Hey Dad,
I still miss you every day. I'm missing you extra hard today. It took me an hour to figure out what I wanted to say. As soon as I started writing it, I realized it took so long because I was trying to forget that I keep seeing you. I should be happy to see you, right? I'm not. Your face and your smile and your checkered shirt are like thorns against my skin. You look like you're supposed to be alive. It makes me want to never wake up again. At least that way I'd get to see you and have it be real. I mean, if I keep seeing you, that means you're still out there somewhere. When I go, I want them to bury my ashes next to yours so I can join you in whatever alternate universe you're in. It must be better than this place. Any place is better than this place. I've been sentenced to a lifetime of grief for a crime I didn't even know I committed.
I met a kid at the Learning Center who said he had cancer. I heard a rumor from the teachers there that Tommy is making it all up just to gain sympathy. If that's true, none of the girls he hangs out with seem to notice or care. I mean, if everyone lies—except you and maybe Max—and everybody's lying, then who's right? But I figured it out: Tommy deals with it by lying to himself about it. The teachers pick up on that and run with it. Easier to pretend a dragon doesn't exist.
Well, Dad, I have bad news: I have cancer, too, and her name is Rachel.
We met at a Firewalk concert last year and up until recently she was the best thing that ever happened to me. I say "recently" because she's been away all summer on a family vacation, whatever that means. She only calls me once a week and we get to talk for ten minutes, sometimes less. She said it would be twenty, but I remember her mom—her birth mom—saying something about learning to not trust a word anyone says. I'd tell you all about how awesome Rachel is, how she understands me better than anyone else ever has, all the crazy stuff we've been through, but I don't want to. I'm trying really hard not to think about her right now because I start feeling the same kind of pain I do whenever I think about you, which is every single day. It's the kind of loneliness that follows you wherever you go, even when you're surrounded by people.
I cut myself, right on my ribs under my arm where it hurts enough to make me feel a different kind of pain but in a place where nobody at the diner can see it. I read up on it after I did it. Most people do it on their arms and cover them up with long sleeves. Apparently, I can't even do that right. I stopped eating breakfast and lunch in the middle of June. I almost made it to Rachel's birthday before Mom noticed my cheekbones and forced me to start eating during my shifts before she'd give me my cigarettes. Even gave me a half hour paid break to do it, not that I see any of the money. I thought about maybe doing that thing where you eat and make yourself throw up, but that sounded way too gross.
If you were here, I'd tell you all about it and then you'd talk to me like you always do and I wouldn't have to do any of it. But you're not here. Neither is Rachel. Three days into the new school year and I'm all alone at this sectioned off little place in Arcadia High where I don't get into fights with other kids because they've all been through the same kind of stuff that I have to the point that they just don't care any more. What I don't understand is why Rachel would leave me hanging like that. I mean, you're dead and you at least make the effort. I must not really mean that much to her.
I'd try to forget about her, but the image of her smiling face is the first thing I see when I wake up every day. And that's what kills me.
Love, Chloe
