I normally went to the post office twice a week during their slow hours to check my PO box that I used for reader mail. A week after sending the letter, though, I found myself checking it every single afternoon.
For several days, there had been no letter from Griffin. On the fourteenth day, a bright-red envelope stood out from the rest of the mail. The name on the return address: Griffin Quinn.
My hand was shaking. Do I rip it open and read it here? Could I even wait long enough to drive home?
I decided that it wouldn’t be a good idea to potentially receive upsetting news in a public place. God forbid I pass out and wake up with a swarm of people huddling over me or something. The thought of that made me shiver.
So I decided to race home.
Once I arrived back at the house, I fed Hortencia really quickly so that she’d be content and pacified while I read the letter.
Sitting down in a comfortable spot on my couch as my heart pounded, I carefully opened the envelope.Dear Luca,
I suck.
Do you still look up a word in the dictionary to memorize every day like you used to? Well, just in case you hadn’t reached this one yet, let me do the honors.
Self-ab*sorbed
/self-?b'zôrbd/
adjectivepreoccupied with one’s own feelings, interests, or situation.
a friend who shits on you because he never stopped for a minute to think maybe there was a reason his best friend stopped writing.I smiled and looked over at the old beat-up Merriam-Webster dictionary sitting on the corner of my desk. My copy was from 1993 and had 470,000 words. The spine had multiple layers of duct tape holding it together from all my years of use. Ever since I was four and learned to read, each morning I flipped open to a random page, closed my eyes, and pointed to a word on the page to memorize. I’d highlighted the ones I’d committed to memory, which meant the old book had a ton of yellow in it now. Although by my calculations, I’d have to live to be 1,288 years old in order to finish. But that never discouraged me any.
I loved that Griffin remembered my little hobby. Only four people knew about it. It made my chest heavy to realize that he was the only one left now—Mom, Dad, and Izzy were all gone. Not even Doc knew. Not that I’d hidden it or anything. There’d just never been a reason to bring it up.
I went back to reading, anxious to see what he’d written.I’m so sorry for everything you went through, Luca. Even sorrier that I wasn’t there for you when it happened. I lost my mum, and she was too young to die, but we’re supposed to lose our parents. We’re not supposed to bury our friends as teenagers. Especially not the way you lost Izzy. Jesus, my letter was pretty damn insensitive. It’s not an excuse, but I’d had a little too much to drink when I wrote it. Do you think we can start over? How about if we try. Yes? That’s nice of you. Okay. I’ll go first.Dear Luca,
Hey! It’s been too long. I’ve thought about you a lot over the years and wondered what you were doing. For some reason, those thoughts have been more frequent lately. It’s too bad we lost touch. That was probably my fault. Anyway, I’ll catch you up on my life. Moved to the States four years ago. Still strumming my guitar—my music career has been . . . interesting. It didn’t exactly turn out the way I thought it would. But it pays the bills. Not married, no kids. Had a girl for a while. Now I don’t. Love the Pacific Ocean. Bought a surfboard. I suck at it but paddle out to escape life as often as I can.
So . . . agoraphobic, huh?
It’s kind of a cool word. Wonder how many points that gets you in Scrabble? The B, P, H, and C are each worth at least three. But wait . . . I don’t want you to think I’m a weirdo and sit around and play Scrabble all the time. Then again, you wouldn’t think that’s weird—you memorize the damn dictionary. A quiet game might be just up your alley. Maybe a two-person game? Would three people in a room freak you out? Or is there a set number that pushes you over the edge? Seventeen maybe? That’s a lot. Way more than can play Scrabble at once, that’s for sure.
It’s too bad you don’t have agrizoophobia. (Fear of wild animals, just in case you haven’t hit that in the dictionary yet, either, slowpoke.) That would get you ten points just for the Z.
Maybe next time. I mean, some wild animals are pretty damn scary.