Potatis Elvira’s Reviews > Letters to the Lost > Status Update

“You were the first person to see all of me, Juliet. The first person who made me feel like I was worth more than a reputation and a record. That’s the hardest part of losing Cemetery Girl. I don’t know if anyone will look at me that same way again.”
-Declan

”His thumb brushes against my neck in a soothing rhythm. “I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“I’ve liked you since the morning you ran into me.”

”We were wrong,” she says. “You make your own path.”

She came home early, exactly like I’d begged her to do. She came home three days early.
Just not to be with us.
- Juliet

She turns around and follows Alan into the kitchen.
My legs don’t want to hold me anymore. “I’m sorry,” I yell, and my voice breaks. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t drive him. I’m sorry I let Kerry go. I’m sorry.”
She doesn’t respond.
She doesn’t come back.
They leave me there on the steps, alone.
- Declan

”I didn’t do anything wrong,” I say again.
“You take every chance you get to do something wrong!” he roars. “You don’t think about anyone but yourself, and when someone does something you don’t like, you do everything you can to destroy it! Why the hell do you think we wouldn’t tell you?”

”I don’t think you wanted to kill yourself.”
I pull next to his car in the now-empty employee lot. “Didn’t you listen to everything I just told you?”
“Yeah. I did. Maybe you wanted to try to kill yourself, but I don’t think you wanted to actually do it.”
“What’s the difference?”

I want to be coy, but my voice comes out serious. “Am I stronger than you thought I was?”
-Juliet
“You’re exactly as strong as I thought you were.”
-Declan

I assumed that if I weren’t driving, he would stay home.
I was wrong. He went out.
He took Kerry with him.
Only one of them came home.
- Declan

”Rev doesn’t like having his picture taken?”
“No. If you look in the old yearbooks, you’ll see he doesn’t have a portrait in any of them.”
I blink. “Really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
“Why?”
Declan’s hands go still, but he keeps his eyes on the wheel. “Because his father used to hurt him and then take pictures of it.”