This is for Maureen. This is for Maureen to tell her all the things I could not tell her. This is for Maureen O’Reilly, who lives on Elm Street, near the old church.
You have the sweetest lips I’ve ever seen. I wonder sometimes how many guys have kissed them, sucking hungrily at their fullness, drawing you in deeper and deeper. Many, I know. They swarm around you, bees to red honey, and you give them a taste before pulling away. A deep taste. A long, slow, rich taste. (I’ve hid in the tall grasses behind the gym and watched you in the toolshed. Twice I was brave enough to stay for a while and watch as one of them kissed those full lips, and large breasts.) You’ve had large breasts for years now, pale and slightly freckled when you lie in the sunlight with your shirt unbuttoned and your bra undone. And from ten years old you used them to tease the men. The nuns were always giving you disapproving looks. Sister Agnes actually walked over once at recess and buttoned the top button. The nuns in high school seem easier somehow.
And you were easy. Even I, who loved you, can’t deny that. You were so ripe, hanging there, waiting for someone to reach up, laughing, and pull you down and you would fall willingly into his arms. (I could never watch after he’d taken off his clothes. You, I could watch naked forever, your masses of red sliding over your skin as you moaned and shivered. But when he took off his clothes I closed my eyes... and only listened). But you never stayed. You’d pull yourself back up into that tree and bloom again, a scarlet flower, a pomegranate, a cluster of raspberries, an apple.
Maybe cranberry suits you best. So flaming gorgeous, but sour inside. I hated you sometimes. Your easy laughter with them. Your easy smiles for them. Your easy dismissal of me. I would lie in bed on hot August nights with the fan turned on me and the sheets kicked off, my hand below my waist and my eyes focused on the sky outside the window... and I would plot revenge. Plans to drug you, and keep you tied up in my room, where I would spend hours (with you blindfolded, so you would never know whom I was) caressing that lush body, those overlarge breasts and pale skin. Plans to beat you gently, then fiercely, with my father’s heaviest belt... to punish you for never noticing me enough to reject me.
Maureen, Maureen, Maureen. I could never do it. The first tear from those amber eyes and I would be lost. I am lost. Lost in my love, in my lust, in all the things that should not be but are.
Perhaps you will truly hate me after this. Perhaps this letter will make your life miserable... depending on who finds it first, out on the front steps of the school. The pills are starting to work... I’m getting very sleepy, and it’s hard to write. I hope they don’t publish it. Whoever reads this first — don’t send it to the paper. Don’t tell the whole town. I just want the school to know. And Maureen. That I loved her for the last three years. Maureen, maybe you can carry my love with you. You don’t need to sleep with all those men. Then again, if you stopped, you wouldn’t be you.
Sincerely,
Caroline Tilden
Honor Student, Class Vice President