September 21

Dear Elizabeth

No … I AM NOT ANGRY AT YOU…. At least I wasn’t until I got the postcard telling me that you jetted off to Florida…. What a rough life!!!!!!

Well, maybe I am just a little angry…. Well, maybe I am a lot angry … but don’t take it personally. I think I’m just angry at everything in the world at the moment.

I’m sorry that I haven’t written for two weeks. I was going to send you a dumb cute note saying that I hadn’t written because I lost my pen … but that’s not true…. I think I haven’t written because I’ve lost my sanity … and my sense of humor … and my temper.

It’s all just so hard sometimes…. My parents are acting weird. (Actually, they are acting normal … which is so weird!) Both of them have jobs that they like…. And my mother is going to a parenting class … a parenting class … do you believe it? I’m twelve years old, she’s twenty-nine, and NOW she’s going to a parenting class…. Maybe she should have gone when I was born … but NOW??????? She just says that she wants to be the best mother to me that she can be … that she wants to make up for all the years that she wasn’t as grown up as she should have been. And my dad is making “dad noises,” like, “Now that we are saving to buy a house, we all have to economize.” Can you believe that this is coming from my Charents? … I’m so used to being the one who is responsible that this is really weird … and a real pain. Do you believe … they are actually giving me a curfew … and what’s even more disgusting than the curfew is that I have no place to go, no place to come back late from. (Wow … that sentence is definitely a run-on, fragmenty, ended-with-a-preposition sentence…. I know all of this now because Ms. Fishburn, my language arts teacher, … yes, that’s her name, but secretly I think of her as Ms. Tunamelt … loves grammar and sentence structure.) Oh, well, back to the Charent Report.

First, they make me move to a new place (which isn’t so unusual for them) and then they start acting so different.

I can tell you … I DON’T LIKE IT!!!!!

And … you know what else I don’t like … I don’t like my new school. Everyone’s so stuck-up and mean … and they make fun of the way I dress … and Ms. Tunamelt doesn’t like my writing…. She says, “It’s too creative. It’s not academic enough.” And she looks gross too…. She wears the same outfit every day in different colors … a skirt, a blouse, and a jacket. Monday, she wears her pale blue combo … Tuesday is puke green … Wednesday is you-know-what brown … Thursday is warning-light yellow … and Friday is pot-holder plaid.

I kept waiting to write back until I was happy, but if I did that you probably wouldn’t hear from me until graduation day.

Okay … enough…. To change the subject.

I can’t believe that you and your family just jetted off to Florida. I am so jealous. Did Emma wear the sunglasses that I gave her, the ones your parents hate … the ones with palm trees and glitter on them? The ones your father says are so tacky?

Now … to talk about the stuff in your letter …

1. I keep looking at the scrapbooks too. You know what really makes me laugh? Remember the summer I went on vacation with your family, and then you went on vacation with my family? I love the picture of you and my family at the county fair — we look great with cotton candy all over our faces. Even the lime-green poodle we won has cotton candy on his face. Then there’s the picture of me with your family at the art museum in the city. It was sooooo nice to be included in one of your many family trips, even though I know your father really hates me.

2. About the creative writing … At the moment, the only creative writing is my letters to you … but maybe that’s more nonfiction. I think I have writer’s block.

3. Possible Elizabeth name change … Liz, Lizzy, Lizzylu, Beth, Bethie, Betherino, Elizarino, Eliza, Liza, Zabeth (I really like that one), El, Clyde, Waldo, Richie (for Richardson, not for the amount of money you have). Tell Emma I love her and miss her sooooooooooooo much.

Bye.

P.S. (As in Positively Sorry) Oh, Elizabeth … I just reread this letter … and I apologize for being so mean at the beginning of it. I guess I’m just upset … and yes, angry … at everything … and I’m taking it out on you.

Now you know why I haven’t written for so long.