case of plastic rings. I cocked my head to one side, trying to remember what exactly it was that Isabella said about rings. 

"I don't think you're supposed to get one of those for a girl unless you're really serious about her." I looked at him curiously. "How serious are you?"

He bit his lip like he was really considering it. "Pretty serious, I think."

We left The General with pink, red, and purple cardstock, a bottle of glue, two pages of heart stickers, a wilted pink carnation, a package of glitter pens, and one very, very shiny ruby ring which Jake insisted on carrying himself.

We set up the letter writing on Gramp's front porch because there was a big beautiful sycamore tree in his front lawn that provided ample inspiration for the best romantic letter. Once the two of us were situated comfortably with popsicles, lime for him and chery for me, then we were ready to get started. We spent at least ten minutes arguing over who would do the actual "writing." Jake figured he should do it since the letter was coming from his in the first place, but we both agreed I had the prettier handwriting. We eventually settled on the idea of cutting the words out from old magazines, just like how we'd seen in them do in those old myserty movies. Once we got that out of the way, we had to figure out what we were going to say.

"Start off like this: Dear Sheila..." I instructed him, proud of all the times I'd put up with Isabella's talk of boys and love. Personally, I thought the whole matter was silly. Besides, if you got too close to some guys, you might even risk getting cooties. I didn't know what they were exactly, but any sensible girl knew things like that were best to just leave and let alone.

Most of the time, it was boring watching Isabella get ready to go out. But occasionally, I would sit on her bed while she got all dressed up so I could ask her questions.

"Who you goin' out with tonight?"

Isabella would dab on a bit more red lipstick and pout at her reflection in the mirror. She smoothed down her blue polka-dot dress and turned around to smile at me. "I already told you, silly. Johnny and I are getting dinner at Marten's. Then he's taking me down to the pier."

"Why?" I wrinkled my nose. "What's so special about today?"

"What's so special about today?" Isabella repeated back to me, half-shocked. "Why don't you know? Today's our eight and a half months anniversary!"

Seemed like every day was sme type of anniversary when it came to my sixteen-year-old lovesick older sister. Or, at least every day that she spent with Johnny, who seemed to be with her all the time but still "never enough." Personally, I could only see so much of the same person before they began to drive me crazy. Especially if that person was a boy. Even too much time spent with Jake was sometimes too much, and he didn't even count as a boy because he was my best friend.