The Waiting Game

The Tenth Letter

The evening that the tenth letter should have been waiting in my mailbox for me, it wasn’t.

I wasn’t that concerned. I figured that whomever was supposed to be sending the letters might have gotten to the mailbox a little too late for it to make it today. I shrugged it off and returned to my room to watch mind-numbing reruns and listen to my Lady Antebellum CDs on repeat, without a care in the world; without anything left to care about.

At about six fifteen, Devon was pounding on my front door.

I pulled the door open, surprised. “What?”

He pushed past me and into the house without me allowing him inside, but the protest died in my throat when he whirled around to face me again. He was visibly shaken, his hands quaking, his face pale and his hair messy from his hands moving through it restlessly. As I watched, his right hand raked through his hair, his left hand clenching something tightly.

“I want to know what is going on,” he told me, his voice loud but he didn’t care. No one else was home so there wasn’t a fear of someone overhearing our conversation. But I was a little taken aback by the emotions in his voice, the restless panic inside of his vowels. I staggered forward a step, concerned, but he flew backwards, as if fearful of my touch. “I want to know what is going on right now, Gia.”

“Devon, what are you talking about?” I demanded, so confused.

To answer me, he held up the object clenched in his fist.

With a jolt, I realized that it was two letters. One of the envelopes simply had my name written on it. The other had Devon’s name and address, all in his dead brother’s handwriting.

I grimaced.

“Yeah, you know what I’m talking about,” he remarked, looking like he had just seen the ghost of his brother. In a way, he kind of had. He shook the letters clenched in his hand, freaked. “He said that you would know. My dead brother told me that this wouldn’t be the first letter you’d be getting from him after he died.”

“It’s weird, isn’t it?” I whispered through frozen lips, unable to look away from the letter addressed to the man standing before me. “The first time is really strange. It really scares you. But I eventually got used to it.”

“You’re telling me that you’ve gotten more than one of these before?” Devon demanded, incredulous. “How?”

“He said that someone is going to mail them to me to arrive on certain days.” I shrugged, now shaking, too. “I don’t know a lot, Devon. This is the first one you’ve gotten.”

“This is the first time I gotten one of my brother’s sick sort of suicide letters?” Devon snapped. “Yes, it is.”

I winced at the thought of it being a suicide letter. It kind of was, and it kind of wasn’t.

Not for me, at least.

Devon looked at me for a long moment before he suddenly started pacing in front of me, muttering to himself under his breath, so low that I couldn’t hear it. I cautiously watched him for a couple of minutes, wondering what I could say, but the moment I got the words and opened my mouth he held up one finger, telling me not to speak. I sighed and continued to watch him, wondering what was going through his mind.

Without warning, Devon staggered and collapsed into one of the dining room chairs less than a foot away from him, still so pale. I started and stumbled even closer to him, my concern coming back with a new vigor.

“Devon?” I asked.

“It’s really him, isn’t it?” his brother demanded but it didn’t feel like he was asking me. Kind of more like he was asking the universe.