Faith is a substance

That's what I've been told

Of things hoped for

When I was twelve years old

So while I'm still waiting for things to manifest

I'll write about the summer

I put hope to the test

Dear Ronnie Lee,

Thanks for asking me to marry you, but I’m only 12 years old, and I think I need to study up on how to cook and keep house before I can say yes. So when I gets good at all those things, I’ll consider it.

Very sadly yours,

Sandy

I sprayed the letter with some of my grandmother’s sweet White Lilacs perfume. As I carefully folded the letter into a heart shape and put it in my right skirt pocket, I wondered if I should have mentioned the part about Ronnie Lee not being my one and only. No. I decided to skip it. Why confess to something when there wasn’t any proof? Next, I tore a second piece of paper from my spiral binder and wrote another letter.

Dear Leroy, you dumb turd,

Why didn’t you come by my house last night like you promised? I waited and waited and waited. I even saved you a piece of my grandma’s lemon chiffon pie. I hate you! Don’t EVER, EVER, EVER speak to me again!

With total disgust,

Sandy

I sprinkled it with dried chicken poop, then folded the paper into a tiny square and placed it in my left pocket.

Where is it written down what someone my age should think or feel or even be like, for that matter? At birth, I must have been given an old soul because there weren’t too many things I hadn’t already figured out.

As I got up from my bed, I hastily ran to the screen door at the front of the house. I needed to make sure the family was still gathered on Grandma’s front porch. There they all were, feasting on the ripe, delicious peaches that Uncle Jack had brought over earlier in the day. He wasn’t my real uncle; he was more like our summer Santa Claus who always brought Grandma—his special lady—fresh produce from his garden. Satisfied that I wouldn’t be missed, I made my way to the back door and eased out.

I dashed down the wide dusty road as fast as my skinny black legs would carry me to Ronnie Lee’s house a mile and a half away. It was time to drop off my first letter, and the excitement I felt could only be compared to seeing Aretha Franklin in person.

As I turned onto the main road, I began to slow down, feeling a sudden surge of exhaustion. It was the end of August in Hooks, Texas, and my face felt like it was hovering over an open pan of boiling water while my feet were resting in a hot oven. Even walking the shortest distance was a lesson in endurance. My lungs burned as if I was trying to breathe underwater. To add to the misery, an army of hungry mosquitoes had surged in formation around me, planning to strike. They were fierce around this time of day. And since all other mammals had the common sense to take cover, I was offered as a human sacrifice to these bloodthirsty insects. But I bravely fought off their attack.

However, this pressure of trying to sit on two chairs at the same time, like my Uncle Zippy said, had to end. It was one of the reasons why the letters had to be delivered, and it had to be today. Because in exactly three days, my family would be leaving Grandma’s house and driving back to the South Side of Chicago—and not the posh Pill Hill or Hyde Park section. Where we lived, you carried a knife with you, especially when going to buy groceries. Because the neighbors were not our friends; they were more like a pack of wolves always on the prowl for kids carrying cash. They were better known by their street names as the Black P. Stone Rangers, the Insane Disciples, and the Gangsters of Chi-Town. Yup, we lived in what is otherwise known to Americans as the “ghetto.”

I reckoned after 3:00 p.m. was not the best time to be out walking on asphalt in Texas as it took very little time for a humid 90-degree day to suddenly feel like 110. The sun had moved directly over my head as the rays continued to spit out waves of sunlight just below my threshold for heatstroke. It didn’t help my situation that I was wearing rubber flip-flops that stuck like cotton candy to the surface of the road. At this pace, it should only take me about fifteen more minutes to get to Ronnie Lee’s house, which should be just enough time for my hair to return to whatever natural state it was before I learned to use a hot comb—one giant, matted mass of tightly curled naps secured by a rubber band and two hairpins.

