"A car accident late Monday night left 19-year-old Zachary Tompson critically injured less than five miles from his West Tulsa home. Police have stated that the no other vehicles were involved. Tompson, who is currently being held at Hillcrest Medical Center’s Intensive Care Unit, was the youngest member of a local pop band that had several nationwide hits in the late 90s."

Letter 1

Zac,

Where do I start? Tuesday morning? But that’s not the beginning at all.

We used to go to the same babysitter when we were little. We’ve probably both heard those stories a thousand times—about how we cried whenever our moms tried to separate us, about shared popsicles and naptimes averted through mischievous means. That would be a logical beginning point for this letter, then: a tiny, golden you and tiny, dark me holding hands on the swingset behind our babysitter’s old house, shadowed in the gigantic dusk beneath her hundred-year old lilac trees. I don’t really remember that, though, no matter how much our moms’ talk about it whenever they see each other.

Maybe instead of a beginning I should be looking for a reason. I don’t know how to say it, but you were always there—a memory hovering ever so slightly beneath the everyday, remaining just a hairsbreadth out of my conscious world for thirteen years. We’re all intertwined like that, the two of us, like we couldn’t really have gotten away from each other even if we had wanted to. Maybe our friendship was unavoidable—demanded by fate, or nature, or even your God. All I know is that it makes me sad to think how much time we wasted when we could have been friends, all those years of riding bikes and fourth of July picnics and first crushes and first kisses. Years that we could have lived through together.

There it is. The beginning that I’ve been looking for: that stupid party.

You know how I hate parties, how I get all nervous and shy and uncomfortable, and to this day I can’t imagine what compelled me to go that night. It was the worst sort of party, too—the kind held in Richardson’s park, the kind that always turns into a drunken free-for-all. I’d be willing to bet that Angie talked me into going, just like she’s always talking me into things. It was good, in a way. Before you, she was probably the only reason I ever tried anything new. And after all, she and Hayden were the ones who brought me back to you.

I remember throbbing bass tearing through the humid night, loud even before the horizon-lightening bonfire came into view. The party was in the campgrounds, set far back off the rutted, dirt road that circumvents the park. A ferociously crackling pyre of wood had been teeteringly constructed in the middle of the gritty campsite, not even a hundred yards from the murky black of the Arkansas River. By the time Angie and I had pulled up in her mom’s bruised Volvo, the area was already filled with a bright cascade of milling people, their huge red and green plastic kegger cups clutched tight. Before either of us had even managed to fumble our way out of the car he was there, Hayden—your perfect, beautiful Adonis of a brother. Horrific as I still find the prospect, back then he and Angie were still together. She had fallen eagerly into his embrace.

I turned away from the sight of his wandering hands, sure that I was about to embark upon the most torturous evening of my young life.

Angie—then my best friend, always my sister by choice—had flipped her long black hair in an effortlessly calculated move, drawing attention to the curve of her pale, smooth neck and giving your brother the special, secret smile she saved for only for him.

Funny that she and I are so close, but so totally different. It’s been that way from the very beginning, from when we were first friends, but your brother’s unimaginable golden glow had lit up our contrary natures, casting us as photograph in comparison to photo negative. Angie leaned against him whenever he stood close by, always touching, always breathing him in deep and sighing softly at his hand in hers. I’ve never been that physical toward a boy, no matter how much I loved him. Not even you.

Maybe that’s the biggest disparity between me and Angie. She touches, and I don’t. I’m the ice queen, as Hayden called me once, when he didn’t know I was listening. I didn’t mind. What he thinks of me has never really mattered, other than my worry that someday you’d listen to him and stop wasting your time with me. I don’t understand him, and I don’t want to. I just wish that I didn’t react to him. Stupid, isn’t it? How I hate myself for my body’s response to your brother, unstoppable as it is. His hair, streaked honey blond and casually shaggy; his eyes, impossibly deep, blue sea bright; the way he stands so close and looks everyone full in the eyes.

