The Day Before Tomorrow

Monday, April 17th. Dear Catherine.

I suppose no one’s ever taught you the value of shutting your mouth when you’ve got nothing good to say— but then again, they say kids who don’t have dads, usually turn out the worst. (I get to say that, cuz I don’t have one either). My mom says that I should be nice to you, despite what you said, cuz your dad walked into a rope and jumped off a high place. Somehow that means it’s everybody else’s problem and that they should be nice to you. This letter is my olive branch. But it doesn’t mean we’re friends.

Sincerely Yours, Joel Montgomery.

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Tuesday, April 18. Dear Joel.

I suppose no one’s ever taught you the value of honesty, but then again, children born to liars can’t grow to learn better on their own. I didn’t even offend you; not on purpose at least. I said what I said about your mom to a friend, and I apologized when I’d noticed other people’d heard it too, but you went nuts about it in front of everyone. You’re only mad because you’re embarrassed. Not because you’re genuinely angry at me— though if you are, I’m truly sorry. . . that you are in possession of such a deep and personal you problem.

I remember when your dad left. We live in the biggest town, yet the news spread like wildfire. That was the year I pitied you, and I pitied you until people began to pity me. It’s true my dad walked into a rope and jumped off a high place. And it’s true that somehow, everybody else made it their problem. But my dad left me because he was sick. Yours left because he wanted to. If we’re going to play a game of ugly words, we should pick someone to choose a winner — or else it’ll never end. Or I suppose worse, it’ll end, and we’ll never know.

Dear Joel. No. We are Not Friends. But I think we’ve got bigger things to worry about now.

Mine, Catherine Heeler.

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Wednesday, April 19th. Dear Catherine.

Who did you have in mind? To do the picking of winners and all?

P.S. My Mom isn’t a liar.

— Joel.

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Thursday, April 20. Dear Joel.

Do you remember Mrs. Cellophane? She started working at our school the year you came, the year everyone thought you were a big shot, just because you had a ‘New York’ accent, forged straight from the bowels of New Jersey of which you came. People from Detroit think everybody’s from the same place. If your accent sounds remotely British, then you’re from England. Remotely Southern, then you’re from Texas. And you, were from New York. I think we’re happier accepting something as it might be, than what it could be, or what it is. My dad might’ve left because he hated his job, or because something was seriously wrong. But it was probably because he resented the fact that I was born, from the moment that I was. And you might be genuinely sorry and embarrassed for overreacting when I said what I did. But more than likely, you’re probably not. I think the might bes, are better than the probablies, and definitely sos.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Cellophane. I think she hated the both of us like it was her job. When I walked past the teacher’s lounge, I could’ve sworn she called me Cunty Catherine, and we all know what she called you, in front of everybody, every day. I think everyone in the ninth grade class hated Mrs. Cellophane, but I liked her very much. She spoke to you as if you’d see right through her skin and spot it if she lied. If you could say anything about her, it’s that she always told the truth.

The truth. . . It is a truth universally acknowledged, that your mother told a lie. She said she could fix this thing. And now the world is ending, in five days.

Dear Joel. We live in the age where you don’t even need a cellphone, to communicate from a place very far. Why letters?

— Catherine Heeler.

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Friday, April 21st. Dear Doomsday.

If I never see Mrs. Cellophane again, I’ll admit that God is real. I swear she’ll be the only one of us to survive this thing. And my mom never told a lie. She just didn’t know the important parts of the truth, and did the best with what she had.

My dad told me once, that when you intend to tell someone how you feel, you should never do it in person, or over the phone. When you want to tell someone you love them, you should write it down, because when you write, you choose the words you mean. A text is quick, and more often than not, filled with error. Through word of mouth, you run the risk of messing up, in one way or a million. When you write, every word is curved and coiled with intention. Every letter of every phrase, is injected with the things you mean. Everybody deserves to read a love letter — and I figured the same rules would naturally apply to a hate one too. (So I wrote yours).

I think the people from where I kinda come from, believe in the might bes too. Half the people in New York aren’t really even from there, but they go there in hopes of something that’ll probably never happen. One day they might star on Broadway, one day they might rule fashion week, one day somebody might notice them. But in reality, they probably won’t. I think I’m afraid of the might bes. The might bes give you hope, even when you know you shouldn’t have it. I think I’m scared of hoping, because when you hope, there’s a chance you’ll lose. When you accept the truth of a matter, you can’t be betrayed in the end.

