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  I hope you’re okay and not in too much pain.

  I remember seeing this movie where a guy gets AIDS and dies. He gets all these brown spots on his face and starts stumbling around his apartment and then he goes blind and collapses on a coffee table.

  Is anything like that happening to you yet? I figure AIDS and cancer have at least a few things in common but maybe I’m totally wrong. When I get to you you better not be blind. At least give me a few days of you being able to see.

  Love,

  Your Bro

  August 28th, 2007

  Dear New Boy,

  Welcome to Buckner!

  This is my fifth year at the academy. As a seventh-grader in New Haven, Connecticut, I coasted by with a 3.0 GPA, played sports, and was fine with being “good enough.” Then I came to Buckner’s summer camp and after the incredible experience I had, my parents decided to enroll me for the full academy program.

  My experiences here at Buckner have been life-changing, as I’m sure they will be for you, too. The program has taught me dedication and motivation. I’ve learned that anything I want to do can be accomplished with hard work. My cumulative GPA is now 3.8, and I tutor other cadets in math at the Reginald Plotke Learning Center. This year I will compete in three sports: football, basketball, and track. I’ve been challenged with the leadership position of captain of the varsity basketball team and have worked very hard in preparation for the upcoming season. Chapel services help ground me. I listen to each message to see how it applies to my everyday life.

  In our Leadership Education Training classes, I’ve learned alternative methods of dealing with problems and people and strategic ways to talk to and motivate others. I’ve earned several medals and academic stars, but my coveted achievement is the JROTC National Scholar Athlete Medal because it is awarded to a cadet who is successful both in sports and in the classroom.

  All this is here for you, too. As you begin the difficult initiation process that will challenge you during the coming weeks, just know that I was once in your shoes. Have faith that Buckner Academy is here to make you better!

  Sincerely,

  Captain Patrick Karl

  Commander, Bravo Company

  September 10, 2007

  Dear Mom,

  So I promised you I would write you so here goes my first letter. I got here two days ago and I haven’t slept yet. This place is really scary Mom. Not like horror movie scary the kind of scary where you think you might die because you don’t have what it takes. All the buildings are made out of stone and there’s this huge graveyard full of these things called class stones and my room overlooks it and I keep thinking I’m going to see the Headless Horseman galloping through with an axe or something. I know Dad is a military hero and Edward won all those physical-fitness badges and is an all-conference wrestler and can do that thing where you grab a pole and stick your legs out sideways but I don’t think I have the same intestinal fortitude or whatever that’s called. What I’m saying Mom is that I’m weaker than everybody like physically and mentally too like I can’t remember how to ask permission to eat or use the bathroom. I screw everything up. I feel like I’ve been shining shoes nonstop. My squad leader hates me. He’s this guy Sergeant Voyce and every time he sees me he makes me drop and do push-ups. I know I should give it more time but I was wondering if I could come home. I really don’t think I’m cut out for this Mom. I know that’s disappointing to hear but I’m just trying to be honest. If you let me come home I promise I won’t smoke any more pot and I won’t steal anything and I’ll stop doing antihistamines and I’ll apply myself in school and start using my intelligence in a positive way. Things are so bad that last night in the middle of the night I had to go to the bathroom really bad but I didn’t go because there was this guy on duty who likes to poke me in the Adam’s apple with his knuckle. He’s done it like six times in two days his name is Staff Sergeant Rebillard and he has a face like a smashed cat so I stayed in bed and eventually fell asleep but I pissed my bed right before reveille. It wasn’t a huge amount or anything it was mostly my underwear and pajama bottoms I threw them away but I had to change my sheets before first mess which meant that I couldn’t work on my shoes and they weren’t shiny enough and Sergeant Voyce wound up making me stay in push-up position for the whole morning formation and my hands wouldn’t stop shaking all through breakfast if you don’t let me come home I think I’m going to run away like go AWOL and never look back or maybe I’ll stick a fork in my eye and get kicked out I swear Mom I’m going to do that if you loved me you would let me come home. Okay fuck this I just read this letter and there’s no way I’m sending it to you. No way no way no way no way. It will live in this notebook forever or I will burn it.