All these things had left me mute and struggling for some escape, full of the knowledge of his beauty and the fear of it all at once. He’s gorgeous, always has been, and that’s exactly what I was thinking watching him and Angie together. Maybe even a little jealously. His electric current reminds me whenever he’s near, but my mind never fails to remind me that he’s not….nice. I know it sounds like something your grandmother would say, but its true. In some ways I see why he and Angie were together for so long—he does things for their effects, and sometimes so does she. The way he talks, the way he moves, always seem hollow. Like he’s too eternally concerned with sounding good and looking better to ever really be anything but a prop, a doll, a model.

When he saw me standing awkwardly beside Angie, trying to avoid notice in the shelter of her brightness, Hayden’s exquisite lips had twisted into a smirk. He uses people, your brother. He was using Angie then because she’s beautiful, and because she’s always been ready to try anything. To be anything for approval.

Hayden tugged playfully at the hem of her shirt, commanding all of Angie’s attention before leaning in to kiss her, full and slow on the lips. You know what? Of course I was jealous. He was slowly stealing away my best friend, inviting her into a world filled with these parties and these people, a world where I didn’t belong.

Angie had tried her best to get me to come along with them to join in the dancing, but I begged off as uninterested. Angie and Hayden were already drifting off into each other, a place made for them only, a place where not even best friends could belong. I had watched them from a distance, standing together in the greasy smoke of the bonfire and eating juicy slices of sharp, pink watermelon. If I had asked right then Angie would left, driven me home, and probably never talked about that night again. But I couldn’t do it. Even though I wish there was some other truth, I almost understood why her eyes lit up around Hayden, just as I almost understood the blush that reddened her cheeks as he protectively placed a hand on the small of her back, steering her through the amassed crowd.

I must have wound my way toward the distant, mirror-smooth river, dreaming of how it could cool hot skin and chase away thick August air. The stars are the one thing that I really do remember, almost like I’m standing there right now—exposed and alone in the stifling night. They had burned constant and bright in the sky, low like I could have touched them. I would have been happy to stay surrounded only by the buzzing crickets that were increasingly audible with distance from the party, but Angie had come along. Probably she decided that I wasn’t having fun.

My best friend had blended into the darkness much as I imagine I did, dark skin and hair turned faint and pale by comparison to the night. "Lydia." Her voice was so familiar, with its soft curves and gentle emphasis on the fist syllable of my name. "Do you want to—" her words died when Hayden, a magnet to metal, drifted to her side again. Back then, the future had seemed impossibly far away. All I could imagine was a static billion years at Nathan Hale, or at The Hideaway, serving pizza—of living life wondering what I could be if I was somewhere else. It was suffocating, that feeling. But right now? I’d give anything for it, for the sameness of an unavoidable eternity.

"Just come on, Lydia. We’re not going to hurt you." A hint of indulgence had crept into Hayden’s voice, softening his face and smoothing the sharp lines of his posture.

I didn’t respond for a long moment, and Angie had finally sighed with frustration. "We can go home if you want, Lydie."

Hayden’s groupies, all older, brutally cool boys, had followed their ringleader-idol to our side by then. When he realized they were there, a faceless Abercrombie haze, it was if some invisible, but strikingly powerful, switch had been thrown in him. Gone was the gentle laughter, gone was whatever attempt to help me feel comfortable that might have been hiding in his voice. His next words were a knowing leer: "Maybe this will loosen you up a little bit."

Hayden had pulled a small plastic bag out of his pocket, intentionally flashing everyone nearby an eyeful of the chalky white powder it contained. "It’ll be great, Lydia. Come on. Just a little." He was teasing, watching my nervous reactions closely. Enjoying the spectacle of the thing.

I have a suspicion that standing there, I bore a remarkable resemblance to a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle. Hayden’s groupies were talking loudly, ignoring the battle of wills before them, but nothing beyond the blue of his eyes registered in my mind. Your brother was all that I could see, his face and the gleam in him that wordlessly accused me of being a baby, of being silly, of not being good enough to be Angie’s best friend.

"No thanks." I can’t even believe he thought I’d do it. But then again, maybe he really didn’t—maybe it was all for them. To this day, I’m not entirely sure what Hayden had been offering that night. All I know is that I’m glad I didn’t take it.

