In the majority of these letters, I won’t know where to begin. But the only place I’m truly at a loss, for fear of saying the wrong thing or that you won’t feel the way I feel, is here.
I met you at camp in Wisconsin. The first thing I noticed about you was that you were carrying a book around with you everywhere you went, and you wouldn’t even put it down for Frisbee golf, until my dad persuaded you to entrust it to him for the remainder of the game. I liked that. I asked you what book you were reading, and you showed me. That’s how we started talking. You even gave me a rare real smile that first night because I wanted to take a picture. You never smiled for pictures when Mom took them.
I cried when I had to leave camp early to make it home for church on Sunday. I had several good experiences that had nothing to do with you at camp, but none as memorable. I remember quite a few things that you probably have forgotten by now: teaming up for water-balloon volleyball, you stroking my hair whilst we made fun of a Dora episode that had to do with hair, hesitantly saying good night after campfire, you and I being the only ones to know what that weird word meant, you and I dominating at Bible verse memorization, you and I, you and I, you and I.
We started emailing that September. I remember feeling like a rebel as I fearlessly emailed you in study hall on our school-issued laptops. In October, when I got a Facebook account, we started talking there as well. But you weren’t on much, and eventually you stopped emailing. I knew you didn’t have Internet access often, though, so I let it go and treasured the moments when I would squeal like a giddy little schoolgirl after seeing that little green “online” dot next to your name.
You were finally able to get on a few days a week. We talked constantly, and I was falling hard for you. Not only did I have my memories from camp, but you made me feel like I was the luckiest girl in the world when you would occasionally compliment me. It didn’t take long to convince myself that if I wasn’t in love, I was at least in serious like. There wasn’t a friend I had who didn’t know about my little crush. I yearned to rendezvous with you again at camp during that coming summer, and I imagined us becoming a couple, simply because we were so compatible and because you had so many little quirks that I loved. For example, we were both huge fans of Margaret Peterson Haddix books. You knew everything about your favorite animes, and when you prattled about them on Facebook, I thought I was annoyed, but my subconscious remembered names and characters for later.
Then came the rough waters. I’d just given you a reason to call me shallow-minded, but I was hurt when you did just that. Then, only a few days after you’d said I would make an awesome wife, you said you’d never consider dating or marrying me. I was smart enough to know that it would’ve never happened anyway, but it still stung. My mother and I talked about this, since it was obviously upsetting me. She thought that you played with my emotions. That’s what it felt like, but I didn’t want to think of you that way. “Alex isn’t like that, Mom,” I implored, begging her to understand. However, she still claimed that maybe I didn’t know you as well as I thought I did. “Guys are like that,” she told me.
You think it would be best to keep our distance from each other for the next few days, let us both figure out how we feel and why…Maybe you’re right, but it doesn’t feel right at all. I just wish things were different. I wish we could just talk it out right now and just make it all better. Of course, it’ll never be the same, I guess, what with you now knowing totally how I feel about you. But you’ll always find a part of me secretly wishing.
From that little part of me,
Mari.
