True Letters from a Fictional Life Read Online Free Page A

James. The middle one. You might remember me as the one who trekked muddy boots across your freshly washed kitchen floor last night. Or as the kid who complained while you dragged me through the mall last weekend after buying me new soccer cleats. Sorry for being a jerk.
    At one point during the Shopping Death March, I made fun of some people walking into the bridal shop. That set you babbling about how time flies, and how soon we’ll be buying a suit for my own wedding. You might’ve noticed that I didn’t have much to say about any of that. Maybe you’re right—I hope you’re right—maybe I’ll be buying myself a tuxedo ten years from now.
    I do like the way people behave toward me and Theresa when we’re together—everyone’s voice changes to music, and we get all sorts of smiles. And we’re not even really dating.
    You know, I try hard at everything and, believe me, I’m trying hard here, too. What I wish would happen is that tomorrow morning I’ll wake up and everything will be totally effortless. Thanks again for the cleats.
    James
    Back in freshman year, I fell into the habit of writing letters to people and then stuffing them in my desk drawer. I started doing it after I read a book about Abraham Lincoln. He used to scribble angry letters to cabinet members, pouring his guts onto the page, saying everything that had been rattling around his head, and never send them. Then he’d go talk to the guy calmly.
    The key to that desk drawer is one of those old antique jobs with a long hollow shaft and a clover head. It once belonged to a pirate, I’m pretty sure. Just in case anyone gets nosy, I keep it with my house key in my pocket.
    From where I sit and scribble every night, I can see out my window, up the hill into the woods. It’s not just a backyard with some trees. It’s a forest that sweeps north, practically unbroken, to the tundra. A few miles from my house, Vermont’s two biggest highways and two big rivers converge. Snow to our west melts into the White River and splashes into the Connecticut, the river that drains the northern hills. My dad calls our valley the Shire, because he says we live such cozy little lives, like a bunch of hobbits sipping tea by potbellied stoves in our burrows. He’s right, in some ways. Buteveryone else calls the place the Upper Valley.
    When I was about ten, I was looking out my bedroom window when the whole snowy world glowed blue beneath a full moon. A moose cow and her calf emerged from the trees and loped along our yard’s edge, then slipped back into the forest. I watched them trudge up the wooded hillside until I couldn’t tell their legs from saplings, their bodies from the shadows. Now, whenever I pass that window, I peek out to see if they’re there, standing on the shore of that sea of trees that laps at our lawn. One day, my dad says, that forest will swallow up all our little roads and houses. It took me a long time to realize that he meant lifetimes from now, not so much “maybe by next September.” Still, I think about it every time I mow the grass and every time I help my dad repair our old stone wall. It falls apart ten yards into the woods, where it once separated sheep pastures that hemlock, maple, and ash have already reclaimed.

CHAPTER 3
    Hawken caught up to me in the hallway on the way to English on Monday afternoon.
    â€œDid you read that play?” he demanded.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAll of it?”
    â€œYeah, I liked it.”
    â€œQuick summary, please?”
    â€œOh, boy . . .”
    Just then, Aaron Foster came out of a classroom and swished down the hall in front of us. He was wearing skinny black jeans, a lavender V-neck sweater, a gray scarf, and white tennis shoes, no socks. The snow hadn’t even melted yet.
    Hawken grabbed my arm and opened his eyes and mouth wide, as if the stars and planets had aligned before him. I honestly didn’t