Jamie closed her bedroom door, leaning up against it with a deep breath to calm herself down. She felt stupid, delusional. And the worst part: she'd brought this all upon herself. Such a messy situation, and she'd gone and made it all about her.
She walked over to her closet and slid the doors open. Shuffling through her colourful dresses, pushing the fabric aside, she buried her head in her closet and pulled out a shoebox. Sitting down her bed, she took yet another deep breath and pulled the lid off.
The box was overflowing with envelopes, letters galore. She tipped the box upside down, shaking it until every last scrap of paper fell out. She knew exactly how many letters were in the box: 46. One for every day he'd been gone.
She peeled open the envelope of the very first letter she wrote. She'd never been sure if they were actually letters or some sort of personal diary. Either way, she'd never sent any of them. She wouldn't know where to send them to, and if he would even care.
"Dear Preston,
I still can't believe yesterday. I sit around, waiting to wake up, safe in my bed. I'm still convinced it's all some horrible nightmare; as if the past year didn't happen. If I woke up now, Will would still be alive, Dakota would be clean and you'd still be here.
We didn't tell the police about you. We called them, they picked up the body and we told them about Will's clothes, but we didn't mention you. If your name pops up somewhere, we'll think of something. We'll think of anything until you're ready to come home. But we need you to come home. Everything's fallen apart. The friendship between the five of us that was so strong 367 days ago is now hanging by a thread. There's only me and Lou left, and even we can't talk about anything. We don't know what to say.
Please come home. We need you. I need you.
Love Jamie"
A tear rolled down Jamie's cheek as her eyes reached the final line. The final line felt like a knife through the heart, even more so than it did 46 days ago. The notion of needing him, sending him all her love was so strong, it was making her weak.
She picked up her pen out of the mess of envelopes and grabbed a new sheet of paper from her bedside table.
"Dear Preston,
This is my 47th letter to you. You haven't read a single one, but I still pray every night that one day, you will be able to. Dakota's been admitted to rehab today. Lou's parents have decided to move. I'm officially all alone.
I'll keep this brief, but I think you get the message. In all of this, I don't care if Lou moves away, or if Dakota's admitted to rehab. I love them both, but I love you more. I need you around, I need you to make me laugh with some stupid sexist comment that gets me p*ssed off and defensive. I need you to make a ton of idiotic jokes, and then say one genious thing that makes it all seem okay again. I wish there were a way for you to come home, and everything to go back to normal. But I can't see that happening anytime soon.
So even though every day when I wake up, I have to face the excruciating moment where I remember that I'm all alone. Even though every day I face the sympathetic smiles from my classmates, despite the fact that none of them would dare be associated with me, I'll wait. I'll wait until no one cares if you're in town or not but me, and you can finally be where you belong. With me.
All my love, Jamie"