I already started GO ASK ALICE, and it is really really good.
I hate being home! It’s so noisy and I can’t hear the ocean, only cars, and I miss you so so so so so so so so so so so so so much! My parents are fighting and they think I can’t hear them, but I can. It makes me scared. I think they might get a divorce. If that happens, I will only live with my dad or my grandma. Maybe I could live with my grandma all the time and then we can go to school together in Blue Cove instead of me at Pine Hill, where nobody likes me and they all think I’m weird.
Anyway, I’m sad. I’m going to read a book.
Love,
Phoebe
August 31, 19—
Dear Suze,
I have to tell you about this book. GO ASK ALICE. It’s so sad! About this girl who gets addicted to drugs and all the things she goes through. I read it in one day, and I cried and cried and cried. I wish you could read it, too. Maybe they have it at the Blue Cove library.
My mom left on a business trip for a week, so it’s just me and my dad. I like it this way. We have TV dinners or sometimes we go out to eat. This morning, he took me to eat breakfast at this little café where they have jukeboxes on the table. I had elderberry pancakes and bacon, and my dad had blueberry pancakes, which are his favorite and my mom doesn’t like him to eat them because she says he’s getting fat. He was happy and talked to the waitress and made her laugh and told me about this time when he was a little boy and tried to catch a seagull and it pooped on his head.
I hope this isn’t too boring, but I promised to write, so I am.
Write back!
Love,
Phoebe
Suze
It was a rainy, horrible day, but Beryl called to let me know the diary had come from Phoebe, so I huddled into my raincoat and my rubber boots and walked the half mile there after school.
Beryl flung open the door when I knocked. A cinnamon-scented cloud of steam escaped. “Come in, come in!” she cried.
I shook off my coat in the foyer and left my boots and followed her into the kitchen.
“I made cinnamon rolls,” she said. “They’re almost ready. Are you hungry?”
“Yes!” I climbed up on the stool at the kitchen counter, feeling all my troubles and tensions fall away to the floor, as they always did in this room.
Beryl wore a thick blue-and-white sweater, and her hair was tightly braided in a rope that fell over her shoulder. She poured milk into a red tin glass without my asking and set it down in front of me. “How’s school going?”
I shrugged. “Everybody thinks I’m weird, so I don’t really have any friends.”
She leaned on the counter with one hand, the other propped on her hip. “Is that true? That everybody thinks you’re weird?”
I gestured to my stupid dress that came to the middle of my shins. “Weird clothes. Weird hair. Preacher dad.”
She stroked my face with both hands. “So pretty.”
It warmed me. In truth, Beryl provided the warmth in my world. My father was hard and cold and punishing, a fact I tried to keep to myself. “Thanks.” I lifted my head. “I do have one friend. His name is Joel. Nobody likes him, either, because he’s new like me.”
“Is that right? Tell me about him.” She pulled the cinnamon rolls out of the oven, giant and fluffy, and while they were still hot, she spread thin orange-flavored frosting over the top.
My mouth watered, but I said, “Well, he’s friendly and saves me a place at the lunch table, and never says a word about my weird clothes. He’s really smart, I think, because the teachers all call on him and he always knows the answer.”
“He sounds like a pretty good friend.”
“The other kids are mean to him, too,” I say, wiggling my fork in my hand. “He has really bad acne.”
“That must be rough.” She settles the pastry in front of me. “Bring him over sometime.”
“Yeah! He likes to draw.”
Beryl sat down next to me and bent in to smell the cinnamon roll. “That’s a good scent, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. It was the fragrance of love. After we finished, she brought me the diary and as always hugged me before I left. I swear, I lived for those hugs—her softness and the solidness of her arms, the smell of paint and spice and some layer of powder or something I couldn’t name. She didn’t rush. Her cheek rested on my head, and she rocked me ever so slightly back and forth, like I mattered.
September 8, 19—
Dear Phoebe,
I picked up the diary today from your grandma’s house. It was the first time I could go over there since you left, since my dad is getting ready for the anniversary week of the church, and I had to help the ladies of the church clean everything. We even washed under the pews! It was so gross. Mrs. Armstrong was there, bossing everybody around, and I know she likes my dad! She’s gross. She wears a girdle!