Letters from the Inside Read Online Free Page B

family time. I don’t mind.
    That girl you met from Prescott, I don’t know who she is. We don’t mix with the Year 1 Is much. And anyway, like I told you, I’m quiet, so not many people know me.
    Anyhow, I’ve got a History test tomorrow, better go and study.
    Bye,
    Tracey

    April 17
    Tracey, how can you ignore my letter like that? I mean, it’s bad about your basketball but I told you stuff about Steve that I’ve never told anyone, and you didn’t say a word about it!
    I was waiting for your letter, and when it came, all it had was bloody basketball. In fact I started thinking maybe you hadn’t got my one, but you mentioned the exchange student, so you must have. I can’t believe it.
    Love (but burned-off),
          Mandy

    Apr 20
    Dear Mandy,
    I’m sorry about your letter and your brother and everything. I knew you’d be pissed. But I didn’t know what to say. I still don’t know what to say.
    When I put that ad in, and you answered, I thought you were such a funny and lively person, and sort of casual, happy-go-lucky. All the things that I’m not, to tell you the truth. Those comments you made once in a while about your brother, when you said he was a creep or something, I just thought he was lazy or selfish or a lagger. I didn’t know there was anything serious. Then your letter came and I read it. I felt a bit sick. I thought, ‘God, she’s got problems like everyone else.’ I don’t think I wanted to know that.
    What I can’t understand is, how come you put it to those guys who tried to crack onto you, Paul and the other one, how come you put it to them with so much spunk, but your brother’s got it all over you? I thought you were bloody tough the way you went after Paul. I can’t work it out.
    Guess you’re on holidays now. I know I told you we’re not going anywhere, but are you? Hope you haven’t shot through, or you won’t be getting this for a while. Not that it’s worth getting anyway.
    Sorry,
      Tracey

    April 26
    Dear Trace,
    Well, thanks for writing back. I don’t blame you for being confused — I confuse myself sometimes.
    Maybe I shouldn’t have written to you the way I did. But I had to talk to someone. And these letters, it’s funny, they’re different. It’s a different type of friendship. In a way I hope we never meet — it might spoil it. Somehow these letters are like a diary, and I write things in them that are different to the way I talk to people I see every day. So if we meet, or when we meet, it’s like we’ll have to start one type of friendship when we’ve already got another one. It’s like we’d be starting from scratch when we’d already been going a hundred years. I don’t know how it’d work.
    I don’t know whether I’m funny and lively, like you say, but I like a laugh and I do some radical things. But I’m not casual, or slack. Maybe in these letters I make myself out to be more of a social star than I am. You can do that in letters. After all, what you know about me is what I choose to tell you — I could be making it all up.
    Sometimes when I write to you it’s like I’m writing to myself.
    I’ve been thinking about who sees the true side of me, because everyone sees different ones: my parents, my sister, my brother, Cheryl, Rebecca, Maria, you, the bus driver, my French teacher. . . But they’re all true in their different ways (all fake too, sometimes). Guess it shows how many sides we all have. You know how people insult each other by saying they’re ‘two-faced’? The reason it’s an insult is because it’s an understatement! I’m thousand-faced.
    Your letter only came today, thanks to Easter and Anzac Day. It’s been a scungy holiday so far. I hate it when all the shops are shut. Sunday we went to church, not a common event in our family. My mother’s always at us to go to confession and mass. She goes quite often but Dad’s not even Catholic. He went on Easter Sunday though, so did Steve. Now if anyone should go to