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ADVANCE PRAISE FOR A LOVE STORY STARRING MY DEAD BEST FRIEND
As poignant as it is life-affirming and as tender as it is vibrant. A must-read for adults as well as teens.
Steve Kluger, author of My Most Excellent Year
Emily Horner has written a book that could well be called Much More than a Love Story. Its about friends, and hope, and letting go, and learning to love again. The story will make you want to grab a bike, take a spin, and remember how good it feels to be alive!
Alex Sanchez, author of Rainbow Boys and The God Box
A story so compelling, so moving, so satisfying, so honest that it kept me up way past my bedtime!
Nancy Garden, author of Annie on My Mind
To Beth,
who has taught me
much about writing,
and friendship
Dear Julia,
Im writing this because I still turn around whenever I hear your name, and I just turned around.
This Julia is eight years old. Shes in the booth behind me with her mother and father and older brother. She has just visited the orthodontist, and there is nothing in this world that could console her. Certainly not the promise of being able to chew gum again someday. I want to tell her that its going to be okay, except that for the last two months people have been telling me its going to be okay, and they are all wrong and I want to bite their heads off.
Im writing this on a napkin at a hot dog place outside a town called Dwight, Illinois. As long as days last in the middle of June, I was still surprised when the sun started to go down and I looked at my watch and it was eight oclock already. Fifty-some miles on my bike today, and Id better start looking for somewhere to spend the night.
I am going to California, just like we planned. Im riding my bicycle there, and I know its an impossible distancethe rest of Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. Ive been doing the math, on napkins or in notebooks, to make it look like less of an impossible distance. Ive got 2,391 miles left now, and thats not a number that means anything, but the precision is comforting. Seventy-nine days between today and the last day of August, when Id better get on a bus back home before school starts. Divide it out, you get a little more than thirty miles a day, and theres something reassuring about the calculations. Like how we always did it when one of us was freaking out that we would never have time to write that fifteen-page paper, or never be able to save up enough for decent seats at the theater. It makes it look possible. It makes me forget that I cant do this and I dont expect to.
But somehow, its real. My mother gave me a cell phone and a credit card and sunscreen, and I am prepared for anything that could conceivably happen. And condoms, also. I can see the theoretical value in being prepared for anything, butI just wish that you were here so I could laugh it off and make some bad joke about that being about as necessary as a zombie contingency plan. Instead of thinking about what I cant bring myself to say.
Of course I do have a zombie contingency plan. You know how Jon wants everybody to have zombie contingency plans.
I dont know whether I should call Oliver back. I pick up the phone and I cant do it.
I dont even know what I should do with this letter, because Im writing as if there was somebody I could send it to, and theres not.
Theres just this Tupperware box in the pannier of my bike, and its so light. So terribly light, with nothing in it but your ashes, but its not light at all. Whenever I think about it, I can barely move.
And yet somehow I keep moving, because its just me perched on twenty pounds of steel in motion, with infinite possibilities stretching out in front of me, a vastness that gives me vertigo. The heat on my forearms, and the wind in my hair sweeping in through the helmet vents, and the resistance against my legs as I shift the gears down to muscle myself up the hill. It turns my whole existence into my legs pedaling, my body leaning into the turns, my fingers on the brakes, my eyes on the street. It is so fast and beautiful and all-consuming that my brain doesnt have room for anything else, and I like it that way. It means I dont have to think about you.
But I do anyway.
What I am thinking, when this all looks pointless and hopeless and dumb, is that you havent seen the ocean yet.
Im going to shove myself up these hills. Im going to sleep on hard ground in my little tent. Im going to show you the ocean.
Youll be waiting for me there, yeah?
NOW
I spent the summer with the smells of rain and grass and sky, and the horizon stretching out for ten miles in front of me. The basement workshop was a foreign country now, with blood and rust and sawdust in the air, and fluorescent lights that popped and flickered, and air-conditioning that made me shiver and rub my shoulders even though it was the middle of August. But I was alone with my thoughts, like Id been all summer, and that was fine by me.
In front of me I had the sketches that Lissa drew, and an entire book of Japanese architecture marked up with Amys sticky notes to show how the castle and the shrine were supposed to look. But I started with something simple, marking the contours of the wood cut-outs that were supposed to stand in for bushes. Ruler, protractor, French curves.
I fell into concentration and wasnt sure how much time had passed when I heard a voice say Hey from the stairs.
Hey, I said. I glanced up, but I couldnt see anything more than a pair of feet from where I was.
I was going to do some sewing down here, is that cool?
Its cool.
Got some music, if you want. No show tunes.
Thank God.
She came into view little by littlewhite and pink sneakers. Tights striped in rainbows. A black skirt that puffed out at the sides. A tiny girl, barely five feet, her hair tied back with a lime green scrunchieshe looked as if shed come right out of the halls of middle school. And it was too late to say no, it was not cool, please go away.
Heather. I said it like I was expecting her to say, No, Im Heathers good twin.
Guilty as charged. With barely a nod, she sat down over in the empty seat by the stereo and handed me the CD wallet. Choose something.
Shed hardly said a sentence to me and already I was freezing up and wishing I could throw the CDs at her. I wouldve been ashamed to pick a fight over it. She hadnt done anything wrong except waltz in pretending not to know me, as if there wasnt any history between us. But I wasnt going to go pawing through her CD collection so that we could have a secret musical soulmates thing just because we both liked Arcade Fire. So I handed it back to her.
The first song sounded of suicidally depressed fine gravel. She started sewing; I went back to my pencils and plywood. All we had to do was be civil to each other. We only had to hang out in the same room for a while, hang out with the same friends for a while, and when the play was over wed be able to get lost from each other in the high school crowds. In the middle of two thousand students, you should be able to avoid the one you cant stand, even if you are both rabid overachievers. Oliver told me as much, more than I wanted to hear, and when she was sitting across from me, small and harmless with needle and thread, I could almost believe it.