  September 25th, 2007

  Dear Jamie,

  How’s military school? I hope it’s going well. You’ve been gone for almost a month and it’s strange getting used to you not being here. At night every time I look over at your bed I keep expecting to hear you snoring or talking in your sleep like you do, but you’re not there. Do you keep your new roommate up at night with your snoring? Has he written down some of the things you say in your sleep? Remember that time after we went fishing in Michigan how you stood straight up in your bed and said that the state capital of Ohio was hidden in the cornflakes? That was really funny. You should tell your new roommate to keep a pen and a pad of paper near his bed so he can write everything down.

  Things at home are good. I just applied for early acceptance into the University of Chicago premed program. I applied to Yale and Carnegie Mellon too, but my first choice would be U of C because it’s the best. My biology teacher, Mr. Sparr, thinks I have a great chance to get in all three, so cross your fingers for me.

  I decided to join the cross-country team because I thought it would get me in better shape for wrestling. Three-point-one miles is no joke. After the two-mile mark I always feel like I have nothing left. You have to really dig down deep for that final one-point-one. I’m going to try to go down a weight class this year because Coach Calhoun thinks I could win state at 156. I’m on a no-cholesterol, high-protein diet. I mostly eat oatmeal and almonds and salmon. Did you know that salmon is considered one of the perfect foods? Apparently so is anything from a goat, like goat milk or goat cheese. And coconut water is the most hydrating thing you can put in your body. Did you know that? It’s even more hydrating than Gatorade. Dad’s basically on the same diet, so it makes it easy for Mom.

  Speaking of Mom, she’s on a mission to renovate the basement. She was on the phone with Home Depot for over an hour today. She ordered a bunch of paneling for the walls and she’s getting carpeting too. She spends most of her time down there, sorting through old boxes and trying to figure out where she’s going to put stuff. Dad wants a bar down there, too. And maybe a sauna and a Jacuzzi. Don’t be surprised if they put you to work during your Thanksgiving break.

  I got these circular push-up mounts that the Navy Seals use for their workouts. They’re part of the perfect push-up package that I ordered off the Internet. I’ve been working out with them for two weeks now and my chest and shoulders are getting really strong. I asked Mom to get you a pair so you could do some working out on the side. I know you don’t like the notion of fitness so much, but it could help you get through the initiation process for new cadets that Dad was telling me about. I also got a pull-up bar mounted in our room now. I’ve been doing three sets of ten three times a week and I’m hoping to get up to twelve by next week.

  Jamie, I wanted you to know one thing. Remember how you were getting into all that trouble this summer? With the stealing and that thing you did to Mrs. Weitzel’s birdbath? And how I walked in on you smoking pot in the garage? Well, I never said anything about that to Mom or Dad. I let that one stay between us. I hope you believe me, Jamie, because it’s true. I know we haven’t always gotten along, but I don’t want you to think for a minute that I’m some sort of narc.

  But regarding your recent behav
ior, I do hope that Buckner is helping you find a better path, one that is more productive and helping you move toward your potential, because you have so much of that, Jamie, so much potential. All three of us do, and even though Peter is squandering his down in Memphis or Athens, Georgia, or wherever it is that he is busy being an opinionated homosexual, there is still hope for you.

  Please don’t break Mom and Dad’s hearts.

  Please do not do that, Jamie.

  Love,

  Edward

  March 8, 2008

  Dear P,

  It’s two days since I wrote you and my hand is definitely starting to feel better. My head hurts less too but it still throbs if I bend down to tie my shoes. When I do anything like that it feels like my eyeballs are going to burst.

