Love Letters to Write Before I Die

He contemplated for the next few hours if he should write back to Haley. But every time he picked up the pen in his injured hand, he discovered that he was rendered speechless by her last letter. It was as if no matter what he wrote, the girl would fight back with such ridiculous passion for hope and life that he was certain there was nothing he could do to convince her otherwise.

It got out of hand. It wasn’t even the point he was trying to make in the first place. In a way or another, Nathan realized, he didn’t want to turn someone into a pessimist or make that someone to face the ugly truth that was life. He just wanted to be heard.

He rubbed his temples.

Haley, the ‘Letter Haley’, reminded him of his dad, Robert, sometimes. But he lacked the persistence and it seemed as if everything he said came out bland and bleak. Sometimes, it would really sound as if his dad really believed that Nathan would continue to be alive until 70. The other times, his voice strained slightly – as if he didn’t want to give himself the hopes to know that his son would be able to live for that long.

His mother on the other hand, Sophia, would just look as if she might burst into tears as soon as she saw him. He remembered all the fights that kept him awake at night. The terror paralyzing his limbs and he pretended to be asleep, just in case they might kick the door down to his room or something. He was 14 then.

“Our son, is going to die!” his mother screeched, her voice just barely piercing the walls of his room. But he could hear them. “And we can’t do anything about it, Robert!”

“Sophie—” Robert Scott began but was instantly cut off by his spouse. Any attempt to calm his wife down was shot and thrown out the window.

“What have I done wrong to give that lovely boy...” her mother trailed off and Nathan couldn’t hear them anymore. He just assumed that his mother probably broke down crying then. Which made him upset for a couple of weeks or so.

Katie was a beautiful girl, there was no denying that. She had long chestnut hair, framing her high cheekbones well. She always wore some sort of a flower as hair accessory. Her eyes were blue and she had heavy eyelashes. He knew her since junior high and somehow, he didn’t have the guts to tell her about his illness. At one point in their friendship, he did but he just couldn’t bring himself to.

She was book smart, granted. But everything else…not so much.

So that might explain her awful taste in boys and friends.

Sometimes, Nathan couldn’t imagine what trouble she would land herself into if he was gone from her life. Which made him being dead all the more worrying.

“I just have to say this,” he said, looking at Katie who was sitting near him on the couch, eyeing him warily. His bottom lip was split, there were bruises on the left side of his face and hidden under the thin fabric that was his shirt, was another bruise.

“You can be such an idiot sometimes,” he sighed.

“How should I know he’ll…you know,” she said, trailing off awkwardly.

“Try to attack you?” Nathan said, raising an eyebrow. “Katie, he’s a known delinquent at school. There are clouds of rumors so thick surrounding him you’d probably get lost trying to even get close to him. Everyone knew.”

“I don’t like being judgmental,” Katie pouted.

“What the—it’s hard not to be if the guy once punched the principle’s face.”

“You don’t know that.”

“He nearly slipped into comma. He resigned a few days after that.”

“You still don’t know if Rick bashed the principle’s face.”

“Half of the student body saw it because he did it in the hallways, Katie,” Nathan said, his voice quivering with disbelief at his friend’s innocence.

“…I didn’t see the actual bashing.”

“For crying out loud!” Nathan said, slumping. People in his life were suddenly getting really frustrating all at once.