Star's Crossing

The First Letter

Can I tell you a secret?

It was an unconventional end to an endlessly conventional practice. He read those words with irreverence, twelve years old, fingers against the ink in the candlelight of a damp, crowded board room.

Whoever had written this letter was home in Star's Crossing now, likely mere neighborhoods away from his parents' estate. He envied her. His Connecticut town was small and precious, a jewel in the dunes, a gate to the sea.

He'd hated leaving it. They all had. This was why the Star's Crossing letter writing tradition existed in the first place.

The letters were a parting gift and a prayer, a well-wish blown on dandelions and asked of the stars. When boys left for their first year of boarding school, each girl of the same class wrote a letter.

They were anonymous, random, and only one could be given. Correspondence following the initial note was forbidden, as well as highly impractical. After all, how could one address envelopes to a nameless, faceless girl?

It was best this way.

He could not afford to wile away his years at school, penning letters home. Staring off at the sea during rugby matches, out windows while the instructors gave lectures. Romance was a silly notion, and so were girls. Courting would not begin until he was eighteen and could return home, anyway. There was no use beginning now.

Besides, whoever wrote this letter, he knew, was an unsuitable match. Her words were luscious, decadent. Her use of adjective and expression was liberal, each sentence drooping beneath the weight of its own description and narrative. She wrote generously, pages upon pages, dense with ink, crowded with ellipses, unfinished thoughts, reconsidered notions.

Can I tell you a secret?

She wrote in askance, aware he could never reply. As though she knew he was desperate after that line, fingers scanning every word, eyes darting, furtive, hungry. She'd awoken something in him that could not easily be returned to slumber.

As soon as he'd finished reading, he began writing. It was long after midnight, though he dared not check his father's silver pocketwatch and assign the hour a name. He settled into the window nook of the board room, boys shuffling around him in their duvets, squinting when he struck a match, groaning when he dipped his quill.

Can I tell you a secret?

I believe in love.

He smiled as he began, surprised when a dull light soon began needling at his eyes. He reached blindly for the drapes, startled when he realized it was dawn rapping at the window, easing in over the sea in a spill of mercury and pewter.

He'd written all night. He frowned at the sheaf of papers that had accumulated beneath his ink-stained hands. He was nearly through his parchment, and had devoured two pots of ink.

But he had so much more to say.

He had no choice but to conclude his letter there, almost midsentence. He folded the page in half and reached for an envelope, hesitating. With a glance over his shoulder, he smoothed the last page open.

Can I tell you a secret? He wrote, paused, pressed the quill to paper.

I believe in love, too.

She'd signed the letter: A hopeful friend.

He signed his: A likeminded ally.

He addressed it to the schoolhouse after debating about the postmaster, and though his eyelids weighed heavy and his wrist ached, he pulled on his hat and coat and took the steps two at a time through the drafty corridor. He waited at the post office for an hour in the early frost, nose buried in his scarf, and nearly gave the postmaster a heart attack when he arrived.

He thrust the letter into his hands and fled before his courage could.

He returned to the office five days later, after calculating the speed of the courier's carriage. The postmaster shook his head.

He returned the following morning, but nothing had arrived from Star's Crossing.

On the fourteenth day, he waited at the school gate and intercepted the courier, suspecting some kind of foul play. No one had written.

He read her letter once a day, but as time passed, he began to feel foolish. He read it once a month, then once every three, and at last, the letter became a quiet, small ghost. It hid in the corners of his mind, always, and rose only when bidden. By a fresh blooming flower, or the first, hard percussion of thunder; by the scent of an old book or the low, bereaved moan of a cello.

Can I tell you a secret?

He returned from a walk six months after he'd left home, one week prior to Christmas. He planned to read his letter, as he'd been reminded of it when he saw a bough in the woods, black as night, laden with snow. He couldn't help but think of her prose.

The door to his room was open, the walls damp with cold. A note sat on his pillow, thick as a hymn book.

He tore the envelope wide, and out spilled her mind and her heart, all of the words that had plagued her and filled her and inspired her and broken her.

To my likeminded ally, summoned in trying times-

He grinned, tracing the greeting.

I'm so pleased you've entrusted me with this secret, she wrote. Over the coming years, we'll share so many more. Here's the first of them: I'm going to write you once a week until you're home.

He laughed sharply, and settled into the window seat, determined to read every word once and then again.

She signed it: Yours.

He dipped his quill, and felt something unfamiliar swelling within his heart. He pressed the pen to the page, and addressed her. He did not need to know her name.

He already knew who she was.

Mine.