Total pages in book: 166
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 160042 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 800(@200wpm)___ 640(@250wpm)___ 533(@300wpm)
Sometimes you make me mad because you can be so blunt and rude. Not to mention, so bossy and high-handed. Especially when you tell me to quit my shitty job at the shitty library with shitty hours and the shitty air-conditioning. And I know I freaked out on you when you told me to stay away from my math professor because he asked me to come up to his office after hours. But you were right. He did make a pass at me. So I declined his offer of being his TA. And funnily—and spookily—enough, I heard that he took a job at another university a few days later. You didn’t have anything to do with it though, did you? There are times when you make me smile too. You listen to me ramble about my classes, my professors, all the plans I have about grad school, about my future.
And then there are other ways I think about you.
I imagine how you look bent over the piece of paper that I hold in my hands every week. I imagine your fingers—that I think are long and thick, maybe scarred and scrape-y from years of working on the ranch—clutching the pen and scribbling words. For some reason, that picture is so hard to come by. Maybe because after everything I know about you, it’s hard for me to imagine you sitting still. Even though I know you do. Even though I know you have to, given where you are right now.
I also imagine your face.
I know we never talked about it, not after my initial confession, but the article I read about you in the Post had a picture of you too. It was grainy and unclear. But I could see you, with your dark head bent, as you were escorted out of the courtroom with a crowd around you. And while I couldn’t see your face among the sea of people, I could see that it was raining and some days I feel really sad about that. About the fact that it was probably one of your last days on the outside and the sun was hiding behind gray clouds.
I don’t want to stop imagining you. I don’t want to stop talking to you. I don’t want to stop, period.
Do you?
Until next time (hopefully),
Peyton
To: Peyton Turner
From: Bo Porter
Peyton,
This is a bad idea. Straight up.
It was a bad idea when you first wrote to a felon, asking for his help, and it’s a bad idea now that you want to keep writing to me when there’s no need for it anymore. This is the opposite of the careful life you want to lead. The opposite of what a straight-A student might do. I want you to remember that. For later. Remember that it was your idea because my answer is no. I don’t want to stop.
Instead, I want to tell you about my Tuesdays.
My Tuesdays go like your Fridays. Every Tuesday when one of the guards moves through the rows of tables in the dayroom, distributing the mail, he knows to come to me first. He knows I watch him like a hawk until he makes his way over. And he knows not to let anyone disturb me when I get your words in my hands.
But unlike you, I don’t skip sentences. I go slow. I take my time. I take in every word, absorb paragraphs. Then I close my eyes and sniff your words in through the nose like cocaine. Call me crazy but they smell like flowers. Sweet and rosy. And when I’m high on you, I see you in my head too.
There you are, sitting at your desk with your head bent. I think you’d have your hair up and away from your face. You’re a straight-A student, aren’t you, so you don’t want anything to break your focus. Maybe you also wrinkle your forehead when you’re deep in thought. Or when you have a hard time coming up with the perfect word or the correct phrase.
Or maybe you bite your lip?
When you’re sassing me, I imagine you doing it with a lifted chin. Your hand getting heavy on the paper, your breaths picking up speed. Your cheeks red and flushed with anger. I imagine you frowning as I tell you that I don’t want you working so hard at the library, your nose buried in a book. I want you to have an adventure. And if I could, I’d give it to you. I imagine that frown getting thicker as I ask you what if it really was me, who scared that professor away? Like I did with those inmates.
Would you be scared of me?
And now I’m imagining the flush of anger spreading through your cheeks because you’re not afraid of anything, least of all a felon hundreds of miles away. And I want to touch it, that flush.