Dear Doomsday— see I call you that, cuz you’re one of those people counting down the seconds till the world ends. If nobody hoped in the first place, they wouldn’t hate my mom. And your dad wouldn’t have left, and neither would’ve mine.

P.S. You owe me your biggest fear.

— Joel.

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Saturday, April 22nd. Dear Joel.

Mrs. Cellophane was a grade A wench, but I think she’s just like us in a way. See you and I are what they call ghosts. Nobody knows what to say to us, so they stay away. They look through us, and march forward, as if to approach us would rip the organs through their skin, and bury them next to our dads, or mine at least, and the memory of yours. But when they do see us they stare, locked in some kind of frozen trance. Only the brave approach us. They muster the nerve, and they ball their fists at their sides, and they come up to us, and they say whatever it is they could think of to prove they were strong enough to talk to us. They ask us how we’re doing. And then they go, and they move on, and we’re still the ghosts frozen in the moments that our fathers left. I think Mrs. Cellophane was so mean because she didn’t have a mom. Whatever it was, I guess it takes a poltergeist to know one.

I saw you yesterday morning in the principal’s office. I was too far to hear you through the glass at first, but I knew why you were there. The student council drafted a letter, signed by the man in charge himself, Principal James Creed-Hopper. They invented a club for sad kids, better said, kids who’ve lost a parent, who’d be experiencing the asteroid alone. I was there when they debated whether kids whose parents only abandoned them should get to join, or if it wasn’t the same because they might come back by the time it struck the Earth. They argued about it for forty-nine minutes, and they looked at me many times, but they didn’t dare ask for my input, unsure of how I’d react. I’m the acting student body Vice President, who passes out free cupcakes and buttons for a season every year, whose mother tells the world who got shot on tv every night on the eleven o’clock news. And yet, all I am to anybody is the girl whose dad killed himself. Nevertheless, I saw you.

I saw you grip the edges of the yellow letter in the tips of all of your fingers, before you ripped it perfectly down the middle, and slammed the remnants on Principal Creed-Hopper’s desk. I watched you point your finger so close to his eye I thought he’d get you on assault. Close enough now, I heard you, through the glass; you yelled that you didn’t need to talk about your dad, and it wasn’t anyone else’s business. You laughed at him when he said he just thought it would be a good idea. You asked him if it was mandatory. No, you said, “What happens if I don’t do this?”

Mr. Hopper said, “I strongly suggest you attend.”

But what he meant was, there wasn’t a consequence. You told him you hated this school, and when you stormed out of his office, you slammed the door so hard I thought the glass would break. And then you walked past me without a word, but eyes so empty, only people who’ve been through the kind of stuff we have, would notice how they were so very full. How people like us, with eyes so devoid, fill the emptied space with stories only our brethren can read. If anyone knew where your father was, I might’ve feared you’d kill him, with eyes like those.

Because he did this to you.

You are the big hot shot from New York City-Jersey, who plans on being a psychiatrist one day, if you weren’t lying in class when Mr. Drew asked. You’re the boy who paints a different mural on the side of his car every month— whose Mom once told the world she could stop the asteroid “in thirty days,” and now, we’re counting down the moments till it hits. Going to school, and working our jobs as if pretending time is normal, will negate the truth of what’s to come. But all they see you as, is the boy whose dad left him.

Dear Joel. I’m not afraid of anything. But there are things I used to hate. I used to hate beginnings more than anything in the world, because for something to begin, it must only mean that something else has ended, but life moved on regardless. My dad used to say that he’d love me to the end of the world, and if something should happen that tears us apart, all I’d have to do is find him there, and he’d love me all over again and beyond. I’m almost inclined to say that if one good thing came out of the asteroid. . . But I guess that’s a selfish thought.

Dear Joel. The world ends in three days.

Mine,

Catherine Heeler.

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Sunday, April 23rd. Dear Doomsday.

I don’t think you hate beginnings. I think you’re terrified of ends, or worse, being forgotten. Even if you won’t admit it.

I don’t want to be forgotten either. If there isn’t a place after this one, and we really just become atoms in the ground, the only way we get to live beyond dying is through the memories of the people we left behind. It’s scary to think we could exist our whole lives, just to disappear on a moment’s notice. To one day be a person, with a story, with a life, and then the next, you’re gone, and no one’s left behind to know that you paved the grounds they’ll change the world on. I don’t want to be forgotten, but I’m not afraid if it happens. I won’t know, because I’ll be atoms. And they won’t know, because they forgot.