Finally, I reached Ronnie Lee’s mailbox. I could hear the electric saw buzzing in his backyard. His dad, Nathaniel Lee Boatman, emerged from the house onto the front porch. He was a tall, thin man with a scraggly mustache. A short, stubby cigar dangled from his mouth. I squatted down low behind a blackberry bush near the mailbox, careful not to get stung by the sticker bugs that clung to the underside of the leaves. I watched him as he slowly walked across the barely-there porch and sat in one of the old beat-up rattan chairs. He then pulled a small box of matches from the pocket of his ragged overalls and lit up his cigar.

Their weather-worn three-room house was in desperate need of paint, but that fact failed to inspire Mr. Boatman to grab hold of a ladder and paintbrush. Ronnie Lee said after his mother, Maggie, died two days before Christmas, his father didn’t have the energy or the will to do anything at all except tend to the few vegetables and pigs on their farm.

Hastily, I reached my hand up and put the letter in, leaving the mailbox door open. Still in the crouched position, I tried to inch my body ever so slowly away from the bushes and sticker bugs that appeared just as determined as the mosquitoes to have me for supper.

“Hey! Who’s out there yonder ways?” Mr. Boatman yelled from the porch.

I remained silent as I waited for my chance to take off down the road. But the sticker bugs proved too much, and I fanned and scratched furiously from the bites. As I peered through the prickly bushes, I saw Mr. Boatman reach for the squirrel gun he kept on the porch to shoot at poor little critters that had the misfortune to wander into his front yard. Ronnie Lee told me his dad also kept a shotgun in a cabinet under lock and key for hunting bigger game. Mr. Boatman aimed the gun at the blackberry bush. Knowing that this was probably the first and only warning he would give, I made my presence known.

“Nobody! I mean, it’s just me, Sandy Forte.” I realized there was no hope of escaping undetected as I rose up to meet his piercing gaze. He squinted against the sun and slowly put the weapon back underneath his chair.

“Well, Sandy Forte, explain yourself. Why is you tipping ’round in my front yard?” he asked while he chewed on the end of what was left of his cigar.

“I was . . . well, I just dropped off something for Ronnie Lee.”

“Like what?” he asked as he leaned forward toward the edge of the porch.

I sensed he wasn’t going to let me go without an inquisition, so I had to confess or continue with these nonsense questions.

“I wrote him a letter and left it in your mailbox. I have to go now, Mr. Boatman. My family is—”

“Why is you writin’ my boy a letter? He right out back, sawing down tree limbs. You kin talk to him face to face. Hey, Ronnie Lee! Come on up front,” he yelled.

I started to panic, but when I heard the continuous buzz of the electric saw, it gave me hope that Ronnie Lee couldn’t hear his father’s command.

“I ’spect, I ought to go get ’em,” Mr. Boatman said as he started down the porch stairs. This gave me enough time and opportunity to make a run for it. I didn’t want to have to explain myself or see the look of sadness and disappointment in Ronnie Lee’s eyes once he’d read my letter. He was a nice boy—too nice for me or any other girl to break his heart.

Running again, this time toward Leroy’s house. I slapped sweat from my face. As I grew weary, the shade of an elm tree by the side of the road beckoned me to sit down and rest. What I wouldn’t give for iced lemonade in a tall glass with—

Suddenly, I felt the urge to check my left pocket to make sure my letter to Leroy was still safely tucked inside. I felt around and realized there was nothing there. Panic rose like bile in the pit of my stomach. And despite the lack of moisture in my mouth, I gave myself permission to cuss as I sputtered out the words, “Dammit, to hell! What was I thinking?” As I thrust my hand into my right pocket, I felt the other letter folded in the shape of a heart. In my desperation to get away, I had made the fatal mistake of putting Leroy’s letter into Ronnie Lee’s mailbox. And I was as sure as God’s grace that Ronnie Lee was reading that letter right now.

I sat under the tree, sweat dripping down my face, and tried to catch my breath.

In order to try and fix this, maybe I ought to think back on how I got into this whole, crazy, rotten mess in the first place. I mean, my life as a heartbreaker didn't just start overnight. It began way earlier this summer— two months ago to be exact. All the signs were there, I simply never noticed them. I just kept throwing a sponge in the rain, hoping for the best.