Letters With Boys

Bridget's Journal, Week 6 - October

October 19th  

Dear Diary,

This is stupid.

Whatever happened to prose and poetry? That would be a more valuable use of my time than writing mindlessly to myself, don’t you think?

And let’s be real—even when you call it “journaling,” it is still, at its core, a diary.

I don’t mind that I’m not forced to write to Kai anymore. Really, I don’t. I like him a lot, but I’m not romantically interested, and Tally is obviously very romantically interested in him, so this is a good thing. Besides, we’ve exchanged phone numbers and can hang out whenever we want like regular humans. Welcome to the 21st century.

I just went up to Mrs. Indigo and asked her what I’m supposed to write about in this thing, and she said, “Why don’t you write about something you aren’t comfortable sharing with anyone else out loud?”

Well, fine, Mrs. Indigo. I will. And then I’ll keep this journal very, very close to me from this point forward, because this secret dies with me:

I’m gay.

There—I said it. I’ll deny it if anyone finds this. I haven’t told Mem or Tally, and you’d better believe I’d die before I told my ultra-conservative, ultra-Episcopalian parents. But it’s true. c***s don’t do it for me, diary. That’s the real reason I’m a virgin.

And now that I’ve written this, I’m going to rip off this page and burn it.

Love,

Me

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

October 20th

Dear Diary,

I still think this is stupid.

I wasn’t bullshitting you yesterday, though. Unfortunately. I really wish I was; everything would be a whole lot easier if I was straight. Sometimes I wonder, if I hadn’t so clearly been against the idea of dating anyone, whether Kai might have gone for me instead of Tally. They’re obviously perfect for each other, you know, with the sports and all, but still. 

I’m glad it’s her, though, that gets a little happiness. It’s so rarely Tally. Usually if it’s accolades it’s me and if it’s romance…

I was going to say romance=Mem, but I guess that’s not entirely true. Mem’s had a really tough go of it in the romance department in the past few years. But before that—when she and Matt were a thing—I always thought she was the luckiest girl in the world.

Not because I had a crush on Matt, mind you. The guy’s handsome enough, I guess, if a bit unremarkable looking, but like I told you yesterday—not exactly my type.

(He’s not really Mem’s type, either, if you ask me. Gray is much better suited for her, even if he makes me a bit nervous.)

I was just jealous of what they had—love. Someone to care for not just as a friend, but as someone you aren’t afraid to admit finding beautiful, sexy, funny… the whole, nine yards. 

And someone who isn’t afraid to admit they feel the same way about you.

Truly Yours,

Yours Truly

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

October 21st

Dearest Diary,

I’ll admit it—I’m starting to grow sort of fond of writing in you. So fond, I even stopped burning the pages.

I’ll still be super careful with this thing, mind you. But I think there’s some sort of catharsis in doing this—that it might actually be good for me.

Speaking of catharsis, Tally asked me today whether I thought we could convince Mem to go to therapy with Kai’s mother if it was free of charge.

Interesting, I thought to myself. Would I, if someone asked me?

God only knows I could use the help.

I doubt, though, that I could even admit my darkest secret out loud to someone as confidential as that. It’s not that I find it embarrassing, exactly; I know there are loads of people like me, and that most of the world is past judging us.

But my parents aren’t “most of the world;” even my school isn’t “most of the world.” The way any of them would react if the word got out… Well, it’s just better this way.

As for Mem, well, she’s a stubborn, hotheaded girl, like me, who doesn’t like being told what to do or what to think. But, I’m sad to say, she seems to understand how broken she is this days. And this business with Gray only seems to make it worse.

Take last weekend, for example. She claimed she was upset about the “slut” rumors, and I know and understand that they did get to her, but it was more than that. It was the way Gray showed up with coffees for us after school with that sexy, black eye and that crooked, knowing little grin of his and charmed the hell out of her. It was the way he made her feel—light as a feather, hot as a sauna, dizzy as… Well, you catch my drift.

It scared her. It scared her, so she called up one of Tally’s brother’s friends from NYU and told him to come "console" her. I'll let you infer what that really means.

(Tally doesn’t know that, because Tally chooses to ignore signs that point to things that make her uncomfortable.)

For the record, in case you were wondering, Mem really isn’t a slut. She’s never slept with anyone from Seacoast, and just the one guy from Lancaster, which really doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, count. Other than that, it’s just been a few guys from NYU, mostly Tally’s brother’s friends or just altogether rando’s. We usually stop her when we’re able to get to her in time—Tally especially—but sometimes I just leave it alone. She has her reasons, after all. She’s trying to erase something that, unfortunately, is written in ink. But sometimes you still have to try, even if you know you won’t succeed.

Love,

Me

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

October 22nd  

Diary,

We’re officially going to meet up Sunday—the girls and Kai—to convince Mem to see a psychiatrist, also known as Kai’s mom.

We’ve already established that I’m too chickenshit to talk to her, but I’m left with a follow-up question: should we not also convince Tally to see a psychiatrist?

Granted, she probably shouldn’t see Kai’s mom specifically, given that things with her and Kai seem to be going well and that would obviously put a bit of strain on the romance of it all. But Tally’s mom can afford to send her somewhere.

Really, Tally’s mom should already be sending her somewhere. Isn’t that kind of standard, when you lose a loved one?

Yeah, that happened a few years ago—her dad died. More than a few, I guess—we were ten at the time. Not young enough, though. No ten year old should ever have to find out that their father killed himself, I’ll tell you that much.

Thank God Mem's family moved to Granger when they did—just a few, short months before all this. I'd been Tally's best friend since we were born, basically, but I had no idea to handle tragedy, especially of that volume. We'd already started hanging out with Mem—even back then, she was miles cooler and more original than anyone else at our school, and we were drawn to that—and when I came to Mem admitting I had no idea what to do, she smiled and said, "Me, neither. But I think we should start by hugging her."

So we hugged her, and the hugs turned into tears, and the tears turned into all of us spending every, waking moment together for months on end, and we've been the "Ride or Dies" ever since.

(That's what we call ourselves, you know, in group threads and stuff like that. Ride or Dies. A bit dark, but that's us for you.)

Tally doesn’t talk about her much anymore, just like Mem doesn’t talk about what she went through later on. Sometimes I think I should push them more—that it’s my responsibility, in a way, having gone through the least amount of pain and misery of the three of us.

But then I think of how much pain and misery I’d be putting them in by asking them to talk about it, and I decide it’s better to just not say anything.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

October 23rd

Happy Friday.

I don’t know who I’m more scared for at this point—Tally or Mem.

Mem’s fallen harder, I think, than Tally. That makes sense, because Mem does everything hard and fast, and Tally is always sort of slow, calculated, and methodical with things—things outside the volleyball court, anyway.

But Mem trusts men less than Tally, which means she’ll keep her guard up longer. Tally’s a virgin, and as inexperienced with dating as she is with s*x, which means she doesn’t understand how awful men can be. 

I like Kai, though. If I could have picked anyone for her, I think it would have been Kai.

But I swear to God, I’ll kill him if he hurts her. Him and Gray.

They’d better be for real.

Sincerely,

Me