At sixteen it had cost everything in me—every ounce of strength—to stand in front of those people and to say no. The memory feels different through, because looking back I realize what I must have suspected at the time. No one was judging me on my reaction to Hayden’s offer; they’d made up their minds about me a long time before. The groupies, Hayden, even Angie. I don’t think I need to tell you that it hurt.

Now, an almost grown up, I find it harder to care what people think. I don’t know for sure if it’s solely your influence that I have to thank for that, or if it’s maybe a simple benefit of aging. All I do know is that nothing’s really changed, even if the hurt is numbed, because I still don’t feel like I fit into the world when you’re not with me.

"More for us," Hayden had assured me with one of those smiles—the cold and knowing kind that leave a girl more completely seen than she’s ever dreamed possible. Seen, and found completely lacking. I was dismissed by the precise arching of one eyebrow, by a slow and easy smirk turning his angel face demon.

"Are you sure you don’t want to go, Lydia? It’s seriously not a big deal if you do." Angie kept asking me, and I just kept shaking my head no. What good would it do? I was there. It was too late. Angie had finally followed after Hayden, casting an uncertain smile in my direction. I was alone.

I muttered "creep" defiantly under my breath, feeling as sullen and out of control as a child. I had watched them walk away, Angie’s small figure nearly blurring into Hayden’s larger one, until they dissolved into the crowd.

"He’s kind of a jerk, huh?" You had stepped in front of me then, outlined by a starry silver shine, left unnoticed behind the crowd. Looking back, I like to think that I recognized you. Lord only knows I should have—Once upon a time we took baths together. And our moms sure have the pictures to prove it, don’t they?

Even if my memory had somehow managed to shut out a childhood playmate, how could I really have forgotten your sweet face? I would have thought that Angie’s two year obsession with Hayden in elementary school—only differing from the one she had at sixteen in that it wasn’t mutual—had turned me into a veritable Tompson zombie. I had seen you and Hayden plastered on her walls, your idyllic, Teenbeat glow blocking out the delicate pink flowers that she and her mom had stenciled there. I had heard your voice a billion times a day for years. Years! But somehow you just slipped out of my mind, presumably to be replaced with state capitols and multiplication tables. What a waste of brain cells.

Okay. Fine. So maybe I had no idea who you were. And I bet I sounded less-than friendly when I had growled my quiet reply. "Yeah."

"You shouldn’t let him push you around." That’s exactly what you said, word for word. I don’t think you ever got how mad that made me, why I had just stared indignantly up at you. Inside, my blood was beginning a slow boil. After all, in the dark of that first night there was nothing to differentiate you from Hayden’s groupies. Your slouch, your khakis, your offhand words and the scruffy pale hair that hung in a loose ponytail at the nape of your neck, all supported the theory that you were one of his, after all. One of the herd.

"I didn’t."

"I guess not."

The late-summer Arkansas had evaporated away into barely a stagnant trickle that summer, and as we stood at the muddy river’s edge my worn canvas Vans had been soaking through. My feet tingled with the coldness, with the damp, and so I walked, not caring if you came. I just wanted to be away. Back home. Or maybe back home in an alternate universe where I could finally have felt like I fit in.

After a pace, though, I realized that you were with me, thoughtfully watching the way the blacker-than-black mud sucked around the edges of your shoes.

"You don’t go to Hale, do you?" Few people had attended those parties that I couldn’t fit into my memory of school assemblies and homerooms—or, in a lot of cases, sandboxes and square dancing. It was a logical question, I had thought. A polite and safe thank you for your company.

"Nope." You kicked at the accumulated muck on your shoes, and spoke in deliberately measured tones. "I came with my brother. You know him as ‘creep,’ and I as Hayden. His girlfriend goes to Hale, and I sort of got invited me to come along."

"Sorry." I couldn’t even believe what I was hearing. I had known that Hayden wasn’t an only child, but you seemed too quiet, too steady and even, to share anything with him, most especially a family tree.

"You’re sorry for what, exactly? Calling him a creep, or because I’m related to him?" I could hear your smile even as I gave silent prayers in hopes that it was too dark for you to see my blush.

"Both, I think."

"He’s not always so bad. But ‘creep’ is our mom’s pet name for him."

