october, 2001.

Dear Alexis,

I have to call you by your full name, because I would never begin a letter to you with 'Dear A'. The grief therapist said that I should keep writing you these, and that he and I would read them out loud together after a year. I don't know what significance a year would have, or whether I'm supposed to find this helpful. It seems too fake to me, and too cruel. I hardly ever call you 'Alexis', anyway. Usually it's 'Ally'. Ally and Sadie. We were supposed to be dad's girls.

I used to write to you so much. I think I was at space camp that one year, and you— I have no idea how you convinced dad to stay home that summer. What was the boy's name? He was so smitten about you, even after you crashed his car. (I wanted to tell you something like, love is a car crash, to try and get you to listen to me, because I'm two years older than you and that means I'm supposed to be the smart one, to save you from car crashes and boys with leather jackets. I know, I know; you'd see right through it, laugh and call me names. I only say things like that because I'm scared.) One of the things I missed most at camp was mom's waffles. The other thing was slipping notes under your door.

Right now we're all staying at home. I'm sleeping in my tiny bed again, where the walls are thin and I can hear dad sob in the study. Since you've been gone, I can't stop thinking about disappearing, or leaving you one last note. It's pretty selfish. I don't even know what it would say. I guess— Agatha Christie disappeared in 1926. Did I ever tell you about this? She wandered off for 11 days, apparently in a 'fugue state' because of her stress. She gave herself a new name and stayed in a hotel in Harrogate. These days, she'd need a credit card to check in. People would find her in an instant. They'd say they really loved her in The Virgin Suicides.

I often dream of disappearing, but I don't know where I'd end up. Maybe you'd be there. I'd rather take you with me.

All love,
Sadie.

november, 2001. (i)

Dear Ally,

The boy's name was Patrick. The boyfriend from high school. He came to your funeral today.

He's not how I remember. He's taller and fits a suit better than he used to, now that he's not wearing slacks that pool at his feet. He wears a tie every day and works at an office selling surveillance equipment, and he says that he's making good money but he sometimes still plays music on the side. He said that he never blamed you for the car.

He was describing his job, and the whole time, do you know what I was thinking about? That space project you'd made when we were kids. It was so weirdly intricate. I just wrote an essay for Mr. Noah's class. You made that chart of hand-drawn rockets, then attached an extra piece of paper because you ran out of room for the tallest rockets. I went to look for it when we got back home, and it was still there. Mom had kept it all those years. She was so proud of you. She still had all my negatives from that art class, too, but nobody wants to see pictures of my feet. Or shadows. Or water. Or trees, I guess. I don't think I ever had a talent for art, but look where I ended up? Maybe I'm just good at being a faker.

The Daily Mail still ran a photo of us that day. We're all sitting in the first row, in mourning black with your friends from LA. I think there was a blonde that came in vintage Dior. The headlines still use the word "starlet" when they talk about you, and I keep thinking what they're writing is "secret". I forget to breathe every time my brain makes that mistake.

november, 2001. (ii)

Ally,

It's been hard. I've been talking with Sofia, and she's really supportive. She says the work will be there if I want to come back. I think she wants me to, but something about the experience seems so broken. This was supposed to be you. I don't know how to talk about the stuff that matters to me. I don't know how to pick out dresses for premieres so I can get dressed up like a doll. I don't know how to make people fall in love with me just by saying one single, perfect thing. I was okay being the deer; you were the jackal, grabbing life by the jaws. It's why dad misses you so much. Out of the four of us, it was always you two wild animals. Mom and I were okay with being caretakers.

Last week, we stood out on the porch and talked in the dark. Dad and I. We passed that bottle of Jack back and forth while we saw the Lowells pull up into their driveway, late again from hockey practice. The booze burned all the way down, but it did the job. It gave us courage over warmth. We sat there in silence, me with that red blanket and him in that stupid denim jacket he always wore, and I knew he was going to ask me where I was when you were fighting for your life. Al, it took everything in me not to run away. Not even that squeaky floorboard would have stopped me. You loved LA so much, and I think it would be nice to disappear there, but I still thought of that city as— yours. Not ours. So I watched him, the man who always had a pen with him to write down notes, the man who always let us beat him at Scrabble; I watched dad smoke cigarette after cigarette. I watched the moths fly towards him and his thin haze of grey smoke, their tiny bodies hovering where the porch light shone above his head, attached to his artificial halo.

He told me that there's a saying, in Italian. "Cacciarsi nei guai." It means getting yourself into trouble, but it literally means putting your head into the mouth of a lion. He learned it from way back when, when he was in Rome with those aristocrats. They had that huge hedge maze in their back yard, and it took up all the room in that photo. The greenery was endless. I guess I knew what dad was trying to say. You got into a lot of trouble, you made friends, you partied a lot. But people loved you. You were all the beasts of the wild. Dad told me, eventually, looking up into the night sky, that he wouldn't know what he would have done if you'd been fearful. If you'd been afraid of what you were doing. I think that makes sense. I think that we all want to remember you as being brave, as if it'll make us brave too. We're grasping at straws.

I know William Wordsworth was referring to something else entirely when he wrote, "The world is too much with us", but that's how I feel right now.

All love,
Sadie.

december, 2001.

A,

I went to Joshua Tree. It was beautiful there. I saw a bobcat that a tour guide with a mustache called Henry, but I think he looked more like a Brando. You would have agreed with me.

I'm finally back in LA, but I know it won't be for long. This month is the hardest. Right now, my new neighbor is practicing scales on her French Horn. I think she's getting better just in time for Christmas.

Happy Holidays, Al, wherever you've gone. I miss you. This is the time of year when I'll remember you most.

All love,
Sadie.