Chapter Text
Dear friend,
I’m writing to you because I saw your name on a pen pal clipboard. I don’t think it’s a pen pal clipboard but if it is, then this letter is for you. Sorry about the lack of a return address, I live in a household that isn’t my own so I can’t give it out. I would have said, “please understand,” but I think you do because I know you’re in a similar situation. Because that’s what the clipboard is for and I just want someone to know that I’m here, I’m talking and I’ll be a friend.
So here is to our friendship,
Your friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Sorry about the mustard stain on your last envelope. I forgot to introduce something critical about myself besides my name and that’s on me, sorry.
The most important thing to know about me is: I have terrible luck.
People said my mom passed away from giving birth to me because it was either me or her in that operation room, and before my dad could decide, she passed. I don’t know if he cried that night, I think he did. I never asked.
He did name me after her maiden name, Bennett, and I think it’s beautiful to keep a person alive in another person you love. He thought so too.
Dad was a kind man. He told me all kind of things about her because he knew I was too young to even feel her last warmth, so he made sure I’d always remember her tales of how smart she was, how funny and how much she had smiled when she found out she was pregnant with me.
He said she cried, and I would like to think she was very beautiful when she did.
He also showed me a lot of photos, most taken by him because they met while he was taking photos of wildlife and she was walking into the frame. I loved that story. Some of the photos he first took of her—I still have with me to this day.
We were alone most of the time because dad’s parents stopped talking to him a long time ago and mom’s parents did not live in the same country anymore. Grandma passed after their wedding, months before my birth, but dad told me all about her too. She was the reason my mom was kind and loving, and he was grateful for that.
He also said she would have loved me a lot because of how much I resembled mom, and I’d like to believe his words on that, too.
Dad was good.
So it was my luck that he didn’t get to be around me for long either.
I was too young to remember the details, but I was sitting in a kindergarten class on a pouring day with my shoes untied, then tied and untied again because I couldn’t decide if I should use a bunny knot or a butterfly one. Dad would have been fine with either but I really wanted to ‘wow’ him with what I learned at school today. He deserved at least a ‘wow’.
I ended up tying my shoes again, perfecting the butterfly wings and this was when my teacher crouched down, gently and she told me what happened, and that I wouldn’t be going home today with him and that there would be someone to pick me up.
She skipped a lot in her story but then she started crying, bawling and I understood.
Then I was no longer with him.
Please don’t feel bad for me, I’m okay, I promise.
Everything worked out in the end, actually, because I’m currently living in a foster home with my siblings and my dads. I have more now because they rotate so we would always have someone to come to and I have never had three parents before. So it’s fun. A lot.
They don’t know my birth parents, no one in here does, but they let me put their photos into a little frame in my room that I share with Heckler, my older foster brother. That’s not his real name but I don’t think it’s okay to share his real name with you or anyone my age, really, he doesn’t like to be known with me.
Heckler is also moving out sometime in the next two months because he is going to college and “cannot wait to be alone for once.” I think I’d feel lonely if that was me.
I have to write a paper now because it’s finals soon and middle school is hell. It’s not the teachers, but the kids can be a little too mean and so I can’t wait to get out of it and go to the same school as my friend, Barbara. She’s a sophomore right now but she’s very kind and pretty. The kind of pretty that snowflakes have when they are pressed against your window and leaving the lines of their mapwork once they fly away again.
I will tell you more about her someday, pinky promise.
Until then,
Your hopeful friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
A new member had joined our family and our dads won’t tell us how they found her, but Mona got to have her own room, which meant my two other brothers moved in with me and my room got another bunk bed across our current one to make space for them.
Heckler hates this but I love company.
“Of course, you wouldn’t mind, you’re starved for people,” he said but I think he didn’t mean to hurt me. He just liked his space a lot. “So unlucky…”
Mona didn’t talk much to anyone, didn’t finish her food. She would curl in if you accidentally grazed her skin and she would cry, a lot. But she liked stars and the sky and I had caught her on our roof, her head tilted up and she reached her hand out into the air once.
Her dark hair blended into the canvas of black, infinite.
This morning, I went to the local library with one of our dads and he held the ladder while I climbed to get an astronomy book for her, which he could have reached with his height but I wanted to do so myself.
