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From: [email protected]
Subject: Four letter words
Claire,
Fear isn’t something I experience often, and I do a lot of dangerous shit. Only when I do something really out there do I get a whiff of actual crippling, bone-chilling fear.
But you? You scare the hell out of me, Claire Harper.
If you ever find these emails, or if I ever grow the balls to tell you about them, I’m sure you’ll wonder why a single embarrassing event in the eighth grade had such an impact on my life and approach to relationships. While I don’t think I can fully describe how devastating that moment was, or the utter humiliation of the months (yes, months) that followed, I can sort of see your point.
There’s more to it.
That situation with Angela happened in the fall, and the rest of eighth grade was hell on earth. There were days I made myself throw up just to avoid going to school. But my mom was diagnosed that year, and my concern for her started to overshadow my own shame, and I didn’t want to do anything to cause her or my dad more worry. So I sucked it up and finished the year.
Camping had always been like a reset for me. My dad and I had started going a few years before that, and even though trips were less frequent after my mom’s diagnosis, we still went about once a month. Being out there and seeing how much bigger the world was outside of that small, judgmental school that smelled like money and arrogance was a shift to my perspective every time. It reminded me there was more to life than what happened inside those walls, and there were things I was good at.
Like rock climbing.
The summer after the year of hell I was on one of those trips, and just before night fell a kid from my school ran into our camp. He’d come out with a group of inexperienced climbers and one had frozen with fear on the side of a rock face. They were afraid he’d get tired holding on and fall, and even though he was on belay, they couldn’t just let him stay up there all night. My dad and I grabbed our gear and followed the kid to the site. We were familiar with the area and knew there was a way to get to the top of the face on foot. My dad set the anchor and I climbed down to meet the stuck climber. Once I got there, I realized it was Blake, one of the most popular kids in my class and, incidentally, the guy Angela ended up going to the fall dance with.
Anyway, I talked him through getting off the rock, and by the following week the story had spread through town. I was in the newspaper and Blake, who turned out to be a pretty decent guy, invited me to his house the next weekend.
When I started high school, I was suddenly part of the “in” crowd. All the girls had heard about what I’d done and thought I was some sort of hero. Blake took me under his wing and his good word propelled me to the top of everyone’s list, like my status as the poor janitor’s kid no longer mattered.
I’d like to say I gave them all a “fuck you” and went about those four years with my pride intact, but I was a teenager. Nothing was more important than fitting in back then. So I went with it, slowly learning what it took to become one of them. You wanna know what rule number one was?
Don’t let them see the real me.
It didn’t take long to realize what mattered to those people. They valued confidence, which I learned to fake. Athletic ability, which I had. Power, which I had little of until I learned to make people laugh. I became the fun-loving jokester of the group, and that became my rightful place. And money, which was the one thing I had no hope of having. But with Blake’s seal of approval, everyone else suddenly seemed content to overlook it despite years of bullying.
Things they didn’t value: vulnerability, showing emotion, judging people by who they were on the inside as opposed to how they dressed or what they said. I never got on board with the last one, but I got pretty damn good at hiding the first two.
Once I got it, I was one of them. I belonged. People said hi to me, invited me to their parties, sat with me at lunch. They were “nice” to me. You bet your hot ass I went with it and became the person they wanted to see.
I didn’t realize just how far I’d stepped into the role until I left for college. It’s not so easy to turn back from someone you spend four years grooming yourself into, you know? I’m conditioned not to show weakness. Emotional connection? Fuck, no. Anytime I’ve gotten close, warning flags go up everywhere, telling me to turn around and go back. Not worth it, no one wants to hear it. People don’t actually want to know you, they just want your fun side. The athletic side. The exciting side. The side that makes them feel good.
When I was twenty-one I came back to New Mexico for a camping trip with a bunch of friends and a girl I was casually dating. I couldn’t be that close and not stop by and see my parents, so I planned to pop over to Santa Fe for lunch one of the days, and she tagged along. It was the most awkward thing ever. She just sort of stood in the middle of the room like she didn’t want to be there, looking around like our home was roach-infested squalor rather than a, yeah, small and old, butcleanhome. While we were there my mom lost her footing and bumped into the cabinet in the dining room and this huge glass bowl fell off and broke her foot. At one point I almost cried, I was so upset seeing my mom like that—in pain and embarrassed because she thought she’d made a scene in front of a guest. My girlfriend wanted to go back to the campsite but we were in my car and I couldn’t not go with my dad to take my mom to the ER, so we all went. She asked one of our other friends to come pick her up from the hospital and she broke up with me as soon as we got back to Denver.
That pretty much solidified that, even as an adult, letting people see the real me and meet my family just wasn’t an option.
Then came you. A woman who I can be myself around and who I’m actually going to let come meet my parents. And you know what I don’t feel this time?
Fear.
Graham
19
Claire loved road trips.
Especially now, since she required heavy medication to get on airplanes. Her dad’s accident may have taken her confidence in flying, but it hadn’t stolen her desire to travel. She loved going new places and seeing new things.
And, as Graham had recently pointed out, trying new cuisines.
She wasn’t sure what the plan would be for meals, and she’d be content to share them with Graham’s family if that’s how it worked out. But if they could have one or two out...she’d do some serious research and pick the most unique locally owned restaurant in Santa Fe she could find.
“You’re, like, vibrating with excitement,” Graham noted from his place in the passenger seat. She’d picked him up from the station at five o’clock sharp, bags packed and Gertrude in tow. After a quick stop at the gas station for drinks and snacks, they were ready to start the five-and-a-half-hour drive.
