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Today was meant to be a good day. Martha had plans, actual plans, with her actual friend. Go to the library with JD, return all their October books, then rent some November books to take to the coffee shop in the park for the next two or three hours. Maybe they’d tell each other about what they were reading, maybe they were going to just sit in complete silence. Either way, it was going to be good.
Until she came downstairs and her mom said a letter had come for her. She hadn’t questioned it at first, assuming it was just college or something. Then she looked up at her mom’s face and she knew. It might be the last thing she ever would have expected, but there’s no doubting it. There’s only one person who could make her mom look like that.
She’d looked at the front first. There was a return address in the corner, somewhere on the other side of the state. It’s a nice town, probably in a nice neighbourhood. It’s probably a house, based on the address. Not the one-bed apartment he was living in the last time she heard from him.
“Has that letter offended you in some way?” Her grip releases, and the letter drops onto the counter. She looks up and finds that an hour has passed since she found the letter. Damn it. Her mom has probably already gone to work. And she was meant to meet JD at the library twenty minutes ago.
Instead of being at the library, JD is standing in her doorway, his backpack slung over his shoulder and his hair slightly messed up from his beanie.
She opens her mouth, probably to apologise, or ask who let him in, or to apologise again, but nothing comes out but a small, weak croak. Somehow, JD manages to hear everything, because he sets his backpack on the chair and crosses over to the counter, an arm’s length between them.
“It’s okay, Dunnstock,” he says with a shrug. “You didn’t show up at the library and I got worried. So I came here and your mom was just getting in her car. She let me in.” He gives a soft, self-depricating laugh. “I didn’t break in if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not-I wasn’t….” She shakes her head. Her thoughts feel like a cluttered attic, boxes tipping and spilling over. “Was my mom okay?”
“As okay as someone working for the great American healthcare system could be,” he says. He lightly taps her finger with his. Boundary testing. “She’s okay. If anything, she’s just worried about you.”
“Oh God.” She presses her face into her hands, shame flooding her cheeks and her chest and her stomach. She had a plan, years ago, when she got old enough to understand what all of this meant. Step One on that plan was Don’t Make Mom Worry.
It’s the reason she still says Heather is her close friend, because she doesn’t want her mom to worry about her getting jumped by skinheads on the way to class.
Now one freaking envelope has torched that entire plan.
“Dunnstock.” JD’s voice is firm, strong enough to grab her neck and wrench her out of the attic in her mind. With the state she’s in, it makes her cower a little too, even if her rational brain knows it’s JD and if there’s one person other than Veronica and her mom who makes her feel safe, it’s JD.
The little girl who lives in that attic doesn’t know that, though. All she knows is someone raised their voice at her.
Something passes over JD’s face then-shock, worry, regret, compassion, all rolled in one like a kaleidoscope. He keeps his eyes trained on her as he moves his hand again, a murmured ‘it’s okay’ under his breath. Martha tries to believe him, to match his breaths as he covers her hand with his.
Tick, tick, tick. The clock hand moves.
Breathe, breathe, breathe. Martha’s chest rises.
“Let’s get out of here, okay?” JD asks. “I’ve got Clare’s car. Let’s go into town.” He nods at the counter. “Bring your letter too.”
Martha doesn’t even think about it. Her hands move, she grabs the letter, puts it in her pocket, follows JD to the car. JD doesn’t say anything, just gives her a quick look before brushing his knuckles against hers, then putting the car in gear and heading into town.
They don’t go to the library. Instead, JD stops outside a small cafe, one Martha might have been inside years ago with her mom. It’s a vague memory, made even worse by how disconnected her brain is. JD walks her inside, hand brushing hers but never taking it. He sits her down at a table in the back, orders an espresso for him and vanilla latte for her. It’s their usual.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first words out of her mouth as “I’m sorry”.
“Don’t even think about it, Dunnstock.” He’s leaning against the wall, long legs propped up on the chair beside him. The easy-going pose doesn’t match his tone in the slightest, and that contrast opens Martha’s chest just enough to let her breathe.
They sit in silence, sipping coffee and tracing the lines in the wood. Martha can feel JD’s eyes on her. What’s more she can feel the question, passing like a fishing line from him to her and reeling the truth out of her, little bit by little bit. Her coffee is cold and his cup in empty by the time she tells him-
“It’s from my dad.”
JD’s eyes darken. His body remains still, bar his hand curling into a fist. Martha never met his dad back then, but it doesn’t take a genius to put it together. He was with his dad, then he disappeared, and now he’s with Clare. Even Kurt and Ram could work that one out.
“I see.” His voice is tight. He takes a sugar packet and rolls it between his fingers.
“I don’t know how much Veronica has told you-”
“She’s told me nothing,” he says. She blinks then, slightly taken aback, and he just shrugs. “It’s not her thing to tell. It’s yours.” His eyes flicker to the letter, jaw clenching, before looking up to her. “I can guess he isn’t your favourite person though. Right?”