“You’re a good boy, Bennett,” he said to me when we scanned the thing, like he knew why I was suddenly interested in the broad sky, like the gaze inside of me came out as a pond’s surface. “She’ll love it.”
To be honest, I haven’t asked her if she does. There is some kind of pressure on pressing someone prior to giving them a present, don’t you think so?
I left the wrapping a step outside of her door because dads asked us to give her space and I didn’t want her to walk on the book.
I can hear her door unlock as I am writing you this note. Let’s hope she’ll like it lots! Let’s hope it brings the sky closer to her hands.
Your excited friend,
Bennett.
P/S: She drew a smiley face in her cereal today so I unwrap this envelope to keep you updated. She said “thank you, Benny” and gave me an old kaleidoscope. It’s made of gold, I think. We still didn’t talk much but she finished her glass of milk and smiled when I showed her the kite I made out of newspaper. Mona is very pretty when she’s happy. That’s the only thing I wish to let you keep in mind about my sister.
Anyway, since it’s a Sunday, I’m on my way to show Barbara the kaleidoscope right now. It reminds me of the stained art glass in the church that she took me with this morning. She also didn’t get to meet Mona yet so I wanted to share something as pretty for now.
Lots of love.
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
It’s been a while since I last wrote to you, sorry. I’m in high school now, a freshman at fifteen and it’s kinda weird. The clothes are a bit too loose because my dad passed them down from Heckler, who just went to college. But it’s okay, you know. I like antiques a lot anyway.
Before I forget because I’ve been forgetting a lot recently. Do you know what a ‘kiss’ is?
No, not the kind that your sister plants on your cheeks when you’ve been a good boy and helped her with chores. Not the kind where you see cute babies and they nudge their noses against yours in an attempt to get closer, to grow taller from your experience. Not even the ghost kiss when your brothers are leaving for college and they nuggie your head then kiss it, or the ones where puppies lick your face wet and start barking playfully either.
I thought I did, but I didn’t and I think you may not know what it is too.
So,
Today, I’ll tell you about a kiss.
But before that, I need to tell you about Razor.
His real name isn’t the blade, but he doesn’t let us know what his name is and that’s okay too, you know, because it’s high school and we’re all trying to make an impact before the moment flees—so it’s okay that Razor wants to be called Razor and not, whatever his birth name is.
He just transferred here in the middle of the second term, which is bad because everyone has already joined groups and most of them are wary of new people. But I don’t think he minds being alone as much as I would have. I think he doesn’t look lonely, does that make sense?
There is a rumour that Miss Lisa in the library is his god mom, a relative or someone that takes care of him like my foster dads do because Razor doesn’t have a family, too. I think I pay a lot of attention to Razor because of that. Because every other kid here has birth parents and he’s the only one that has something closer to me.
“Hello,” I first said to him when I walked past his locker, which had a lot of scrap papers and tiny trinkets.
I think he didn’t hear me.
“Hello!!” I started again and he only blinked blankly, the ends of his hair were like tiny arms trying to reach the horizon, curling upward.
That was when I felt a yank on my arm into another friend.
Barbara has always told me that it was nice of me to befriend everyone, but my friend group was an odd combination of people who were left out from other groups and that she was getting worried. People called us ‘The Scrapes’ and I called us ‘Benny’s Adventure Team,’ you can tell which name is the cooler one, right?
It didn’t work for Babs, though.
I called her that sometimes.
“Stop it,” she said and it was about the nickname, not what I stated. “It’s not eighth grade anymore and who you hang out with is important here. Promise me you won’t try to befriend people who are left out by others since it may do you more harm than good, Bennett.”
And I didn’t believe that, at all, because people were social creatures—which was something I had learned from a science class. But it was Barbara and she was two years older and two years more knowledgeable than I was, so I nodded.
She didn’t make me do a pinky promise and Razor hadn’t joined any group to be considered an ‘outcast’ by them yet, so I guess it worked out in my favour.
Still.
I saw him after school, in a park the other day. Always playing with dogs roaming free in that place and he looked at peace, the arch on his brows eased into something softer, quiet.
And then he smiled!
I have never seen him smile because he’s always slumming, he keeps a lot to himself and it’s weird to see someone who doesn’t smile—does.
I told my counsellor this in our bi-weekly meeting and she only asked if I had any trouble with keeping up with the school work, and if I had been blaming myself less recently. Which was weird because I didn’t think I blamed myself for anything.
