Raphael paced through the dust-riddled sunlight shafting through the attic, the old pine planks creaking softly with each footstep.
This place had been their home for 2 years, ever since the fire.
But he preferred not to think about that.
The attic was empty, except for one thing. A black safebox lay in the corner of the attic where the corner of the roof hit the floor of the attic. It had belonged to Donatello.
Raph had never looked inside before, but now he was ready. He had found the key all the way at the back of the junk drawer in the kitchen, behind two out-of-date phone books and numerous dead batteries and screws.
He unlocked the box and lifted the lid breathlessly. A small piece of paper drifted loose and landed, face-down, on the floor of the attic. He picked it up.
It was a photograph, a picture of a girl about 13 or 14. A girl in a black leather jacket with short-cropped hair, grinning and waving at the camera. On the back it said, Margo Amiot, age 13.
Margo Amiot. Raphael remembered her, if vaguely. When Raph and Donnie were 7, Margo had appeared at the front door of the abandoned house they used for their mailing address, selling Girl Scout cookies. Donnie had gotten into an obsessive conversation about calories with her, and the wagon-toting 5-year-old was hopelessly lost. Almost immediately they had become best friends through the inexplicable reasoning of young children.
But when Donnie had turned 9 and Margo was 7, she moved to France, where her family had come from. Donnie had moped around the house for days.
That is, until Margo's first letter from France came in from the mailbox at the end of the driveway. Leo-wonderful age 11 as he was, and the only one allowed to check the mail on his own-brought it inside, and thus the letter-sending frenzy began.
At the top of the safebox lay the first letter, still in its envelope and bulging suspiciously in on corner. Raph opened it to find a bottlecap on a string. A French bottlecap, as Margo explained in the letter, a necklace she'd made. Raphael remembered how Donnie had worn it around the house for 2 months, proudly showing it off. Then he had stopped wearing it suddenly; Raph assumed it'd got lost.
He read through the letter, memories springing back to him; how Donnie had kept the letter in his belt pocket, reading it till he'd had to tape it at the seams from unfolding and refolding, how it'd gotten stains on it from cereal milk, juice, any liquid Donnie had happened to have around, somehow a drop had gotten on the letter.
Dear Donatello:
I am riting you from france becuase I miss you. You are my best freind. I wanted to call you but Mommy says she cant pay the long distince. I am going to french scool now and they all speak french but i dont know it yet but i am lerning. I can say hello and goodbye and thank you and shrimp.
daddy buyed me a soda at a store so he helped me put the top on a string and i sended it to you
from margo
Raph grimaced. Margo had been a horrible speller when they were younger.
The next letter was from when she was ten. Countless letters had been sent in between, but they had likely been lost in the fire.
Dear Donatello:
My French is nearly fluent now! Alicia says the bathroom at school is haunted, do you believe in ghosts? She said it threw a spoon at her head from across the bathroom. Nobody wants to go in there now, but I still do, but I don't see anything unusual.
Margo prattled on about ghosts and mean teachers; Raph put the letter down, remembering how Donnie had drawn up a lot of evidence that ghosts did not in fact exist. Donnie had always been such a genius...
He pulled out the next letter, also from year ten, some sort of conversation with Donnie about cake.
"Miss Jean-Paul says cake is bad for you but what if it's strawberry? Mom says strawberries are good for you..."
The prattle went on like this for the next few letters, about how she had gotten a kitten and wondered if Donnie was allergic, how she was taking art lessons, whether or not Alicia turned into a rabbit at full moon...
And then something caught his eye, some bit about a baby. He skimmed the letter.
"Dear Donatello,
I HAVE A BABY SISTER! I couldn't believe it! Her name is Macy, and I can't believe they didn't tell me she was going to be born- I am going to learn to knit so I can make her a sweater, it really does get cold here in France in the winter and she's a winter baby so it fits her personality-"
Raph was surprised by this news. Donnie had never told them that Margo had had a sister. He checked the date at the bottom.
November 8, 2012. 6 years ago. Margo would have been 12. Donnie would have been 14. No wonder they never knew; Donnie had stopped telling them what was up with Margo shortly after he turned 13. Leo had told Raph he thought they'd lost touch.
He skipped again, through numerous letters about babies: whether or not they had their own language, arguments about whether 12 was old enough to babysit, how the sweater project had been abandoned...
At age 13, Margo's mailing address had changed. Presumably she'd moved. Her next letter was full of depression. Somehow things kept dying.
Her goldfish was dead. Her great-aunt was dead of pneumonia. Her window-box flowers were dead. Apparently chivalry was also dead.
Raph didn't want to read about things dying. He hastily folded the letter back up and put it in the envelope.
At the age of 14, Margo had gotten lost in the park for 6 WHOLE HOURS...gotten the part of the Beast for the school play...finally been allowed to ride her bicycle to the ice cream shop herself...
And then he came to the last letter in the box.
"Dear Donatello:
Don't be mad at me. Please. I didn't mean it. I don't mind your arguments about things, they're a part of you! I still want to be friends, I was just...writing too fast, or something!
BFFs?
-Margo Amiot"
Questions that had never been answered, an argument that had never been settled. Donnie had never sent her another letter.
At the bottom of the safebox, among the small shells and trinkets from france, something glinted gold.
Raphael retrieved it; it was a small locket on a gold chain. Inside were pictures of Margo and Donnie. The matching lockets had been gifts to them from Margo's mother when they moved to France. After the fire Leo must have found it and put it in the box before it got stowed in the attic.
Raph looked up. The sunlight shafting through the attic had changed position and wasn't as bright. He checked his watch; he had been up here for 2 hours now. He put the locket in a pocket on his belt and went downstairs.