Note: Based on the Heathers 2010 pilot script, 'What's Your Damage', by Mark Rizzo. Thanks to LateToTheParty for the beta!
—
Letters, often smudged with messy ink and dirty hands, flew between post offices, between states, irregular yet regular and frequent in their irregularity.
—
Dear Dad,
I got busted for drugs. Ritalin, specifically. Got on it back in Boston when I couldn't pass a Bio test without it.
Now, as you know, I didn't need to do the father-daughter confiding thing, but I did. Points for honesty and let's take a sharp turn away from Sternly Worded Parental Lecture Road?
Believe me, I travelled that route with Mom. Extensively.
Regretfully,
Becky.
—
Darling,
You're an idiot.
Dad.
—
Dear Vague Paternal Figure,
Just to clarify, did you mean that in the 'getting caught' sense or the 'doing it in the first place' sense?
Call me a Spartan, but I think Option Mono is what most folks care about. Mom loved my chemical-assisted As.
How are the kids' birthday parties going?
Hugs,
Becky.
—
Honey,
Hate to psychoanalyze, but both questions sound like you know you shouldn't have done it in the first place.
You'll be fine the first time you do drugs. You'll be fine the first five times you do drugs. It won't make you instantly morph into a cautionary slide reeking with blood and guts on an overhead projector in an overheated classroom on Friday afternoon. Do it fifty times, and it just might.
So watch yourself. Ask me about my Nicorette patch. I dare you.
And don't knock the stage-magic gigs. Women like a guy who can pull a boiled egg out of nowhere. Ask your mother.
Don't worry for the As. No one will remember what you did in high school. Unless you pull something really explosive. That's not a suggestion to try.
Stay out of prison,
Dad.
P.S. Is that a Sherwood, Ohio postmark I see before me? Quaint little town. Feel free to share gory details.
—
My Dear And Highly Respectable Father,
I write this letter in the darling little attic room that was once my beloved mother's, perched by my heirloom desk with punctuation marks in place of knobs. I overlook a green croquet field. One so delights in the countryside of our great nation. You ask for quaint, you get quaint.
Freedom or death shall be my watchword. I think the population of cows exceeds the population of people. Two Ash-holes run the school. Yes, they're both called Ashley. Have you ever heard anything so weird? God knows what their moms were thinking. Ashley the First, who shall be known as ADJ, got me out of the big house by swapping favors with her mommy dearest, the corrupt town mayor, Heather Duke-Jolly, she whose hyphen is not optional. ADJ's desires are to be valedictorian, go to Harvard, be President one day, and I get to choose to be with her or be crushed below her patent-leather Mary Janes. Ashley #2 is the absurdly gothic, publicly promiscuous child of the severely brain-damaged Coach McNamara; it's pretty possible that she propositioned me for a threesome this one time.
Speaking of, I saw this hottie who looked kinda like you-twenty-years-ago in the old school yearbook. Mom has a type or what?
I hope this satisfies your sudden and not at all suspicious need for gossip about Sherwood, Ohio.
Mom is grounding me forever. Come make a road trip, break me out of chokey? New York, New York, how I'd love New York.
Yours penitently and not at all desperately,
Becky.
—
Wayward Offspring Who Strays From The Beaten Path,
Your mother is the custodial disciplinary parent. Thus, I don't intervene.
Many moons ago, she and I came to a careful, amiable separation agreement like mature adults. It involves keeping thousands of miles of space between us. It is a dewy, delicate, spider-web-like balance that we dare not disturb.
Or, in short: She scares me, and you should show her more respect, you little scamp.
Love,
Dad.
P.S. Strongly suggest you steer sharply clear of corrupt mayor and bizarrely named offspring. Let the trained journalist handle it, she knows what she's doing. I hope.
—
Becky Sawyer sighed as she opened the thin letter. She'd expected as much. No chance of seeing Dad for ages. Her father was usually to be found in New York, getting letters through a post office box in place of a regular apartment. One of his more publicly acceptable skills was stage magic - nightclub gigs, the odd bar mitzvah or children's birthday party. For a guy with nine fingers, he could really make sleight of hand work.
Her mother never asked her about her letters, though Becky knew she knew. The things Becky had from her father she could count on one hand. Childhood memories of piggyback rides up and down the riverside at night, streetlights in her eyes. Her first pair of sleeper earrings and a hand to hold while the needle went in. Uneven, rebellious eyebrows, set in a face otherwise her mother's, that made her look untrustworthy at every angle. And a huge bunch of scrawled notes kept in an old floral lunch box, written on anything and everything from nightclub napkins to fancy hotel embossed paper.
Becky flopped back on her bed and stretched. Ugly faded wallpaper, once blue, spread around her. The room had been furnished to her mother's taste, a long time ago. She utterly regretted that they'd inherited the house from Grandma and Grandad. She was trapped in ol' Sherwood, Ohio for the next it-might-as-well-be-forever. Grounded at home, and fighting a one-woman war at school against the Ash-holes while her mom made nice to their creepy moms for the sake of writing a damn Vanity Fair article. Screw being drafted into Ashley D.J.'s preppy pastel-colored horror show or Ashley McNamara's faux-gothy scene of being publicly kinky to get maximum attention.
Screw Mom and all her stupid secrets.
—
Note: Although the Heathers 2010 script strongly hints that Becky doesn't know who her father is, it doesn't actually confirm that theory. So I went this route instead.