This was a month ago, though.
The table lamp is dying out so I don’t think I can write anymore, but I promise to tell you about the kiss as soon as I come back with another letter. I also promise that I’m not stalling, no matter what my counsellor says.
Your happy friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
I didn’t know if I should write this but since I tell you everything and this is something I already, almost spilled, I think I should tell you too.
About the kiss that happened a month and two weeks ago, it took place at Barbara’s party. How odd is that? At first, I wasn’t sure if I should bring a friend but she insisted I should have at least one person my age to be there, so I brought Razor and well, it wasn’t that I didn’t like my other friends, I loved them, lots.
It was more so that Razor was new in town.
This could help him make more friends than dogs at parks and skip rocks onto the riverside on the weekends. Which had nothing wrong with them either, really, but I was just worried if he would like to know more people, if he would have someone to socialise with if he had wanted to talk.
The guy blinked once when I asked, then twice and I wrote it out on a note because I had never seen him talk once in the two classes we had together, and I was worried that I overlooked something I shouldn’t.
Yet, he nodded and here we were.
When Barbara greeted us at the door, she gave me a sharp glance but Razor bowed and we both didn’t know how to react to that. “Come in,” she eventually said and stepped aside so we could slide into the house that seemed more alive than the rest of the block. There were colour lights. The music played was being changed by someone every two minutes and there were a lot more girls than guys.
It wasn’t like Barbara to host something wild but I had never been to many parties either, so please do not go by my references when I have little to note.
“This is my first party,” I said and Razor nodded. I got drinks because I knew the kitchen a bit well by now, the note on the refrigerator said Jean, Barbara’s older sister was out of town.
I guessed this was why there was a celebration on this weekend. The kind of films Heckler watched also mentioned parties and gatherings for teens once the adults leave, which was never going to happen with our household, though I am at peace with that.
Razor took in the cup with both hands and whoever raised him did a good job. I almost wanted to compliment Miss Lisa, but no one had confirmed that rumour and I didn’t want him to be uncomfortable.
“I’ll walk you for a tour around this place if you want to!” I spoke over the music, which was a loud hip-hop song now and Barbara went white at the first string of curse words. She never liked to swear, much less when it came in a musical tingle. “Come on! Let’s go on an adventure!”
His palm was a bit too calloused for someone my age, but I didn’t ask.
I grabbed Razor’s hand and he let himself be grabbed by me.
It was a standard house tour, the living room, the kitchen, the backyard where I would cheer her on as she practised her singing and cheerleading, the reading room where we spent half a day organising things back into place after we chased a mouse out of Jean’s selection of A-Z, and the bathroom that I sometimes hid in during hide and seek.
Razor was a great listener throughout all of it. I noticed that his eyes were ruby, the very, very precious kind that you would see people talk about on the television when it was adorned on a celebrity’s ring finger.
It worked out beautifully. We were about an hour into the party, which had turned into a loud game of tag with a Barbara that was freaking out; when he spoke something to me for the first time ever, voice soft.
“Do you know... what is a kiss?”
“Of course I do!” I declared, too happy that I finally got to hear his tone and in hindsight, it was not that much of a great thing to be excited about. But I was and I was happy. “Everyone does. It’s something you do to show someone how much you appreciate them. It’s a nice thing to do.”
He seemed to consider it for a nanosecond, then, “can you show Razor?”
To be completely honest, that took me off guard. We were in Barbara’s guest room as I would always go there whenever I needed to hide from a world that was a bit too loud at times, but the dim lights made his eyes glow and my throat became patched. We were in her guest room and the bed was soft and his voice was quiet when he whispered the question to me.
I didn’t know where to look.
“Sure.”
I decided after a while.
“Sure.”
Razor and I sat on the bed, the satin mattress dipped when I moved in for a kiss because it was normal. It was something Fischl would give me, something Barbara would too when I was a good friend and listened and kind to them—which was what Razor had been to me. So a cheek kiss felt very deserving, even when I had never had another guy do this to me.
This was the moment I recalled that I had rotten luck because I tripped, and he pressed his lips to mine. It was a kiss, yes, but it was the wrong one. It was the kind of thing my dads would turn off the TV when two actors did this, it was the kind of thing books in our library blacked out in dark ink so we wouldn’t know what was happening after the characters leaned in.