  I’m at this shitty little place called the Lakeside Motel where Dan or Dave or Dale and the old lady with the leaky eye dropped me off it’s about twenty miles away from Highway 25 on this road with this huge old parking lot where all these semis and a bunch of truck drivers are smoking and sitting on plastic beach chairs and drinking out of bottles with brown paper bags over them and playing cards and talking on their cell phones. It’s mad big this parking lot thing and there’s a hamburger stand blaring classic rock at the front like mostly Bruce Springsteen and Fleetwood Mac and Pink Floyd. I was walking around there a little earlier but there weren’t any other kids around. It’s like truckers have something against the younger generation. This one Mexican dude with all these tattoos on his arms offered me an ear of corn on a stick. He had like a whole bucketful of them but I said no thanks and kept weaving through the crowd. In some ways that parking lot is like a carnival without rides. A carnival without rides or kids. I think it used to be a drive-in-movie place because there’s an old white screen with all these stains on it. Someone spray painted “JESUS HAS A WEBSITE” on it which is a funny thing to write without adding the website address like it’s some seriously privileged information that you have to PRAY to get or something.

  I’m writing to you from a picnic table behind the motel. I’m under this ancient tree with maroon-colored leaves. There’s a huge spiderweb from the tree that attaches to the motel and I keep waiting for some big hairy spider to come out like a tarantula or a black widow or one of those giant camel spiders from the Iraq war like one of the ones E showed me on his computer before I left for Buckner. Anyway P it’s a pretty artistic-looking web and there are like five flies trapped in it and one of them is really struggling to get free and I have to admit that I’m sort of getting off on it like I can’t wait for the spider to come and eat all the flies and maybe torture one just for pleasure.

  Next to the picnic table is this little swimming pool. It has a diving board and there are a few lounge chairs scattered around it but there’s a NO SWIMMING sign and there are all of these dead things floating in it like mice and bugs and frogs and the water is all murky and green and looks like sewage. There’s probably a bunch of snakes wriggling around under the surface too. I wouldn’t go in it if you paid me a thousand bucks.

  I’m not exactly sure what town I’m in but I’m somewhere near Buffalo Wyoming. There’s no lake near the Lakeside Motel. At least not one that I can see so I think the motel must be built on a foundation of bullshit. Maybe there used to be some prehistoric lake where the dinosaurs used to bathe or swim and it dried up and they filled it with dirt and trees or something? Or maybe the person’s last name who owns the motel is Lakeside like John Lakeside or Kevin Lakeside or Rodrigo Lakeside?

  When I said good-bye to Dave or Dan or Dale and the old lady with the leaky eye not much happened. I was hoping they would offer me some cash or a box of Slim Jims or like a gift certificate to McDonald’s or something but they didn’t. Dale or Dan or Dave DID wind up buying me some waffles at a Denny’s though so I finally got to eat which was cool but I got diarrhea pretty bad and almost ruined a rest stop bathroom. There was only one stall in that bathroom and this little black kid was waiting to use it and now he’ll probably hate white people.

  Back in the Lincoln I wound up falling asleep for like four hours. For a second I thought maybe Dan or Dave or Dale and the old lady with the leaky eye tried to poison me because people carry vials P. They carry vials and put little pellets of cyanide between your pancakes when you’re not looking. I had never felt that sleepy before in my life.

  When I woke up we were stopped at a traffic light in a small town and the old lady with the leaky eye was staring at me. She was completely turned around in her seat with her face sort of perched on the top of the headrest. I was like “What?” and she said “You got one heckuva snore on you shrimp” and then she sort of imitated me snoring and I have to admit it was funny P.

  Anyway they wound up dropping me off at the Lakeside Motel and I’ll probably never see them again.

  I didn’t have enough money for a room because it’s forty-two bucks a night and I only have eleven left. I thought I could just hang out in the lobby and crash on the sofa till the girl behind the counter got sick of me. For a while she was pretty talkative and maybe even sexually obsessed with me. Her name was Erin and she wasn’t too pretty but I would have probably let her give me a hand job. She had these big sad eyes and pimples along her hairline and this nose ring that you could barely see like a little speck of glass stuck to her nostril.

