Dear Kurl,
Ms. Khang now has me writing letters to Abigail Cuttler. Do you know Abigail Cuttler? I am not allowed to call her Abby, for starters. I’ve always gone by Abigail, and frankly, I prefer it, she explained in her first letter to me. Abigail’s original pen pal, Emily Visser, disappeared after her mother was transferred to Germany three weeks ago.
All of this to say that I’m writing to you today on my own time, and I’m doing it in my own defense: I don’t believe it’s quite fair of you to be angry with me for having my backpack ripped off my shoulder by the butcherboys in the hall this afternoon. In fact, it seems to me you were engaged in a bit of victim blaming.
If I made any mistake at all, it was failing to see them approach. Between classes I’m usually as alert as any prey animal, head swiveling to scan the perimeter, ears twitching for predatory footfalls.
This time, alas, they managed to sneak up on me. I hardly had time to register anything but the pain of my arm being wrenched by the strap before you were there, snatching the bag back from Dowell and shoving it hard into my arms.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Don’t apologize,” you said. “Jesus! What’s the matter with you?”
“Right. Sorry,” I said. Honestly, I didn’t mean to be so dense. I was still rubbing my sore arm, still not quite caught up on what was happening.
“It’s like you do it on purpose,” you said, and turned and stalked off.
Kurl, I know you weren’t angry with me specifically for having my backpack snatched. You were angry at having to rescue me from the butcherboys again. I understand how frustrating it must be to feel obliged to step in, especially when you’ve decided to distance yourself from me in general. And I don’t want you to think I’m not grateful for the help today, and for your rescue of Nelly, too, from Cherry Valley.
Do I do it on purpose, though? Do what, on purpose, exactly? You’re not going to write me back in answer to this question, so I’ll have to speculate on my own:
Drawing fire is how you described it once, in reference to my wardrobe. Remember that? You’d noticed that the outfits I put together with Mr. Ragman’s help are basically Walt Whitman costumes. You called me a walking target. And yes, you’re absolutely correct that these clothes draw fire from the butcherboys and contribute to a general impression of my eccentricity or cluelessness from which I undeniably suffer the consequences at school.
But “doing it on purpose”—if indeed I can map this accusation at least partially onto my wardrobe—isn’t merely about dressing like my poetic role model. Even more than that, it’s about continually reminding myself how short the present moment is, what a temporary torment I’m suffering at the hands of the butcherboys. These clothes of mine have lived longer than any of us, after all. The blazer you noticed in one of your letters is called Loaghtan tweed from the Isle of Man. It probably came to the US packed in some mill baron’s trunk on a steamer in the 1910s.
I do it on purpose, because I want to be mindful of the decades and centuries behind us of people making beautiful things designed to last. I want to walk down the hallways of Lincoln High with one part of me in the eternal, the timeless, and the other part of me slipping so fast through the here and now that nobody can pin me down, not even the butcherboys.
Yours truly,
Jo