“Kissing someone on the lips isn’t wrong,” my sister had explained to me and I listened because Mona knew a lot. She also hated skinship the most out of everyone in our family, which meant she knew something more about boundaries than I would have. “It’s just very special. Especially the first kiss because it can mean a lot to different people, so you should always ask before doing it.”
Except I didn’t ask and now our lips brushed, eyes widened as we stared at each other.
Whenever I pictured my first kiss, it would be somewhere sunny, somewhere calm because I wanted it to be picture perfect. I wanted them to feel perfect. I wanted the moment and the timing and the sunlight dancing on their hair to think, “wow this is perfect.”
This wasn’t what I had planned nor what I would have imagined.
We were in someone else’s room, at someone else’s house. The party was pounding but muted by the walls and there were no sun rays dancing anywhere, only a dimly lit yellow light as soft as the moon’s glow. It felt odd to be the main object in a room of quiet existence. I wondered if what we were doing were... okay.
There was no firework in the backdrop of my ears, but there was a moment where I could hear his heartbeat and mine dance together, then soar.
And he closed his eyes and I shut mine,
And suddenly, I thought, this was perfect.
I do not know what that means.
Your happy, nostalgic, warm—or something I can’t describe just yet, except that it is spreading and it’s a pretty colour of orange—friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
I am very angry right now and I will tell you why.
We were alone and Razor kissed me again. That wasn’t why I was mad because this happened before the last letter I sent you. (And it made me happy, somehow.)
But it was what he did today that made me feel very, very upset.
I introduced him to my other friend a week ago and he took a liking to Fischl, especially, which was good, you know? I would be happier with all of my friends together because Benny’s Adventure Team would be stronger with all of us.
But then he kissed her on the lips in the cinema and I was very angry.
And I also cried, but that wasn’t the point.
I wasn’t angry at Fischl because she didn’t do anything. She just freaked out and left, but something very ugly contorted in my guts whenever I thought about it and I hate this and I hate this and I am so mad I could hate him too.
When I said this must be my luck, my counsellor said I was blaming myself again and I didn’t understand what she was saying because I was still fuming and mad.
And I’m hurt.
Someone just threw a rock at my window and I will check that out in a minute, but I don’t think I can write anything more today because I am just very upset.
I hope you’ll understand.
Your very sad friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Sorry for the last letter ending on a cliffhanger. Funny enough, it was Barbara that threw the rock outside my room. She’d lost her thick yellow phone book when she hosted the party and she still hadn’t found it, so rock it was.
“I know being accusatory is a sin but I honestly think someone stole it,” she confessed and I laughed because being around her put me at ease. Then I went quiet and started crying again.
“Hey,” Barbara cooed and she had an arm over my shoulder. The air felt different on the front porch when she spoke again. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
Making a fist with my left hand to halt the tears, I explained it to her through long wet noises of snot, sentences strained and words kept escaping my thoughts. I gripped my shirt and she smoothed down the line on my back when I cried again. There was a moment where her blue eyes widened as she heard about the kiss (and I apologised for it being in her guest room, but she didn’t mind it as much, and then I apologised again for making her not mind it).
By the end of everything, Barbara was deep in her thoughts. Concerned. Her hand was still running down my spine in a soothing motion.
“He asked and you said it was something normal you’d do to friends—which was correct because I do kiss your head sometimes too, but you slipped and it was on the lips and Razor didn’t know, right?”
I nodded.
“Then, could it be that Razor didn’t know kissing on the lips was a special thing you only wanted to keep between you two?” Her sentence nudged and realisation came at me like a train. My jaw hung as I started feeling bad. And sick. And bad again.
“Oh,” I said. “Oh no.”
“Yes,” Barbara replied. “Oh no.”
And in her fashion, she pushed me inside the minute she realised it was late and told me to get my story straight before my friend group became unsalvageable. I stared at her figure in the dark. I stared at the frayed line of a wool jumper.
So I’m doing just that. I write the explanation in notes because I don’t think I can speak of this again by mouth, but I know Fischl and Razor both like to read so maybe I’ll draw something in it to illustrate this better. I’m also making Razor a playlist called, “apology” because nothing soothes someone better than music—this I was told by one of the dads.