  Erin’s mom and dad owned the motel and she was on spring break from college and she was pissed because most of her friends were at some resort town in South Carolina called Myrtle Beach and her parents made her come home to help out at the motel. She said she was fine with it though because everyone gets mad herpes in that resort town. Herpes and crabs and this other sexually transmitted disease that makes you get lockjaw.

  Another fact about Erin was that she was a freshman at North Carolina University and she wouldn’t stop talking about their men’s basketball team and how even though they lost some players to the NBA draft that they were going to win the national championship at the end of the month. She was wearing a light blue North Carolina hoodie and even her keychain had “TAR HEELS” on it. Man P skeezers who love sports are not cool in my opinion. Edward would have probably loved Erin for that very reason. She had pretty nice titties to be fair. I never got too good a look at her ass because her hoodie was hanging down over it. It made me curious to see it though which scientifically speaking is an effective technique that other girls should try. Erin’s best feature was her hair. It was even better than her titties. It was the color of butterscotch pudding. E would have definitely been into her P. I can just picture them walking around back in Cincinnati like at Eastgate Mall like holding hands and eating one of those big soft pretzels with mustard on it.

  Erin was watching TV in the office. I think it was a DVD of some shark movie from the nineties starring LL Cool J. I kept having this weird fantasy that she would lift her hoody and flash me but things like that never really happen right? At least to me they don’t. I’m sure guys like Brad Pitt and Leonardo DeCaprio and LL Cool J get that kind of special treatment from mad West Coast skeezers but you have to win an Oscar or be voted sexiest male spy of the decade to earn those sorts of privileges. I’ll probably wind up dating some shy girl with a neck brace and an ass shaped like a stop sign and she’ll NEVER lift her hoodie for me not even if I pay her.

  Erin let me use the bathroom in the little motel office and I tried to take a mini-shower in the sink which is something I did a lot in Portland because the community shower on the fourth floor of Washington House always had trash in it like a half-eaten burrito or a paper plate with ketchup on it or something. Once there was this old man sitting down on the shower room floor. He was naked and his chest was all saggy and bald and he was clipping his toenails. When I walked in he said “THERE’S my community!” He like totally shouted it at the top of his lungs so I turned around and went back to my room.

  In the motel office bathroom there was a real bar of soap none of that pink squirty stuff. I washed my face and
wet my hair down and gargled some cold water and changed into a pair of Sam’s sweat socks which actually fit me pretty good. I was really starting to feel better even though my scalp itched and my teeth felt coated with germs.

  When I came out Erin had turned off the TV and started acting suspicious. First she said “Did you just shoot up in there because if you’re like shooting up or doing crack or something I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” I told her I didn’t do anything and then she said “Well did you like SNORT something?” and I told her I just washed up a little and I showed her how my hair was wet but she still wouldn’t believe me so I pulled up my sleeves to prove I didn’t have track marks and then she put on some lip gloss and asked if someone was coming to pick me up and I said “No” and she said “You just like hanging out in motels?” and I said “Maybe” and then she crossed her arms and said “Are you like homeless? Because no offense or whatever but you sort of smell like you are.”

  My face got hot with embarrassment and now I live in terror about having BO total terror P but I figure it could have been my jeans because they tend to get smelly. They would get that way especially in Portland because I didn’t wash my clothes much there.

  I told Erin the skeezer that I wasn’t fucking homeless and how I was on my way to seeing you and how I had been on that Greyhound and got jumped in Idaho and how I had to hitch a ride with Sam and his mom and another one with Dale or Dan or Dave and the old lady with the leaky eye who kept calling me shrimp and Erin was like “If you’re gonna lie you should be more creative.”

  I swore to her I wasn’t lying and showed her my puffy eye and the scrapes behind my ear and she said it didn’t prove anything and then she asked me my age and I told her the truth and she said I was younger than fourteen and that pissed me off and I didn’t even bother telling her that I’m going to be FIFTEEN in like nine days. I didn’t even bother because I had decided right then and there that she wasn’t worth it. It’s weird P just when you start telling people the truth they don’t believe you. I have to remember that I do.