Dear Hanna

by Zoje Stage

People trusted a naturally pretty face, an easy smile, and being perceived as approachable helped her move through life. And people would do things for a pretty person who knew just how to ask.

Her vision of mothering would always be to do the opposite of everything her own mother had done.

I’m not a little kid anymore and you can use Big Words and say Serious Things and my brain won’t explode.

“You’re not mad?” I asked. (Yes, I admit that was passive aggressive: he clearly wasn’t angry and I was just hitting him up for more lovey-dovey reassurances.)

Being sixteen felt much older than watching sixteen. Joelle often seemed immature for her age, and Hanna alternated between disapproving of how Jacob sheltered her, and admiring how he’d helped to preserve her innocence when the world around her was a catastrophic shit show.

Everyone contained multitudes, and it wasn’t that long ago that Hanna had been a young person tormented by people’s inability to truly understand her.

Perhaps Joelle wasn’t so much a liar but a hider, afraid of what people—her father, especially—would think of her multidimensional self.