Sarah Ockler

Anna, you miss him._ __ll the time. I still can__ believe he__ gone._ The words come out in a whoosh, tasting funny in my mouth. No matter how many times I say them, they still feel like a garbled, impossible language. My chest hurts, and I have to hold my breath to keep from inhaling a deep sob. __e was more than your best friend._ I nod absently, forgetting myself for a moment, forgetting that I__ talking to Jayne and not my journal. __ _ I mean, he was like a brother to me. You know, like Frankie. Well, she__ the sister. I mean__ Jayne reaches for my hands across the table, shaking her head softly. __weetheart, when you say Matt__ name, you have the same look in your eyes that he__ get whenever he__ say yours.

The only thing that's ours to accept is the fact that we don't always get to know the answers.

Sometimes I think I'm an alien that accidentally fell off the mother ship, destined to wander among clueless earthling parents for all eternity.

But once in a while, you pick the right thing, the exact best thing. Every day, the moment you open your eyes and pull off your blankets, that's what you hope for. The sunshine on your face,warm enough to make you heart sing.

I accept the hard reality that I maybe might possibly be just the slightest tiniest littlest bit kinda sorta interested in him.

Everyone says that the internet is so awesome because you can connect with people from all over the world, but I think it__ the opposite. The internet doesn__ make it easier to connect with anyone__t just makes it so you don__ really have to.

He turned the entire living room into an airport, complete with a four-foot-high LEGO traffic control tower and a fleet of paper planes, plastic army pilots taped safely into their cockpits. From deep beneath the couch, a large utility flashlight illuminates some sort of...landing strip? I crouch down for a better look.Oh. My. God.Stuck to the carpet in parallel, unbroken paths from one wall to the other are two lanes of brand-new maxi pads. Plastic dinosaurs stand guard at every fourth pad__riceratops and T rexes on one side, brontosauruses and pterodactyls on the other__rotecting the airport from enemy aircraft and/or heavy flow.

How can you say it was all a lie?_ I ask, just above a whisper. __att was my best friend. I loved him that way always. __e have to look out for her._ That was the last thing he said to me alone. And then he died. What was I supposed to do, Frank? Tell me?

He was always worrying about me _ even when we were kids. If I scraped my knee or fell off my bike, he was the first one to help me up and make sure Mom got a Band-Aid._ __ remember._ I smile. __e was the quintessential big brother._ __e was. But that__ just it _ he__ not here to protect me anymore, Anna. And you don__ have to be, either. I know I let stuff get crazy. I didn__ mean to be like that _ it just kind of happened. You couldn__ have changed that. I _ it was something I had to go through myself._ My throat tightens. __ felt like I let him down,_ I say. __ll that stuff with smoking and Johan and Jake _ I didn__ take care of you. I couldn__ even keep that one simple promise._ __nna, my brother died. There__ no way you could protect me from that. It__ up to me, now. I let him down. I let me down.

Oh my God, look!_ I stand and hold out my hand for Sam to inspect. __ow,_ he says, taking the glass and holding it up to the sun. __ed is, like, the rarest color there is. You__e totally lucky you even saw it._ I take the deep red, half-dollar-sized piece from him and smile, looking out across the ocean. I told Matt in my letter before we left that I__ find a piece just for him, but now that it__ actually here, sparkling in my hand, I know he__ want me to do something else with it. I raise it above my head and throw it as hard and as far as I can into the sea. Let someone else have a lucky day, Anna. Sam laughs. __ey, crazy, what__ you do that for? You__l probably never see something like that again in your entire life._ __ight. But I did see it. And now someone else can, too.

It's rally bad when dads cry.

Dear Matt, We finally made it to California, and it__ just like you told me. I feel you here with us _ I think Frankie does, too._ How dare you write about me in here! How dare you write to my brother! You think just because you fooled around a few times he cared about you? You think he wouldn__ have ditched you the second he found some new girl at Cornell? Get over yourself!

Hey. What did you do to your - I mean, you look different." My cheeks go immediately hot. Not that your average onlooker can tell, given all the makeup I'm wearing. "Frankie and I were just messing around this morning." "Oh," he says, tying the paper from his straw into little knots. "It looks nice, I mean. I just can't see you, that's all." I make a mental note to ditch the makeup tomorrow. Then I get mad at myself for letting some boy that I just met dictate what I do with my own face. Then I get mad at myself for getting mad at myself and remember that I, too, prefer the natural look.

I closed my eyes under the fluroescent lights and tried to make another birthday wish, a onetime do-over, a rebate, a trade-in on the kitchen sink kiss that started everything, offered up for just one last miracle.

Dear Matt, In less than a day, I_ ll be standing on the same sand you stood on so many times before. Well, not the same sand, with the tides and winds and erosion and all of that, but the same symbolic sand. I__ so excited and scared that I can_ t sleep _ even though I have to wake up in five hours! You know, I saved every one of your postcards. They__e here in a box under my bed _ all the little stories you sent, like little pieces of California. Like the beach glass you guys always brought me. Sometimes I dump it out on my desk and press my ear to the pieces, trying to hear the ocean. Trying to hear you. But you don_ t say anything. Remember how you_ d come back from your vacation on the beach and tell me what it really felt like? What the ocean sounded like at dawn when the beach was deserted? What your hair and skin tasted like after swimming in saltwater all day? How the sand could burn your feet as you walked on it, but if you stuck your toes in, it was cold and wet underneath? How you spent three hours sitting on Ocean Beach just to watch the sun sink into the water a million miles away? If I closed my eyes as you were talking, it was like I was there, like your stories were my stories. In many ways, I feel as if I have memories of you there, too. Do you think that__ crazy? Matt, please don_ t think badly about Frankie__ contest. It__ just a silly game. It__ so Frankie, you know? No, I guess you wouldn_ t. You_ d kill her if you did! She just misses you. We all do. I_ ll look out for her, though. I promise. Please watch over us tomorrow, and for the next few weeks while we__e away. You_ ll be in my thoughts the whole time, like always. I__ going to find some red sea glass for you. I miss you more than you could ever know. Love, Anna

The guilt of not telling Frankie about Matt and me is overwhelming, but it's a pale second to the violation I feel that she read my most private, raw thoughts and destroyed them. She broke into my carefully guarded heart, stole the only remaining connection I had to Matt, and turned it into a monstrosity.

For all its ridiculous imperfections, life is pretty damn perfect sometimes.

I've never met a problem a proper cupcake couldn't fix.