Dearest Kit

Chapter Twenty Four

My Dearest Kit,

I know that this is stupid and that it’s irrelevant considering the fact I could grab my phone and dial your number and be talking to you in person and it would take only a fraction of the amount of time it will take to write this letter. However, I need to tell you something, and I don’t think I can find the words to describe to you the way I’m feeling without planning it out first. Also, I’m afraid that as soon as I hear your voice, I won’t be able to hold back the tears I’ve been fighting all week, the darkness will engulf me whole.

Sacha and Beth have been doing it again, that thing they do which no-one can put their fingers on but everyone finds irritating. It’s the way they laugh all the time and talk about parties all the time and recall stories of drunken nights all the time. It’s slowly eating away at me, the fact that I used to be such good friends with them, and now they couldn’t care less about me. Sometimes I wish I had never been friends with them, then it wouldn’t hurt so much, then it wouldn’t affect me like it does.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me being paranoid, being irritable and over sensitive. Maybe it’s just because I was best friends with them, so close, inseparable for such a long while, and now we go for days without talking to one another. Maybe it’s because I feel some of the experiences we shared, some of the memories we made, slipping away from me, as if they were just dreams. Maybe it’s just because Beth can be irritating, be over the top and loud and boisterous. She is winy and complains a lot and when she’s upset with you she won’t say a thing until you’ve worked it out for yourself. And despite all of this, I miss them, and I think that’s the part I hate the most, the fact that they are getting to me, however much I try to deny the fact.

Recently they have been paying attention to me a little more, but not because they’ve become the people I used to like hanging out with so much. It’s in the same way they started to pay attention to Mina more when she got a boyfriend, or Dahlia when they found out she was friends with some boys she went to junior school with. All they care about is going to parties and meeting people they deem more exciting than us, it’s as if they’re forgetting the fact that friends should come first.

The only times they talk to me is when they want to talk about you, or how I was on TV, or what the premieres were like. They only want to know what Rumer Cooke is like in real life, is she as pretty as she looks in the papers? And the one thing which annoys me more than all of those things, is the fact that they are constantly pressing me to invite them to ‘Hollywood parties’ in London (because there are so many of those...) They don’t want to be friends with me anymore, they want to be friends with the person I’m becoming. It’s funny how I’m no longer defined by what I say or how I act, but by the people I know.

I feel like I’m going through a bad breakup, the kind which holds onto you, despite the fact you know you should let go. You don’t want to upset them in case they dump you completely, but on the other hand, you can’t carry on with their bullshit.

I don’t know what to do, but I wanted to tell someone, without saying the words out loud.

Yours Forever,

Christopher Ainsworth’s Girlfriend.

P.S. I got my letter from Cambridge; I got accepted. It tells you something that I wasn’t happy when I read it, for a split second, maybe, but the thought of taking the offer sickened me. It’s no longer because I might not want to go to university at all, but also, because how do I know they haven’t just accepted me because it will get them in the press? How do I know when people are using me for my connections, and not because I am my own person.

* * *

My Darling Lana,

Nothing that you said in your email was stupid, I’m starting to think you’re incapable of doing anything stupid. I’m glad you didn’t just call me, because I’ve missed the emails, I’ve missed the words you put together and the way any sentence you write sounds so beautiful. You can cry with me, you know that right? We could cry together, pouring our hearts out.