I don’t think you’re afraid of being forgotten. I did, but now I change my mind. My mom said that when the asteroid hits, only 50 percent of life on Earth will survive. And they can’t pinpoint the region. That means one of us could get so lucky that our house is the end of the radius, and the neighbor we hate’s’ll remain standing tall. I think what you’re really afraid of, is being the one who stays. Losing so many people, that you begin to forget who. Because when you forget, it’s gone, and so is he. I don’t think you could forget your dad, even if you wanted to. But if you do, no one would think it’s your fault.

You know, yesterday, I saw you too. And I imagined after I stormed out of Hopper’s office, and eyed you without a word, that you’d followed me. I imagined you’d chased me down the hall, and when you caught up to me, I turned around to face you, and I screamed at you. I imagined telling you the club was a joke, and a cruel one, too. I wanted to tell you that you were the Vice Student Body President, and it was selfish of you to sit there and let kids who go home to both of their parents decide who gets to be in the sad kids club and who doesn’t, and pass people a yellow letter to remind them of what they have and we don’t. I didn’t say anything, however. Because then who would I write letters to, till we reached the end of the world.

Dear Doomsday.

A lot of people’s families ran away, when the asteroid was announced. My dad left to do things he’d never done before, and live all the life fear and money was holding him back from. And your dad ran away, because he couldn’t take the guilt, knowing he brought a kid into a world he already knew was going to end. A lot of kids’ parents felt that way, or at least that’s what your mom’s survey said on the news. I feel like we’re supposed to be mad at them. They knew it twenty years ago that the asteroid was coming, and they carried on like normal, as if it wasn’t. But I kind of understand them, I guess, more than I’m angry. . . I think human beings are complicated, and made of opposites. But not the left and right, stop and go, kind. I think we’re made of human matter, and human matter consists of indecisive mismatches, and it will be impossible to figure us out until the day we die, because that’s the day we’ll officially stop changing. I guess if anything good. . . But maybe that’s equally selfish.

Dear Dooms. What’s your favorite color? Mine’s blue. Today, at least.

Joel.

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Monday, April 24th. Dear Joel.

I thought I’d be more nervous than I am today, knowing tomorrow comes. Somehow I don’t feel too much of anything. I can’t really explain it; being afraid of dying all your life, and then when you’re finally face to face with it, accepting there’s nothing you can do. I have come to other conclusions, however.

Human beings are impossible. Throughout our lives, we meet an abundance of other human beings, and we obtain as much knowledge as we possibly can, and we laugh so hard our stomachs ache, and we cry so hard we think the world will end, until one day, the asteroid comes. We love as wide as the universe is long, and we kill because it’s easier than being fair. We eat ice cream cones because they make us happy, and we build tools to wreck each other as if this land the stars made, belongs to any of us. We love babies because they’re innocent. We trade innocence, for aging. We are indecisive mismatches, and then one day, we stop. I guess if I’m sure of anything, it’s that having you as a distraction to it all wasn’t the worst of ways to spend an hour after school.

I think that when the asteroid comes, I won’t close my eyes. Then again, I’m afraid of every bump in the night, so we’ll see how far that goes.

Dear Joel. My favorite color’s green.

Forever,

Catherine Heeler.

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Tuesday, April 25th. Dear Doomsday.

When the asteroid hits in thirty minutes time, I don’t think I’ll close my eyes. I don’t know, I guess I think it’s important, seeing everything as it once was, before the asteroid turns it into something else. I’ve never seen the sky so red before. I guess God finds it amusing, setting the tone before He strikes. My mom hasn’t given up. She told me that she loved me, but that it was important she go to the lab. Her team’s still trying, till the end. They think they can stop this thing.

I don’t know how to say goodbye, to something that feels like it’s only just beginning. But I guess if I’m sure of anything, it’s that whatever happens, I hope you find your dad. You know, I don’t think I’m afraid of the might bes, anymore. Might bes mean maybe. And maybe, means there’s a chance.

Dear Catherine. Perhaps it’s pathetic now, but somehow I’m glad to know you.

If you ever get to read this,

Always Yours,

Joel Montgomery.

Wednesday, April 26th. Dear Catherine.

Mom hasn’t come home yet. I guess now I get how the rest of you felt, when she promised. The asteroid took out half the school, you know; it’s hanging by wired threads. I could see it from my bedroom window. I didn’t close my eyes. . . I’m unsure if I’m alone. I don’t really know how to check.

Dear Catherine, if you’re out there. Well, you know what to do.

Thursday, April 27th. Dear Catherine.

Friday, April 28th. Dear Catherine.

Dear Catherine.