Our tentative steps in the slippery mud had matched in pace, and eventually I realized that you weren’t going to go away. I wasn’t used to patience from people, or such sudden, easy companionship. Looking over at you sent a tiny thrill shivering down my spine, an almost unimagined feeling of appreciation all through me. You were beautiful. And for whatever reason, for however long, you had chosen me.

I know that you’d never imagine it to be true, but you’re just as beautiful as Hayden. If you would just look around sometime you couldn’t help but see the truth in this, in the way people watch you, the way they want to be near you. And even if my opinion is too biased to be believed, it’s mirrored in others, in the way everyone is drawn by the weight of your presence. Maybe I should be wishing that you’ll always think that you’re geeky, awkward, and scruffy—it could be that that’s what makes you so different from Hayden, so comfortable and safe.

I don’t even really what was said, but we had started talk—about stupid things, TV theme songs and Snapple flavors. But it was nice. You were nice. I thought you were so quiet that night, so shy and slow to speak. Not at all like you really are.

We were both aware of the distance between us and the party, and how it increased with our every step. I think that we were both glad, because the further away we got, the more easy our words come. "How come you’re here?" You finally asked, the brilliant spotlight of the moon practically turning the night to day around us.

"I have no idea. My best friend drags me to things like this every so often. A test run to see if I’ve become normal since the last time she checked, I guess." I laughed at those words, those things I hadn’t even known that I thought.

"And I take it you never have?"

The smile still audible in your voice made it easy for me to answer with the truth. "Not as of yet, no."

"Good. Because I haven’t either." You had looked up at the sky, drinking in the rich velvet arc of it, and for an instant the only noise was a teasing, faint breeze rustling through late summer leaves. "When I was little, I used to try and count the stars."

"That would take lifetimes." Back then I had laughed at the thought of a miniature version of the boy beside me spending time in a dream like that. You’re so tall, so strong, that it was hard to think of you as a baby—as someone who noticed the stars, let alone really thought about them. I’ve since figured out that just because you’re so solid, so sturdy, doesn’t mean that you’re not every bit a little kid, constantly giddy with wonder and awe.

"Don’t you think maybe I’ve already been counting for lifetimes?" That was an odd answer, one that would have given pause to someone normal, someone like Angie or Hayden. But I liked it so much, the softness of it, how it left you colored awash in a reflective glow.

At the risk of sounding like one of those horrible romance novels our moms swap back and forth, as soon as we had started talking I felt comfortable. It was as if the events of the evening had happened a hundred years before, or maybe just long enough ago to be nothing more than weak, faded memories that didn’t matter at all. We had walked side by side for a long time, until the distant glow of the bonfire slimmed to barely illuminate one tiny corner of the horizon. Even then we didn’t have to struggle to fill the enveloping silence that eventually descended, broken only by the distant roar of the highway. It has always been easy for me to be beside you without words.

I can’t be sure who was the first to take off their shoes, but I think it may have been me. My feet were already crusted with the thick, brown soil, and so it didn’t seem to matter. You had laughed as you watched me stand on one leg, like a flamingo, shakily untying my laces. But before long you were standing beside me, a supportive hand on my shoulder as you slipped out of your worn-to-perfection Docs. I remember how the mud felt cool and soft between my toes, and how I savored its embrace.

"So you’re not into Hayden’s favorite pastime?" You had asked as we resumed our voyage, heading towards where dark water lapped at the banks of the mud-rimmed river.

"Completely not. I think it’s incredibly stupid. Angie, my best friend, does it. That’s probably why he offered." Your eyes seem to glow sometimes, catlike bright pinpricks in the dark, and the night I met you I was full of shock at their caramel light. I’d never seen anything like you.

"Hayden is never far from substances that are punishable by law, and it drives me crazy. He’s a good guy, but he’s too hung up on being ‘bad’ for anyone to notice it." You didn’t mention Tompson, didn’t mention that you had once belonged to what you would eventually tell me was "a little band." Even then, years after you guys stopped recording new albums, I guess it was hard for you to meet someone who had no idea who you were. You probably treasured my ignorance, but man did I feel stupid when I figured it out later.

