Dear M
Hi there
OKAY, THIS IS WEIRD! THIS is, in fact, a little bit creepy. I don’t think I can do this.
Please don’t be offended. It’s not that I don’t want to write you a letter – it’s more that I don’t quite know what to say or where to start. I mean, this was Jane’s idea. She thinks maybe there’s a whole lot of stuff that I wish I could talk to you about or something. She said it might make me feel better. But that seems a bit dumb. I just write a letter and suddenly everything will be okay? If that was the case everybody would be doing it. The universe would be choked with letters. People wouldn’t have time to go to work or have babies or go shopping – they’d be too busy writing letters to solve all their problems instantaneously.
I guess the other reason I’m not so keen on writing this letter is because I don’t have anything good to tell you. In fact, I’m in a lot of trouble at the moment because of these really stupid things I did. I don’t think it’s a good way to start a letter, Hey, guess what – I’m a total screw-up! I got suspended from school, had my Biology teacher arrested on terrorist charges, nearly killed about fifty people – oh, and I set fire to a poor defenceless dog.
And to be honest, I’m not that thrilled about going back over everything that’s happened, because it makes me think maybe everyone’s right. Maybe I am a complete loony. Maybe I do deserve to be locked up.
But you know what? Right up until last Saturday – the day of the fete – I was doing all right. It’s true. Everything at home was fine – I mean, I had that place running like clockwork – and school was okay. I wasn’t dweeb of the week or Miss Popularity, but somewhere in the middle, same as always.
Jane also said everything that happened at the fete was really just a symptom of something else. Like I had some kind of disease. I think she meant that it wasn’t really my fault because – let’s face it – it would take an evil genius to plan all that stuff. And even though some people seem to think I’m pretty evil, I’m not that smart. Like I said before, I’m just your normal, average sixteen-year-old and so totally not some kind of teenage Osama bin Laden. (I do feel bad about Mr McGregor, but at least they dropped the terrorist charges when they realised it was all a big misunderstanding.)
Okay, maybe Jane’s right. Maybe if you had been here and I could have talked to you, it mightn’t have ended up quite like it did. But I don’t know if even that would have helped.
I saw a DVD once called The Butterfly Effect. It was about the idea that minor, seemingly unimportant actions can have a much greater effect than you would think. For instance, a butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world could start an avalanche thousands of miles away. Even though it’s hard to comprehend that such a tiny insignificant thing could possibly make a difference, this one unbelievably small action might put in motion a chain of events which could cause a major life-threatening disaster.
And that’s kind of what happened with the fete. Because, you see, it all started with one tiny insignificant thing – Jet Lucas.