A LETTER FROM PENELOPE

TW: abortion, abuse, suicide

There was a knock at my bedroom door. It was 6pm. Dinner time.

What I love most about the month of December is that as early as 4pm the sun begins to set. By 5pm it’s getting dark and by 6pm it’s dark. 

The lights in my room have been turned off and I’m sitting on my bed cross legged with the familiar piece of the folded, browned and over read paper in my hand.

“Wes. It’s time for dinner.”

My mom’s soft voice called from the door. My eyes slowly drifted down to the bottom of the door. The only place that light managed to creep in. Apart from that small horizontal line of light, the rest of the room was pitch black. It’s been like this for the past three months now.

“It’s Tacos from taco bell.”

Her soft voice said again.

I ignored her. As usual...

My finger ran over the smooth piece of paper that faintly smelled like her.

Like, sunflowers and rain and earth all mixed together to form the smell of Penelope Young.

I tried to keep the smell from leaving but it seemed like everyday as I touched it I took the smell away and it went from the smell of nature to the smell of my stench. The same stench that sat here with me for the past three months, unmoving, uncaring and lifeless.

Another knock.

“Dad thought about getting wings too. Are you team taco or wings?”

I opened the folded paper.

As if by opening it I would be able to read anything in this dark room but the thing is I didn’t need the light to read Penelope’s letter.

I knew it all by heart.

I could see the first line already. In her hurried cursive. 

It was a date she scribbled at the top right corner of the page.

                        23/01/2019

It was a Wednesday. I remember that partly because I dream about it every time I manage to sleep.

Penelope Young walked into European history class that Wednesday morning with a headband on her forehead helping to restrain her full head of brown curls, a yellow crotchet cropped top with puffy arms and sewed on sunflowers ( which she made herself ) , and bell bottom jeans.

Penelope Young was different.

“I said hi because, well, since we were paired to do that project we needed to at least have conversations with each other.

Your blue eyes looked scared. 

I’m sure you thought ‘who is this hippie I’m stuck with for a whole week ?!’”

I smile as I stare at the paper in the darkness. I was scared. But I thought she was pretty cool after the first week of writing essays about our European history project though. 

She smiled a lot.

And she had her own thing going on. 

I think that’s what I liked the most about P.

She would wear pretty much whatever she wanted (just as long as it was bright colors) and strap a ukulele on her shoulders and perform for who ever was in the parking lot as school closed.

Badass P.

“While you were probably scared the shit out of, I thought you were pretty.... cute.”

I could imagine her blushing. 

She hardly blushed. But when she did, her whole face would turn red. She used her hair to try and hide it which I thought was cute and when I’d tell her she’d get even redder and smack my arm saying I should stop.

“I wanted to keep seeing you after that week.

Even though I never admitted it.

I would write out scripts about me asking you to go with me to the movies, the park or to a farm because who doesn’t like a good farm?! 

I would try predict what you’d say and how you’d say it and it always ended up with us sitting at the back of some truck with you reading out to me one of the poems you write at the back of your chemistry notes that you never let anyone see.

Well, anyone but me :)”

Penelope was great at hiding how she felt. She never made it obvious that she liked me and wanted to hang out with me.

I thought after the project that was it. She was done with me.

“01/02/2020

You said hi. The cafeteria was noisy that afternoon but as soon as you sat next to me it was like no one was even there again.

You awkwardly handed me an apple and said 

“Happy new month.””

Oh God....

“I held my laugh in front of you but trust me, when I got home I laughed so loud that it felt weird. I had never laughed like that before. It was real laughter from like, my belly. 

From that day on, we were inseparable.”

I pause and the familiar question pops into my mind.

If I had known would that was the beginning of what was to come would I have said hi that morning? 

Would I have asked her out to my friend Barney’s backyard band concert? 

Would I have asked her out to the movies, the museum and my house if I would have known?

My eyes move down as though I were reading. My memory plays through the month of February, March and April. 

Those were the good months. 

The months when we laughed and lay in the grass and lay across the unused road and she asked me what would happen if a car were to speed up to us right now and I said I would run for dear life and she said she would lay there and I thought she was being deep or creative or whatever the hell I thought was going on.

I flip the paper over and take a moment to acknowledge that she started on the other side of the paper to signify that things took a turn and that ‘the good can never be mixed with the bad’, like she always said.

“15/06/2019

I still smiled.

Even when I things were going bad I smiled. It was almost as if I couldn’t not smile. 

It was the day before I went to my psychiatrist and found out he was back.

You asked me what was wrong when I showed up at school but I smiled and said nothing.

And you believed. God I wish you didn’t. I wish I could ask for your help and you could take me to the police because I couldn’t do it alone but I still smiled and said we should watch a movie.”

This is what kills me.

How could I have been so blind? 

P’s arms got leaner and her clothes got loose and when I pointed it out, she started wearing hoodies and sweats.

I asked but she’d smile and bring something up as if all was well and I watched P slowly drift away from me.