It was slick out there in the mud, and I had kept slipping, reaching out to save myself with your stability. For no reason that I can even now decipher, we had waded out into the water until our bare knees were covered. And of course that’s when someone had fallen. This time I’m pretty sure that it wasn’t me… but at any rate, we both went down. If anyone had seen us from shore, they would have been hysterical with laughter as we foundered, struggling to keep afloat and to keep together.

Around most people it would have been mortifying, horrific, nightmarish to suddenly find myself neck deep in murky water, but your guffawing laugh is nothing if not infectious, radiating out around you in silly, sonorous waves. And of course I couldn’t help but join in.

"That was so your fault!" I had sputtered out between fits of giggles. In retrospect, we both found the situation a lot funnier than it actually was. But laughing until we hurt, until our salty tears mingled the stagnant river, seemed to be the only possible response.

"Um… excuse me… whose idea was coming out here?" Years of friendship have shown me again and again that you can go from zero to hyper in about .09 seconds, and I was fast to realize this when the splashing began. It was like being ten years old at the Jenks public pool in the middle of summer—cold water flew at me from every direction. Not content with my impromptu shower, I had busily worked to return the spray, running the edge of my flattened hand quickly across the surface of the dark river.

"We’re so wet we might as well take it all the way, huh?" I watched you begin to swim out into the glassy center of the water, your long, smooth strokes barely fracturing its surface. What possessed me to go along with you is a mystery to this day, but I’m glad I did.

Suspended fully clothed in the water, weightless as a daydream and more free than I’d ever imagined being, I forgot everything: Angie, Hayden, high school. The whole world really, everything except for you. At the center of the river we were no longer overshadowed by the low-hanging branches of the forest canopy, and at that distance from reality everything seemed perfect. We swam until the stars came into full focus, crystals scattered across the roof our vision.

Drifting in the current side by side, we had talked about everything. About music and books, about school and our families, about a blur of silly and serious that I can’t even begin to remember. That night and the things we said laid had a foundation for us, for what we would eventually become… for whatever it was we were.

I was fascinated by the small tribe of brothers and sisters you had, just as you were fascinated by my status as an only child. "But who do you hang out with?" You had asked, mystified.

"People I meet at school or something—like Angie. I’ve known her since kindergarten. She was the only militant feminist in the second grade, and she used to kidnap everyone’s Barbies." I missed Barbies and snack time and recess, and my crazy best friend who once lynched Malibu Stacy on the swingset. "Do you spend a lot of time with your family?"

"Yeah." I had wondered if you were going to say anything else, but at the end of a long quiet, heartbeat you continued. "We traveled around a lot when I was younger, and it was really hard to meet people. I ended up hanging out with my big brothers all the time, Hayden and Jacob. That was actually really cool. We got to do a lot together."

Steam had risen around us, streamers of insubstantial fluff, and every noise, from the distant cry of an owl to the nearby roar of hip-hop, seemed to echo hollowly in the silence, magnified by the water.

No less than an hour after our swimming began, Angie’s voice had floated incredulously from the river bank. "Lydia?" I can’t imagine what she must have thought, finding her best friend, the dark side to her light, doing the backstroke with a stranger. Very out of character, that must have seemed.

"Hey," I had called, reluctant to move. I remember the feeling of your hand brushing mine under the water, how cold your skin was, how impossibly light and smooth your caress. I wonder if you noticed, or if you maybe even did it on purpose? I liked to think you did. Back in the beginning I had quite the crush on you, born equally of those huge brown eyes and whatever nameless sweetness always seems to cling to you.

"Are you ready to go? I have to work in the morning." Angie was laughing in disbelief as I allowed myself to fall away from the buoyant support of the river, bringing my feet down to rest on the rocky bottom.

"Well," I said in your direction, wading cautiously toward shore and watching the water slide ever lower around me. That could have been that. The end of our escapade, the end of us, but instead you stood up, impatiently shoving your water-loosened hair out of your eyes.

"Zac Tompson." You stepped to my side, one hand extended. Your eyes had glinted and your voice had smiled in the dark.

"Lydia Redwing." We shook hands, sealing a forever with our touch.

I could feel Angie’s eyes on me as we began the walk back to her car, me dripping a dark trail of water on the dusty ground. "Are you drunk?" She had finally demanded.

So that’s how it started, how we became friends again.

Zac, please be okay. Please.

-Lydia