She exhales. With shaking hands, she takes the letter from her pocket and places it on the table. It sits right in the middle, handled with the care you’d give a rattlesnake.
“He used to be,” she whispers.
It’s funny. This never feels like her own life. It’s like watching a video. A little girl with glasses giggling while her dad picks her up, a warm eye winking as a hand slips a candy into her pocket. Dinner table magic tricks, bedtime stories about true love and princesses. The picture might be faded, the sound muted, but it’s all still there. Happening to some other version of her she often doubts even existed.
JD nods. There are thoughts brewing behind his eyes, but he doesn’t share them. The stage is hers, it seems.
“I don’t-I haven’t heard from him in a while,” she confesses. “Just after he left. He kept telling me he was sorry for it all.”
“Did you believe him?”
Martha stiffens. Every day of her life, she’s striven to be “the good girl”. Never causes trouble, never makes anyone go out of their way. She’s forgiven everyone; Kurt and Ram, the Heathers, everyone who tripped her up and pushed her around. She’s always believed everyone could change if they just tried hard enough. Except-
“No,” she whispers. It feels like a scream. Like she just threw this table to the other end of the room. “No. I didn’t believe him.” She shakes her head again, rattling her thoughts around. “He said it too many times.”
JD doesn’t flinch. He is solid as an oak tree, unfazed by anything she says. She breathes out, slowly, taps the corner of the envelope. If she needs direction, it might be sitting across from her.
“JD what would you do? If it was you and your dad, what would you do?”
“Honest answer?” she nods. He turns to face her, pulls his chair and leans over like he’s worried someone will overhear. He holds her gaze for three, four seconds before looking down, tracing patterns in the wood.
“I don’t know what I’d do,” he confesses. A small, jagged laugh interrupts, then he continues, “I think the best thing for me is not knowing. I don’t know about you Martha, but I spent a lot of my time angry with him.”
Martha doesn’t reply. She still is angry, even if her anger is duct-taped shut and stuffed in the back of a closet.
“You aren’t angry anymore?” she asks. She would give anything to feel like that.
“I don’t know. I don’t think I am.” His tongue pokes out, clamped between his teeth. “I mean I- I have a lot of good things in my life. Clare. Veronica. You. I don’t want to waste my energy on him anymore.” He looks up. His eyes look lighter somehow. “But this isn’t about me, Dunnstock. It’s about you.”
About her.
One of few decisions she can make for herself. Her mom won’t be impacted, she promised she’d be fine either way. Her friends will support her whatever she decides. She stands here, centre-stage, spotlight blinding her face.
Except it’s not really a choice. Hasn’t she always known what she would do if this ever happened? Didn’t she promise herself, write it in her dairy and stash it beneath her floorboards?
She looks up at JD, holds his gaze until she steadies too.
“You got a lighter?”
He doesn’t. She make a small joke about how his bad-boy persona is going down after this, but they swing by the corner store and grab one. The store clerk raises an eyebrow but hey, they’re both 18 now. Doesn’t matter that he used to sell Martha cotton candy when she was 12.
JD’s backpack is still in her kitchen. He quietly moves it to the flood before pulling the trashcan to the centre.
Martha’s hands are alarmingly still. She holds the letter over the trash, lighter in the other.
“Did I ever tell you when I was 9 and we had to light a candle in Girl Scouts?” JD shakes his head. “I lit the match and panicked so hard I dropped it. I nearly burned the building down.”
“And you’re telling me this now.”
“So I have your informed consent for what I’m about to do.”
“You never needed it,” he tells her. “However, I do accept the risk of being burned alive.”
She laughs. It’s soft, airy, lighter than a cloud.
“Thanks, JD.”
“What else are friends for?”
After she lights the match, JD fishes cookies out of the cupboard. The fire is quiet, no crackling or popping to be heard. Just a small, sad wheezing that gets interrupted by the rustling of the cookie wrapper.
Martha opens the window before the smoke alarm can get triggered. Outside, the air is cold, the first winds of winter now surely on their way. Leaves are blown around the street, corners of posters fluttering in the breeze.
The world is still turning out there. She’ll wake up tomorrow and she’ll be okay.
“You okay over there?”
She turns. JD is sitting on the table, eyes sharp. She should be freaked out that he can see through her, through the pink sweaters and ribbons to the quiet anger beneath. She was never meant to let anyone see it.
She isn’t. As she crosses the room and takes the seat beside him, she feels the calmest she has in a while.
JD toasts her with his cookie and together, they watch the fire dwindle, consuming the letter until it’s nothing but ash and dust buried beneath a Chips Ahoy wrapper.
Martha will never find out what was in that letter. It’s the best decision she could have made.