dear jane, i miss coming home to the smell of vanilla from your freshly baked muffins and cupcakes and pies and burritos. i detest having to share your cooking with anybody in this world. miles away, i can still feel the tiny pricks of your hair brushing against my face, or the disgusting face you have in the morning. i cannot adapt to being without you, not even for a couple of days.
please tell me annie still falls asleep to phil collins. i miss her to bits.
with love,
Adrian
And tomorrow I shall wake up – all skin and bones – to the rising sun, and the smell of a chocolate sandwich for breakfast. I’ll walk through the white walls, and no one will know – no one.
-Emily (or no one)
Dearest Adrian,
I hope you’re keeping the lovely voice of Emma in your mind as you read this. The truth is that, I’m melting. Melting like a ray of light that chases rainbows for a living. Melting on like the moon on a warm summer day; when the ultimate aphrodisiac seeps through your nostrils, and you recognize it as rain dropping slowly on scorching hot soil.
And you call that scent love.
And love floods and you’re overwhelmed.
Oh, don’t mind me spit-balling. I’m just coupling fancy words and ice-cream like lust for the rain to come back and remind me how it feels to be cold.
I should probably mention that it’s raining.
To young love and ecstasy,
From your little kitten,
Jane.
Sent from Miss Plancett’s Academy of the Fine Arts
jane darling,
you’re liquid electricity. but i love you is a phrase that’s lost its meaning because of repetition, i’m here to say that i care for you, and having you feel my peppermint hands is all i can ask for.
Adrian P. Evans
dear beloved pilot,
you must imagine this in utterly fancy handwriting and have an english accent like emma or emily in that fx movie a dangerous method, otherwise the function of this letter would be pointless.
okay here goes
you make me want to rip my hair into shreds but i still love you because you gave me eyes and i see the soft autumn leaves falling from another set of lenses and i miss you because you have always had smooth, lady-like, peppermint-smelling hands. and i never understood that. but i liked it. i like you, sort of. maybe. a little too much, actually. i yearn for a red thread connecting our ankles so i could always find my way to you, like hensel did his family. visit soon. i’d love to see your face.
your ever so stupid,
jane.
Sent from Miss Plancett’s Academy of the Fine Arts
i feel so light, i can move around and listen to everything now. i have a slight feeling that i changed things. my dad has stopped drinking, that’s the biggest accomplishment i’ve ever completed. even if it meant me dying. i still love dad. i’m not scared to admit it.
my funeral was really sad, though. i feel the worst for jane. i wish i could tell adrian that she didn’t kill me. i now know that she was just scared, i know everything now. why, why so late? i didn’t know. jane should be with adrian if it means this much to her – i hope he knows how much he means to her. i really do. what if there was a way i could tell him this? i’m nothing but a ghost.
i don’t know what to do in this world. i can’t cross over until jane and adrian get back together. i guess i could enjoy the celebrations in the mean time. fireworks are so much cooler from way up here.
🙂
i dreaded going to the annual new year dance. it was already an horrendously awkward year, and i had to rest my eyes for the show that week. dressing up was only customary when i was on stage. i used to go with adrian each year, but after emily’s death – things have been stone cold between us.
i could sense his inner turmoil. i couldn’t stand it. i wanted to help him, i wanted him to help me. damn it, i was still in love him! regardless of what he said at the altar. i remember him staring at me the other day, open-eyed. it was as if he was thinking about something else, but piercing through my heart with his eyes. he had wide, unblinking eyes. that was the last of him that i saw. i missed him, i really did. i missed how we were, and i really wished this year happened differently.
i walked in the ballroom, dressed as plainly and palely as i could. i saw the death glares of the entire crowd, and i could think their thoughts. i had none. i was blank.
their eyes were pushing me to adrian, and i walked there, against my best instincts. he said nothing. he just took my hand and dragged me to the dance floor. i was full of questions. nevertheless, i shut up. we swayed side to side – maximising the minimal distance between us, but slothly moving closer. still nothing.
i decided to break the ice.
“is everything okay?” i asked.
“shhhh.”
so i shooed. i shooed all night, even when we were just sitting there as the dance came to a close. we didn’t speak till my show.
it was the strangest experience we’ve had.
He came in her room, two days before their wedding night, to surprise her with a necklace he’d bought after he spotted her admiring it during their fourth date. That was two years ago.
As he tip-toed in, he saw her typing away on the magical buzzing box in her hands. He slung it around her neck as she gasped. She admired it’s tranquillity. “Why’d you get me this?” she said as she looked at his face like it was the first time they saw each other.
He walked across to the table to turn up the soothing lounge music, and he heard a soft thud. It was the diamond-encrusted silver.
“I don’t want it.”
His heart was racing. “Why not?”
“Because I don’t know you.”
“Evie, how could you say that? We’ve been together for two years now. You’re engaged to me!”
“BUT I DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE AND I DON’T KNOW WHAT I’M DOING HERE!” She threw pillows at him as tears meandered down her face, like a river.
He tried hugging her, but she twisted her arms and threw him off each time. “STOP IT, STOP IT I DON’T KNOW YOU I DON’T WANT TO MARRY YOU!”
Instantly, like he suddenly remembered something, he calmed down.
He embraced her, and moved her side to side. She calmed down. He was dancing with her, and she leaned her head on his shoulder.
“Do you remember now?” he whispered.
“I feel like I don’t know you anymore. I can’t trust you.”
“Everything’s going to be okay, Evie, everything’s going to be okay.”
“But . . .”
Dad brings the men into my house
My sweet daddy, who once wore a blouse
They walk in, against my will
All those snobs, who make me want to kill
Up goes the smoke and in goes the drink
Till there’s not any brain left to think
And they laugh, they laugh loud
They’re happy, that’s no doubt
But they don’t know, none of them do
That there’s a little girl who needs it too
To be happy, in every way
But all she was told to do was play
Play, upstairs in her room
Alone, and her toys went zoom
But she’d think of them laughing, and smoking their lungs black
All she wanted was to give them each a smack
She hated those men with the ice coolers
Think about it, they resembled rulers
Invasion and tyranny and all
Oh how’d they’d act superior, yet trip and fall
I didn’t want daddy to be like them, you know
How they’d smoke by the carton and flaunt their dough
For grown men, their lives were nothing
And dad, he’s my everything.
but, jane, there’s one thing that i like about you that beats everything else. it’s your smile. you smile like you have a secret, you know that? it’s not only your smile, it’s the way you look at me; like i can save you from everything bad that’s in the world. you know, all this time i’ve been wondering what that secret was, in your smile, but it doesn’t matter anymore because i have a secret. the secret is; is that you’re the one that saved me.
we were flying once. 