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Dear Will,
It’s been five months and seven days since. I refuse to say or to write what happened right now. The memory of it crosses my mind enough times to fill an entire book with the words of that day—that moment. Some days it’s all I can think about, and I just don’t want to put it into words right now.
Anyway, El and I made this poster today for a school project. It’s something for her chemistry class about famous scientists and their discoveries. She chose to do this guy named Alan Turing. I don’t really know anything about him (I just helped her glue on some pictures), but she says he was someone you’d like, so I like him, too.
El’s actually been going to school for almost a month now and… Well, it’s hard. Kids can be mean at Hawkins (and everywhere, I guess), especially to people who are different and she's different, you know? But she’s got the party, so I know she’ll be okay. Even Max is coming back to school next month! It’s difficult because of all the accommodations she needs, like her guide dog and a TA to help her with the things she can’t see. But she’s still coming back, and El’s really excited. As much as I hate to admit it because Max can be a shithead sometimes, I’m happy she’s coming back, too. It’s…
Fuck.
Sorry. I can’t do this, Will. I wanted to write this letter to, I don’t know… prove to myself that I could handle this. That I could sit down and talk to you in the only way I can now and pretend that it’s fulfilling enough, that I don’t want to tear this paper to absolute fucking shreds and just scream. Because I don’t want to write you a letter; I want to talk to you. I want to talk to you but I can’t anymore. Because… Because you’re gone. No matter how much I try to ignore that fact, it’s still true. You’re really gone. And I’ll never get to talk to you again; never see the smile on your face; never smell the vanilla and pine and cigarette residue on your clothes; never play another game of D & D; never tell you all the things I never got to say. Just… never. It’ll never be okay again.
I watched as your body fell to the ground, crumbling in on itself like the rubble of a collapsing castle, cold and limp. Everything was blue: your skin’s hue painted under the deadly atmosphere of the Upside Down, the flecks of the land sprinkling the air. I see that image over and over and over again—every night while I’m trying (and failing) to sleep.
For a while after it happened, I couldn’t speak. (And not because of how, in that moment when you fell, I screamed and screamed until my throat was raw, blood surging to the front of my mouth, staining my teeth red). No. Words were seemingly seized from my throat; my mind, my tongue, all went numb. You were gone and, though the world continued moving, I was just struck paralyzed. My world stopped that moment you dropped to the ground, and it hasn’t started moving again since. I’m not sure that it ever really will.
The Upside Down is gone; we’re all back in school; life is about as normal as it’s been in a long, long time but… you’re not here, so it’s never enough. I miss you so much, Will. I don’t know how to do this without you. I thought we were going to graduate together, go to college together, make… make a life together.
I guess it’s out now. Right there on the paper. I wanted a life with you, Will. I loved you. Not like a best friend, but something more. I wanted to be close to you forever. To live with you someday. To build our own house with a swingset in the backyard and your art on our walls. To get old with you. To hug you and even kiss you. To teach our kids about Dungeons and Dragons. Kids. Jesus Christ, this all sounds so stupid. So fucking stupid. That’ll never happen, those stupid fucking dreams. They probably wouldn’t have happened even if you were still here. But I mean… It's true. I want all of that with you. Wanted.
I wish I could say something nice like I’ve been in love with you since the first day I met you but that’s just not true. It sounds prettier that way but it’s just not right. Still, asking you to be my friend on the swing is the best thing I’ve ever done. If I didn’t do that, I would have never fallen in love with you. It’s the origin point of all this; the spot where all roads lead back to. So I think that makes it even sweeter than when I fell in love with you. That’s the best moment.
Still, maybe it was after you came back from the Upside Down that I started to fall in love with you. Maybe it was summer ‘85. Maybe it was when you moved away to California, and I realized all I’d lost. Maybe it was when I met you in California. Maybe it was yesterday. I don’t know. Either way it feels like a lifetime, like I’ve been loving you forever because it’s just so instinctual. It feels like the strongest emotion my body has ever endured. It feels like the most beautiful and painful thing. And I guess most of all it just feels right. Loving you feels so right. The world might not say it is but I swear, Will, it’s right.
I wish I could have told you this when you were here. Even if it meant we couldn’t be friends anymore, or that you’d hate my guts. I can’t bear holding this inside. But if I can’t tell you, then who do I tell? I just want you. I want you back. Please, come back. And I miss you so much all the time, it feels like I am this open wound, constantly bleeding out. Like I’m on the verge of death because something has cut me open, and the only thing that could mend me is impossible to have. You will never come back. It’s a little like that moment at the quarry, when I saw your body getting pulled out of the water. For a few hours, I felt like I was dying, like this maimed creature just waiting for the suffering to end. Then I got back my hope, and I got back you, and I was better. No matter what bullshit came after, it didn’t matter. Because I had you again. Now all hope is gone and I just don’t know when the pain will stop. I know it will because everybody says that, though grief lasts, it doesn’t always hurt so bad. I think I have to believe that, otherwise I’ll never live again. I think you’d want me to believe that it’ll get better. So I’m trying, Will. I’m really trying but it feels fucking impossible.
I wish I could know what it’s like to be loved by you, and to give that love back. I think it would be quite something.
I miss you, Will. And I love you.
From Love, Mike
four years later…
Dear Will,
Somehow I’ve made it this far. Tomorrow, I’m graduating. It’s fucking wild.
I keep thinking about you in the graduation cap and gown. They’re so silly and unflattering, yet I just want to see you wearing it. I picture it in my head a lot. How the green fabric would compliment your eyes. How much you’d love the yellow tassel. How wicked the top of your cap would be. I bet you’d have the best decorated one, with some killer painting or drawings or something like that. Maybe you’d paint mine, too. All of us, the whole party, could match.
You know, when I put my cap and gown on for the first time, I feel like I left my body for a second. It’s such a distinct thing—the cap and gown. And in wearing them both, looking at myself in the mirror, the realization really hit me, for the first time actually, that I’m graduating High School. I turned eighteen a little over a month ago; I committed to college in New York; and I’m graduating. I’m really grown up now, huh? I feel like I look older, too, but Dustin thinks that’s just me being stupid. I wish you were here to tell me, you know. I wish I could know what you’d look like grown up.
I’m graduating tomorrow, and I miss you, and I still love you, and I’m okay with doing this alone. When I think about your face now, and all of the memories we shared together, I just smile. I feel so lucky to have had you, even if only for a short time.
Love, Mike