Page 36 of Way Down Deep

What color are the shoes? Tell me how they felt on your feet. Every little detail of them.

What was your favorite book—or three—when you were a kid? Ones worth stealing from the library so you never had to give them back? Especially as I suspect you were probably a good girl who normally followed all the rules.

What’s your brother like? Is he older or younger? Did he watch your back when you were kids or put worms down your shirt? Or both? I bet a brother could be a mix of hero and bully.

I hope you’re having a nice day, with a good movie or book lined up for the afternoon.

Do you have Netflix? If so, one of these evenings we’ll have to pick something to watch together. At the same time, I mean, like, we both hit play at exactly ten. Maybe something really terrible, so we could text snarky shit to each other through the whole thing.

Okay, I’m off to polish the doorknobs. Not literally. Also not euphemistically. Probably going to clean the fridge, though. Something in there smells like rancid butt.

Later, Maya-stranger. Bug you once the boy’s gone to bed. Maybe sooner.

3.22pm

Your mom doesn’t sound crazy. She sounds right.

And you sound right too. Vibrant and alive and full of all the best ideas in the world. Elevators and eating stew and staying in and answering questions… They’re all things I never knew I wanted so much and yet I do, I do, I do.

So I’ll start by offering you all the things you want to know.

Yes, you got my hair right. Darkish brown, wavy. Like it’s always left to dry while pressed against a pillow—which it usually has been.

The shoes, the shoes … a deep blue with little bows on. When I started to have some money of my own, they were the first things I bought. And I was so proud of them, so happy to have them. I thought they were the swankiest things in the world. Of course they weren’t at all, and they definitely aren’t now—they’re all scuffed around the edges and worn, like the velveteen rabbit.

But they still felt so good on my feet. Roomy and familiar.

And I was a good girl, oh yes I had to be a good girl for most of my teenage years. It was just that I wanted those books so badly. At night I used to lie there terrified, imagining the police coming to put me in prison for taking them. Yet somehow, even that didn’t scare me enough to not do it. In fact, after a while I started to wonder if it would be better if they did.

All the reading I could have done in my cell.

Because no amount of reading was ever enough. I’m not even sure if I can narrow my favourites down … there were so many I loved. Moondial and Behind the Attic Wall and Neverending Story. All those books about American girls getting murdered and making out and going steady. Ah, they drove me wild with envy.

Even the dead ones.

As for what I’m doing now: I’m totally waiting for you to read my hell yes let’s watch a movie together that is the greatest suggestion anyone has ever made in the history of mankind. And then we can do that as soon as possible, because it’s glorious and magical and right.

All we have to do is decide which one.

8.30pm

Evening, you.

I ate up every detail you shared like … like… Like candy, but I’m trying to figure out which kind.

Some kind that comes in different flavors, and different shapes. So I could turn each one around with my tongue and taste it and feel it and savor it. The only candy coming to mind that meets that description is Runts, though, and Runts aren’t that great. Especially not the banana ones.

Maybe there’s a better, British candy that fits my simile.

I have to say, though, there was a little grain of sand in my candy box. My tooth came down on it, and I flinched, because you said you’d tell me all the things I wanted to know. You left one question out. I don’t know if you did it on purpose, and I’m not in a mood to pry, so I won’t.

I can picture your shoes now. I can half-picture you in them. You’re like a sketchy watercolor drawing with details penciled in here and there. Your hair, your eyes. Your shoes and your hands.

It’s much nicer than if you simply texted me a selfie, some picture posed before a bathroom mirror, phone in hand. I like the mystery of you. The paint-by-numbers.

I never knew The Neverending Story was a book! You must know it’s a movie. I think I watched it about twenty times the summer I turned eight or nine. I got it for my birthday and played it until the VCR chewed it up. I can barely remember anything about it now.

Wait a second…

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