The Dreamer ✓

Letter 07

NO. 7;  A LETTER TO SOMEONE FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD 

JANUARY 5th, 2014

Dear Narumi,

Do you miss me? Cause I miss you. I miss us. I miss our childhood more than I need air.

If there is a year of my life, an age I can pinpoint and say, yeah that was the best year of my life, then I would say it was when I was eight. 

I had you, you were my best and only friend. I had Evelyn. Our relationship wasn't so messed up then. I didn't hate her, I didn't feel like I was competing with her. Back then, I never felt like she was the sun and I was the insignificant asteroid and most important of all, I had my mother. She was still alive and still the centre of my universe.

Narumi, you were the first friend I ever made.

Do you remember? I was six years old. A little on the chubby side with big eyes and messy pigtails. I was fresh from South Africa and practically shaking with nerves. The two of us were standing in front of the class. Mrs. Yeadon, a woman so thin I worry that she would disappear at any moment, had taken both our hands and led us into the brightly coloured classroom.

"Class," she said in a nasally voice we would often mock, "We have two new students today!"

There was a mixture of blank stares, friendly smiles, a random clap and a few hellos scattered among the class of twenty-four.

She pointed to me, short and chubby me, and said, "This is Morgana! Can you guess where she's from?"

Gregory Bartleby, who now works full time in McDonald's, shouted, "Mars! She looks like an alien!"

Giggles erupted and I ducked my head in embarrassment, burying my face in the woolly scarf that wrapped my neck. Mrs. Yeadon at least had the decency to issue Greg with a stern warning and a lunchtime detention.

"South Africa," she said, "Morgana came all from South Africa," she paused and glanced down at me, smiling kindly, "Where exactly in South Africa was it again love?"

"Pretoria," I told her.

"What?"

"Pretoria," I repeated.

I'm laughing right now. God, do you remember how strong my accent was? For the first six months, nobody could understand a word I was saying and for the first six months, I missed Pretoria more than anything. I used to cry almost every day, complaining to my mum about how I wanted to go back to the familiarity of South Africa. To the bruising sunshine and the long summers. England was a labyrinth, a strange new land made of impulsive skies and alien faces. I felt so lost, and I guess what I'm trying to say is that I would never have found my way out of that labyrinth, if you hadn't been by my side. Eleven years later and my accent has dissipated and in its place is a clean cut English accent. 

I had to repeat Pretoria about ten times before she understood what I was saying. 

She'd smiled again and said, "Welcome to Nottingham, Morgana, I'm hope you'll like it just as much as Pretoria."

Mrs Yeadon did happen to be right about that. After eleven years in Nottingham, I have come to love this city dearly. As frustrating and just downright weird as Nottingham can be, it's my home. And there's no place like home right?

Soon after she turned to you and said, "Well, this is Narumi! She's came yesterday, so she's new as well!"

You were so small and skinny with straight black hair and a shy smile. You weren't from around here either. You had just moved from Japan, from a small city called Miyoshi. Mrs. Yeadon claimed you couldn't speak English properly but I found out three days later that your English was perfect and the reason you lied was because you didn't want to talk to her. I nearly peed myself every time Mrs. Yeadon tried to have a conversation with you. You would always look at her blankly, spouting phrases in Japanese and the occasional broken sentences in English.  For almost two years we timed how long it would take until she gave up.  It was almost always a minute and forty-two seconds.

As I write this, something heavy is forming in my chest. It's dull and warm and it constricts my heart. I want to go back to those days Narumi. You know, when everything was so much easier?

When the world didn't look so dark and nothing hurt. At eight, my biggest worry was what I would eat for lunch. I couldn't wait to grow up. I couldn't wait to have my own house and a handsome husband and lots of money. At eight, I spent too much time worrying about what others thought of me (I still do) and not enough time with my mother. If I knew this would be my future, I would hug mum a little tighter, I would smile a whole lot brighter and I would have told Michael Yeboah I had a crush on him. 

We used to have sleepovers almost every week, I remember we would stay up until the late night, whispering secrets to each other in the dark and giggling at the most juvenile confessions. You and I were inseparable. Well, we were inseparable and then Burbank School happened. Secondary school changed everything.

Life wasn't a walk in the park anymore, life became a jumble of grades, pointless crushes and erratic hormones. Life, for the first time, wasn't yes or no. It was everything in between, nothing was simple and everything hurt. We grew apart in secondary school, you drifted into the cooler cliques, you became one of the celebrities. I became...I don't know what I became but it definitely was not cool. I think was (am) in the middle of popularity and anonymity.

Being Evelyn's sister meant that I was always on the school's radar.

Being Evelyn's sister meant that I always in her shadow.

Within the first three months of Year Seven, you started avoiding me. I would save a seat for you in lessons and you would walk right past me as if I was a ghost and sit next to someone else. That someone else was usually part of the cool crowd. By the beginning of our second year, I finally got the message. I wasn't Sera Hasan, who was undoubtedly the most beautiful girl in our year, and you didn't have time for me. You had outgrown me. Gone on to better things, better people.

Do you remember in Year Nine, when I accidentally bumped into you and you gave me the dirtiest look and called me a freak? I do. Do you remember last year, when I found you crying in the girls' bathroom? I gave you some tissue and stayed with you until you had composed yourself. Do you remember, five months later when the roles reversed and you found me crying in the girls' bathroom and instead of asking me how I was, you momentarily glanced my way and left without a word. I fucking do.

I hope it was worth it. I hope selling your heart and soul, selling all your beliefs and everything that made you so you was worth it. Judging from the rumours spreading about your apparent pregnancy and fallout with Christine Wellington, I don't think it was.

I don't miss you.

I miss the Narumi from primary school. The Narumi that didn't care about the latest trends and the hottest boys. The Narumi who wanted to see the world. There's a part of me that hates you for abandoning me like that, there a part of me that wants to drag you by your expensive extensions and show you all the times I cried and cried about the fact you left me so easily.

What's that song? That song by Gotye. 

And now you're just somebody that I used to know.

 And now you're just somebody that I no longer wish to know.

Love, Morgana