a lesson in running away (the art of returning)

Dear Biana: of all the secrets to tell (i'm glad you were the one to hear them)

To my lovely lady Bee,

I promise I didn't forget you.

Can I tell you a secret?

Of course I can. It's not like you'll ever read this. So I can write the truth.

The hardest thing I've ever done is deciding not to send this letter.

I need to keep the illusion up. Of course, you do that every day with your invisibility. Pretending you're not there, fading away, out of sight but still there to watch and follow and see...

I wish I were a Vanisher.

That's another secret of mine. You might be the only one who understands not wanting to be an Empath; yeah, we're living lie detectors who can't lie without messing with our hearts, but we feel so much. So vividly.

You're the only one that turned out all right. I hate Fitz as much as I love him. Did you know that? Alvar kills and Fitz doesn't know how to handle anything he does and I'm running away again and letting you think I forgot about you, but you? You're brave. Wish I could be as brave as you.

So what do I feel for you? You're my little sister. The only person I tell everything to. Even if my version of everything is more like everything except. As in, everything except who I dream of when I should be awake. Everything except why I ditch class every chance I get. Everything except how terrified I am of leaving you. Of not sending this letter.

Of you not knowing. Thinking I don't care.

I care so much. Too much. That's the problem with reading emotions like words on a page: the letters pile up like quicksand. Speaking is impossible when the words are all jumbled in my head. I guess that's why I'm writing them instead.

Here's another secret (I know you love them more than anything): I never was good with words.

I have a memory that swallows jokes and comebacks and introductions and interactions like cold lemonade on a summer's day. I never forget a sentence. I recycle my words over and over. Nicknames are easy, Biana. I used to call you Bramblebee back when you thought you were in love with me (you weren't. I'm the empath.) because you'd kick my ass every time we played no matter how flustered you were. And I tried so hard not to ignore you.

I know what it's like to be ignored.

I don't know how to be anything but funny. I don't know how to be original. Only in this letter, which is part of why I won't be sending it.

Anyway, I wrote this letter because I didn't forget you, even if you'll think I did.

Sorry my photographic memory failed you this time, Bee.

Love you, my sister bramble bumble blueberry belle of the ball and bee that keeps on stinging no matter how many times it dies in the act.

Love,

Keefe

...

He dots his i's with little hearts. He knows she likes wearing hers on her sleeve, in a glass case too easily broken. She's the kind to fall hard and fly easy, up above the clouds and tumbling into an ocean too many miles below.

So he slips the letter into an envelope and leaves it unsealed, unsigned. Perhaps in a few years she will feel distant enough that he can open it again, read it, remember her.

Keefe doesn't know why he picked up the pen. He only knows that Biana's heart rests in a glass case on her sleeve, but his is wrapped in spiderwebs and bobs in his throat every time he swallows. He coughs and the web tears and all that's kept inside comes spilling out. Less insecure and more structural flaws, the kind that send the life draining out of you, the kind that keep you wishing, the kind that make you write a letter that you'll never send.

But he has never been able to patch those flaws. He runs away to mend it, but it's a bandaid over a gaping wound. Perhaps it was safer as it was, so close to ripping. So close to letting his heart bleed free.

The bustle of this coffee shop he's sitting in (waiting for what?) makes it through to his muffled brain, clouded with memories and emotions that don't belong to him.

"Your ability is very strong," his empathy mentor had told him once when he first manifested, and hadn't yet learned how to tell emotions apart from himself. "Going numb is easier when you're this powerful. Every day will be a struggle. You must not let it consume you."

Nowhere in his lessons had he been taught how to block out human emotions. Keefe finds that it's gentler than consumption; more a gentle breeze as he reflects emotions away from himself without thinking. He feels like a stone in a river being washed smooth by constant waves, and the pleasantness of it both calms him and terrifies him.

Keefe wonders how long it took Vespera before she forgot what it felt like to be happy.

A figure bumps into his table and he jolts, suddenly aware that his fingers are aching from twirling his pen between his fingers for the past several minutes.

He sticks the slip of paper in his pocket and wishes he knew how to start over.

He wishes he knew how to forget them.