I did my walk, congratulated my friends, and went home.
Do you know what I found waiting for me?
A letter from D. Baker.
I thought it was from you. I swear, it was as if your ghost walked up behind me and licked my neck. Took me forever to open the damn thing. I thought, maybe she regrets returning the necklace. Maybe she knows I’m in California and wants to meet up.
Stupid, huh?
It wasn’t from you, Delilah Baker. It was from Darrell and Andie Baker. Yes, your parents sent me a card offering best wishes upon my graduation. I have no idea how they knew or how they even found me; I haven’t talked to a Baker since the night of the prom.
They sent me a card with a hundred dollar bill inside. Me. The guy who tormented their eldest and dumped their youngest. I couldn’t believe it. I sat there, holding the card with that crisp Benjamin staring up at me, and laughed.
I inherited three hundred and thirty-one million dollars from my mother, (Yes, you read that correctly. I couldn’t believe it either when I was informed) and your parents, thinking I was a poor college kid all alone, sent a little something to start me off in life.
If I was able to cry, I think I would have done it then.
So here I am writing to you, wanting nothing more in this world than to be at your parents’ dinner table, eating your mom’s famous roast chicken and throwing peas into your hair when they aren’t looking—just to see you flip me the finger in new and creative ways. I want that so badly, my chest fucking hurts.
Maybe it’s your graduation day too. If so, I hope life gives you everything you want, that you find someone who loves you, that you live each day to the fullest. That maybe, in the darkest corners of your mind, you think of me just a little bit.
—M. A. S.
A smile wobbles on my lips. I want to seek out my mother, give her a big hug for caring about a boy she hadn’t seen in years. She was right; he needed us. And I hadn’t seen it. Pressing a fist to my lips, I force myself to go on.
Hey Tot,
You probably hate that name, don’t you? Thinking it’s an insult, a commentary about your appearance. Maybe it started out that way, me trying to put you down, put you in your place—somewhere far from me, where you couldn’t make me feel like I was bleeding from the inside out. But I don’t think of it that way anymore. It makes me think of you as a hot little bite I want to sink my teeth into.
Truth? I’d wanted to do that even when I said the words. I always wanted to sink into you. Didn’t matter if you drove me crazy, I wanted it so much it made my teeth hurt. Would it shock you to know that? Piss you off? Probably both.
I miss you, Tot. Can you believe it? Yours is the voice in my head, haunting my dreams, pushing me forward.
I’m in a casting office now. Sweating my balls off, waiting for them to call my name. I’m reaching for the stars, Delilah.
I hear you smirking, that sugar and arsenic-laced voice of yours saying, “Of course you’d have to try to become famous, Macon Saint. You always did like attention on you.”
How well you knew me. And how little you knew me.
I did want attention. But only yours. I have no idea why since, whenever I eventually got it, I’d act like a foolish shit.
Truth is, I’d rather be someone other than me. I want the fantasy instead of reality. So I’ll act. I’ll say words that are not mine and breathe easier while living in someone else’s skin.
How can I not want it? “We are such stuff as dreams are made on” and all that crap.
I’m shaking now, Tot. Nearly sick with anticipation and worry that they’ll see right through me, straight into my rotten core. But I have you to bolster me. I’ll go in there and pretend it’s you I’m talking to. It will be easy then, thumbing my nose at your skepticism, proving to myself and you that I’m not a worthless soul as you once so aptly put.
Your hate gives me strength.
I’m probably a selfish fuck for feeling that. No, I know I am. But it’s true.