“25/07/2019

This was when I decided I was going to leave you. This was when I decided I was going to let Cameron get me and not you. He found out about you. He took pictures of us at school together and would send them to me and say how could I even walk around after what I did to him?

You were persistent and as much as I wanted to run into your arms and tell you everything, I couldn’t at the time.

I knew what Cameron was capable of and I wasn’t going to let him harm you.”

She started avoiding me then. She started skipping class and ignoring my calls and would only send me “I’m fine” or “don’t worry about me” from time to time.

And then she finally left school. I stopped seeing her and I couldn’t understand what was going on. I hung up posters all over the town and when I got that phone call from her I nearly passed out from joy.

“18/08/2019

It was dark and I was walking through the streets. I was bruised on my arms, cheeks and lips and it hurt. I had just bought painkillers and stopped when I found posters with my face and missing written under it. I immediately recognized your phone number and called you. You answered on the first ring.

I begged you to take them all down as I ripped the one I was staring at and you told me you would if I met you face to face that night.”

I noticed the wounds on her face immediately and held her in my arms but she pushed away almost falling over because she had gotten so weak.

She looked helpless and I was clueless and I didn’t understand it.

She didn’t smile then.

I begged for an explanation but I got none. All she did was beg me to take the posters down.

I told her to promise me she was going to come back to school and never disappear ever again but she didn’t say anything. 

Tears started falling down my face. I was angry, sad, confused and I didn’t know why I couldn’t just know what was going on!

I wanted to say something to keep her from going and so I told her I loved her. 

Her eyes widened.

I said it again and this time I added her name.

She shook her head and started walking away, staring at me.

She was disappearing and I didn’t even know it then.

I called her name and said ‘I love you’

She sobbed and ran away. 

I stood there staring into the darkness after she had disappeared. I didn’t go after her though. 

I felt hurt. Hurt that she didn’t say it back and hurt that she didn’t want to tell me what was going on.

I took all the posters down that night.

“01/09/2019

Before you know the end I guess you have to know the beginning.

I lived in Florida before me and my mum  relocated to New York.

We moved because of me. 

I started dating Cameron two years before and I thought I loved him. He was sweet and caring at first but when I found out I was pregnant everything changed. 

He started getting abusive. He would hit me and call me names and call the baby names and I decided I wasn’t going to get a child involved in the life of a child. He didn’t deserve that. And so I got an abortion.

I regret it to this day.

It crosses my mind everyday what that child would have been today if I hadn’t taken its life away. I was diagnosed with clinical depression and started taking meds.

I told my mom what had happened and she said we needed to move.

My mom was never around though. She worked as a nurse until she lost her job and went out all day searching for how she would support us. 

Cameron showed up one day and that’s when everything went south.

He said he knew what I did. 

He threatened me constantly with calls and texts and In person.

He said he was going to tell you the kind of person I was and you were going to leave me. 

My depression got worse.

Cameron showed up at my house when my mom wasn’t home and he hit me. 

He hit me continuously and I got bruised. He left after threatening to end my life.

04/09/2019

It was hard to come to this.

But it has always crossed my mind what would happen in a world without Penelope. Mom wouldn’t be so stressed out with paying school fee, depression meds, Cameron wouldn’t have anyone to pick on again and you, you could go back to not being worried. You wouldn’t have to stay up all night worrying where I am or what’s going on in my life. You could live a normal life. 

I decided to write this because you deserve to know.

   You deserve to know that ever since I said hi on the twenty second of January I thought you were the most handsome person in the whole room.

   I didn’t want to say hi after that week because I thought I didn’t deserve you.

   I smiled because I didn’t want to bother about me and have you pity me because then I wouldn’t have gotten to know you. You would have been to bothered with the fact that I was depressed.

    That night when you said you loved me, I didn’t say it back because it would have been harder to for me to leave.

I love you Wesley.”

Penelope’s body was recovered the next day. She overdosed. 

I sit there and wish I could cry but I don’t.

I weeped the two months when I had read this letter at least ten times a day each day.

By November I had read the letter enough times to have it play in my head while I stared into nothingness.

And now I just felt numb.

I would turn off al the lights and sit in the dark because it made it easier to feel numb. I never went downstairs for dinner because i had lost all my appetite and it would take out of the eight hours I could sit here in the dark and feel nothing.

Mom had left my door.

She tried everyday to get me to eat but my room door stayed locked and I hardly ever left my room.

I stood up and placed the letter on my dresser and very slowly walked through the dark to the door. I twisted the key in the lock and swung the door open. I squinted my eyes as the bright light flooded my eyes.

I could hear footsteps downstairs and I walked through the bright house until I got downstairs and was met with the wide eyed stares of my mom, dad and little sister. Their plates were empty and mom was piling them up but a plate was still left on the table for me with a box of wings unopened and a closed brown bag containing my taco.

“I’d like a taco.” I say quietly.