My brother is complaining about the lamplight being too bright for him to sleep so I have to go now. Thank you for always listening to me.
Your silly, silly friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Fischl understood and apologised to Razor, and me too. There were a lot of things I wrote in his note that I didn’t share with her, one of which was telling him I liked the kisses but it wasn’t right because I wanted someone who loved him to kiss him first.
He didn’t reply.
After school, Razor went to the dog park again and he just sat there for a long time. I thought he was still mad, so I let him be.
Barbara said it was the best thing to do too, when she bought me ice cream after cheer practice. She was very happy with me for being ‘brave’ because this wasn’t easy to do, but somehow I don’t feel like that.
I feel small. Like a liar.
Your tiny friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
I don’t think I have introduced you to all my family members. I’m sorry. I can be forgetful like that.
Today Amber dropped by because she’s an adult now and foster children are no longer in the system once they’re grown—but she’s the sibling closest to me despite our age gap.
Amber has long brown hair and a sports scholarship, she also has the highest record in zombie shooting arcade games but my brothers don’t like to talk about that. She works in a place that allows her to take care of wildlife animals, and she sends me plushies of them sometimes.
She’s really cool though, is all I wanna say.
Amber dropped by and she brought everyone gifts, new shirts for my brothers, cheques for my dads and a snow globe that had glitters and stars instead of snow for Mona.
“Benny told me you liked the sky,” she said and I wish I could show you the moment Mona’s eyes light up like a galaxy at that. She also kissed my head a lot which embarrassed me a bit in front of my brothers who laughed.
Then Amber ruffled her bag and pulled out a long badge with all kinds of colour pins for me. “For your Adventurer’s Guild,” she smiled and see, I told you she was really cool.
I asked my dads if I could try it on and they agreed, which led to ten hours of me in this leather badge that was still a bit too long on my torso. Which led to the brothers making fun of me. Which led to Amber telling them off.
Mona said she could modify it to fit me better because she picked up sewing a long time ago when she used to make costumes, but I wanted to grow into it.
I knew I would.
Before she left, I hugged Amber and whispered to her that I kissed a friend.
“Did you love them?” she asked, her tone was as soft as the dust orange in a chip bag. Weird imagery but I don’t know how else to describe it, very familial and slightly sweet. “Did you love them lots?”
“A whole lots,” I replied and she ran her fingers through my hair like she always did whenever she was okay. And that I was okay. And we were saying goodbyes again but we were okay.
“Then it’s good,” was her reply. Her smile spoke more and it said something like, I’m glad my little hot-blooded guy has grown now!
But please don’t quote me on that, Barbara has stated that I was horrible at reading faces, once.
Your really dust orange friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
How long would it take you to not be angry at someone anymore? It wouldn’t take long for me because I like having company.
Like that time when a guy in chemistry class stepped on my feet and didn’t apologise because he thought I was a ‘wimp’, and I got really mad at him but then I stopped because what if it was my bad luck that almost tripped him over?
Or like that time Heckler got food poisoning and he blamed it on me because I went into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and I was the only one in the kitchen while his soup was being cooked. I also got really upset that time because he was family, but then I was more worried for him than mad and I let it go.
I know I should be angry more often because it’s normal, but it’s such a bad emotion that I don’t want to hold it for long. Barbara said she liked that about me a lot, but she also got angry at me once and told me to ‘take better care of myself.’ I don’t know what that means at all, but she was so mad, I didn’t ask.
Anyway,
I’m starting to get scared that it would take forever for Razor to forgive me because he doesn’t want company as much as I do. Razor doesn’t mind being alone and he doesn’t talk much to anyone to be scared of missing out either.
Today I said “Hello” to him again and he didn’t reply. He didn’t even look at me when we walked past each other and he no longer sat with me at lunch.
And I felt sad.
And untouchable.
And frankly, untouched.
My counsellor said I should be more concerned with if things were okay at home, which they were. Dads loved us, my sister adored me and even when my brothers complained sometimes, I knew they loved me too. So there wasn’t any problem at home, I retorted.
I wanted to tell her more about my imaginary adventures that I would reenact on the playground alone sometimes when Fischl didn’t want to play anymore, about how I would sometimes be a hero that the people didn’t really need—but happy to have him around regardless.
