Dear Kurl,
All right, then: one last letter, as I feel your invitation deserves a considered response. Lyle was waiting for me when I got home from work, and he told me about your visit. Did he mention to you that I’ve been doing some work for the music school? I’m mostly helping organize the summer camp schedules, processing cancellations and late registrations from the wait list. Anyhow, Lyle said that you had come by with Mark and written him a check for the amount you thought it would cost to repair my bedroom door. The three of you talked for quite a while, apparently. You and your brother filled Lyle in about your uncle’s abusive behavior, your current living situation, and your plans for next year.
And then you told him about U of M’s Summer Poetry Seminar. That you’d gotten the Bridge to Education people to agree to admit me even though I’m only sixteen, so long as I get Lyle’s consent.
I guess I asked for it, by sending in your application. It’s ironic, isn’t it? The e-mail message you printed out for Lyle says, We have, of course, read about your friend Jonathan, and have great respect for his abiding and well-informed love for the poet Walt Whitman. We agree that he would make a valuable contribution.
Of course they know about me. I’m all over your letters, Kurl. I knew that, and I cringed a bit when I reread them before sending them in on your behalf. Somehow I thought of myself as a character in your story, though—or I assumed that’s how the admissions committee would see me.
And then you went ahead and asked them to consider me as an actual, flesh-and-blood person. Ironic, and now I have a very clear idea of how it must have felt for you. Shameful. Exposed. I apologize again, retrospectively, for the violation, even if the outcome was a happy one.
Thank you for the offer, Kurl. Truly, it means a lot to me. I can see how you tried to do the same thing you thanked me for doing—for being generous, for considering your future despite everything.
I do appreciate it, but I can’t say yes. I can’t ride out of my life on the tail of your life. It would be a fantasy, nothing more—two months of wandering around a sunny, idyllic college campus, letting myself swallow the illusion that my biggest problem in life is iambic pentameter.
And then I’d have to let go of it and come home, and here would be high school and Maya and the butcherboys and not Shayna and not Bron and not you. To be honest, I’d rather skip the fantasy and stay in the reality than have to adjust to the reality all over again.
I’m sorry you went to all that trouble, Kurl.
Yours truly,
Jo