The Spencer Letters

Letter 1.

First letter after the accident.

Dear Spencer,

I can't believe I'm sitting here, in my old bedroom at my parents' house, writing a letter to you that I won't send, and that you won't read. At least not for now.

It might seem silly that I'm doing this right now, but I didn't know what else to do. I feel so overwhelmed, so helpless, so... lost. I'm lost without you.

Please, don't leave me.

Don't leave us.

When I was finishing writing the last letter and my phone rang displaying Harry's name on the screen, I never in a million years expected to receive the news he was calling to drop on me, like anvils fall from the sky in kid's cartoons.

I answered the call so cheerfully, thinking it was you two calling together so we could have a mini reunion since you were home. But as soon as I heard Harry's voice on the other side of the line, shaking, dreading to have to speak the words out loud, I knew something was very wrong. Harry doesn't lose his composure that easily. I knew it had to be bad.

"Spencer got in an accident" he said. And my world began spinning out of control, even before I heard the rest of the story. He told me you were visiting the Holloway boys and you took Junior's bike for "a spin".

I don't know what it was about Junior that always got in my nerves! Maybe I just didn't like him because of the person you were around him. You've had a crush on him since the day you arrived in town. I know it had to be that damn bike and his leather outfits what caught your attention!

Why the hell did you have to get on a bike, Spence? You're the worst driver human kind has ever seen! I know Junior and his brothers are your friends, but you're not a teenager anymore, you should know better than to go out on your own driving that stupid machine that I was always convinced one day would kill Junior!

I'm so mad at you right now, you have no idea!

"It's bad, LJ, it's really bad" Harry's voice still haunts my dreams. Well... not that I've been sleeping much at all the past two nights. "We don't know if he's gonna make it." He broke.

I wanted to get inside the phone and come out on his end and hug him. As if the news weren't painful enough, hearing his despair through the line was a knife twisting inside of me.

My dad told me Harry asked to call and tell me himself. I couldn't understand how, amidst everything he and your mom were going through, he found the clarity and energy to think of me. When I got here and we had a chance to talk, just the two of us, he told me he was afraid my parents were going to try and play things down to get me to stay in Paris.

"I knew you'd want to be here, no matter what. No one had the right to take that choice away from you, that's why I had to make sure you were told the truth."

You should've seen the hug that followed! I had been longing for his arms for so long... but this is not how I wanted it to be. I think I squeezed all the air out of him from holding him so tight! It meant the world to me that Harry, despite all the things he had to worry about, I was one of the things he worried about.

My father picked me up at the airport and, judging by his face, I thought I was already too late. I had never seen him so scared to deal with me in my entire life! The moment I hugged him and started crying, he didn't know what to do with me or say to me. When he asked if I wanted to go straight to the hospital, I gasped for the oxygen I had lost when I saw the somber expression on his face.

You were still alive.

There was still hope.

But then I got there, and I run into Harry's arms and I didn't feel hopeful. Because he wasn't feeling hopeful.