But she just looked at me like she wasn’t convinced this wasn’t rooted in something more, so she kept asking about my childhood and I didn’t like these sessions at all. But my dads had said it would help me greatly as I grew up, so I continued sitting there with my hands on my knees and I spoke as much as I remembered—which wasn’t a lot.
Your confused and slightly on edge friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
I got detention. It was the first time in my life because I had never been bad, I swear. My record is squeaky clean except for the stains that I honestly don’t know how they keep getting into all of my important documents, but yes!
What got me into detention today wasn’t a bad thing either—I think.
But I need you to take a deep breath and promise me that you will listen throughout before you judge me, alright? I trust you a lot, friend.
The reason I got one-week detention was because I punched a senior.
Please don’t freak out, I promise I’m okay. There are bandages on my body but he didn’t get to hurt me. I slipped after I swung a hit at him, which landed me flat on the hallway floor underneath the Principal’s feet because, as I said, my luck is rotten.
When I was asked why I did that: swinging the first strike, I didn’t know how to reply because I honestly didn’t know this guy, and he could be a great person for all I knew. He could also break my neck if he wanted to because he was two heads taller than me and the football team had his back—so I was thankful that the Principal found us before it got worse.
“So why did you hit him?” she asked and I looked down because it was weird to look at Jean like this, like a student when she had been almost a sister figure to me while I was growing up. “Bennett,” she spoke again and I fidgeted with the frays on my sleeves. “Bennett, dear, we can’t let you go until you say why.”
“He said a bad word.”
A quirk of brows.
“Which bad word? About you?”
It shouldn’t matter, but I shook my head and tried not to cry when I recalled it. The red-rimmed of her eyes, the way she bit her lips and her shoes clicked faster as she walked into the bathroom. The way the guys stood around him laughed in waves. The way I felt so angry I could burst into stars.
I felt like crying when I continued, words choked.
“My sister Mona. He called her—he said she was a ‘dirty slut’ that nobody wanted and that was why she now lived with us. He hurt her. My sister.”
Silence.
Jean didn’t ask more after that except for sending me to the nurse’s office for my wounds.
When dads came to school to pick me up, they hugged me really tight and Mona was in the car.
I started crying when she cried too. But it was different. It was different because it was love.
Your (gently) grounded friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
Detention wasn’t that bad. It’s not great like the films, but it was truly not that bad. Maybe it was because Jean went easy on me, maybe it was because I wasn’t that wrong. Violence was bad, yes, but my dads said they were proud of me for standing up nonetheless. My brothers told Heckler about this over the phone and he was quiet for a while, then he told me to answer him, and then he said that he was glad I was there for our sister—which was the first time he ever said this to me.
To end the call, he told me not to touch the rest of his stuff in the closet—which no one did because we didn’t want to find anything he didn’t want us to. He also told me to never be reckless again, so yeah, detention wasn’t that bad.
On the fourth day of staying back and finishing my homework in an empty classroom with a rotation of teachers, I found Miss Lisa there.
To be honest, I had never been to the school library because we had one near our home that didn’t blackout content kids couldn’t read, but she called me by my name like she knew me for the longest time, and I froze.
“Bennett, great punch you threw the other day.”
And I didn’t think I could agree with the faculty’s statement. So I just stood there with my head low before I walked to a seat by the window.
Miss Lisa talked a lot more than the other teachers who had been guarding me, which made sense because she wasn’t a teacher, her dresses were patterned with flowers and she would sometimes wear a hat. I don’t think any of our teachers are allowed to do such. Miss Jean has never worn a hat before, and she’s the highest of teachers.
“But I was smart enough to be one,” Miss Lisa said and I didn’t know her well enough to judge, therefore I just nodded at that too.
I was more worried to be alone because of the rumours that she was Razor’s guardian, and Razor hadn’t been talking to me for weeks now. And I was very scared that she would be angry at me for hurting him.
Which she wasn’t. I thought. Because she was smiling and talking and the conversation was nowhere near anywhere for me to be worried about.
Then she asked this one thing and it took all the air out of my lungs,
“Bennett, do you know what a kiss is?”
My breath stuttered. I kept darting my eyes around and the sounds of a tennis ball hitting the racket felt like it vibrated into my soul, my fingernails were little hammers against skin when I looked up.
But then it was time for me to leave so I grabbed my bag and ran.
It was until I got on the front porch that I realised she didn’t chase me all the way home, that maybe she never did chase after me, and maybe she asked because she wanted to check in on how students had been thinking recently within our social circles.
But then I was too out of breath to think straight so I leaned against the doorbell until Mona dragged my almost-dead body in.
She complained that I was horrible but I knew that she loved me anyway.
Your sweaty and exhausted friend,
Bennett.
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.
☀
Dear friend,
The detention was over and I was glad because Miss Lisa didn’t come to find me after that day. But I was also sad because I felt like I could have said something better than dashing off.
Razor still didn’t talk to me and Fishcl was busy in her advanced writing class, hence why I would go to the cafeteria alone. It was like middle school again, only a little larger with the food choices. But Barbara would always leave her friends’ table to sit with me whenever this happened, so I didn’t feel as lonely as I would have been.
Unlike the other popular kids in our school, Barbara never talked much about romance. I didn’t think she liked guys despite how many of them confessed to her in drastic ways.
One time she called me over because she was convinced someone was waiting to capture her in a human-sized box that was perfectly her height—outside of her house. And I ran there with one of my dads because if this person had crafted a box, there wasn’t much I could do with my scrawny body at thirteen and two bandages. When we cracked it open, there was a her inside but it wasn’t the real Barbara. In a way, it was a beautiful wooden statue of her with flowers and a love letter in a pink envelope from a senior.
“Creepy,” I said and she agreed.
My tallest dad found the boy hiding somewhere nearby and gave him a scolding for it, because it wasn’t polite to scare girls into liking you, and it wasn’t right for an eighteen-year-old to like a fifteen-year-old girl this much. I would always remember the way the guy ran like a cartoon character when my dad forced him to apologise. Weird.
So, yeah.
I didn’t think Babs would ever be into boys, even scarred by the idea of that day, perhaps.
I never asked about girls though.
There was someone named Noelle in her art class that would always stay a little late to clean up everyone’s palette and put things back into place. She was also a junior, I think. Barbara said I might have met her at the party, but honestly, I didn’t remember much from it besides the you-know-what event. So I just nodded and said maybe.
She didn’t wait for me to pull strings off my head though, Barbara kept on talking and she smiled with each word.
“... And I was worried, you know, because Jean could be home any second now and someone dared snuck in alcohol and someone else knocked over a vase. I would have gone insane with cleaning up—but I didn’t. I didn’t because Noelle, god bless her soul, sweet, kind and patient Noelle—did her best with cleaning up! And she was so helpful that you’d feel totally relaxed around her…”
Then she kept drifting and I thought this goofy look fit her.
I didn’t say it then because I didn’t want her to hit me in the arm during lunch, to erase her smile and replace it with a slight scowl. If you were worried about me punching the other guy, Barbara’s wrath was the one you should fear.
When she was close to finishing, a girl walked by with a braid in her hair and her smile was soft when she waved politely at us.
And for the very first time in our history of friendship, Barbara hid her face behind my back, ears red with something I couldn’t pinpoint yet.
Yours and Babs’ friend,
Bennett.
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☀
Dear friend,
I haven’t told you this but I get sad sometimes. Like really sad. Very sad. It feels unusual to be sad when everyone I know has always called me ‘happy-go-lucky Benny’ or some variation of that, but I can’t be ‘happy-go-lucky Benny’ forever and I dislike it.
My counsellor said it was normal because people had emotions and when I asked her why, she started bringing up theories that I had yet to learn and it was very confusing; so after a while, I stopped asking.
On days like this, my dads would allow me to pick what was for dinner and my favourite film to watch during it. I could even eat only using my fingers like a true Adventurer and I love it.
I wish I wasn’t so sad whenever it happened.
Today the sadness took over me again, long avenues of its dread and I didn’t feel like leaving my bed. Jack, my brother, the most gentle one of them all, gave me his old controller to play but I said no because I was worried my bad luck would break it.
Then he pushed me to play and I did. And it broke. And I cried.
He wasn’t mad, more frustrated because dads told me that he didn’t know how to make me feel better, so he and Royce are sleeping on the couch tonight so I can have a calmer place to process my emotions.
This sucks. Everything sucks and Razor still won’t talk to me and somehow thinking about that makes me really, really want to cry.
I want to grow up faster to understand all of these things. Grow faster, body!
Your moody friend,
Bennett.