Mads,
I keep replaying that fight and trying to find a version where I stop before I say it. There isn’t one. There is only the version where I said it and you left and I have to live with the fact that those might have been some of the last words you heard from me before everything happened.
I need you to know that I did not mean I wanted you gone. I meant I wanted you to stop making me feel small. I meant I wanted you to stop trying to run my life. I meant I was scared you were going to leave me anyway, so I wanted to be the one who pushed first. None of that is the same as what I said.
A lot has happened since you disappeared. I keep thinking I should tell you the normal parts, because if I only tell you about the Echo and the 30 and the times everything almost ended, then it sounds like I stopped having a life when you left.
I have been trying to make friends with your best friend, Vic. It is not going well. I think she cares about me, but I also think every time she looks at me she sees you, or Liam. Sometimes we are almost honest with each other, and then one of us panics and says something mean or weird. Usually me.
There is a guy named Marcus. He is gruff and impossible and fixes things instead of talking about them. He could almost feel like a brother, which is terrifying to admit because it means I could lose somebody in that way again. He keeps showing up anyway.
Liam’s brother, Lemon, is not a fuck-up. I know people think he is. I know he probably thinks he is too. But he is one of the best people in the world. He has stood up for me when he absolutely did not have to. He is reckless and strange and loyal in a way that makes me feel less ashamed of being all of those things too.
And Tommy Russo deserved so much more than he ever got. He did terrible things. He lied. He hurt people. He convinced himself that killing the 30 was mercy because he could not imagine another way to stop their suffering. But he was hurt too, and lonely, and trying to save people with whatever was left of him. I wish someone had gotten to him before pain became the only language he trusted.
I don’t know what they have done to you. I know enough to know it has happened more than once. I know the 30 have killed you over and over. I know you kept getting back up, or being brought back, or becoming another version of yourself that still had to remember. I am sorry I ever used death as a weapon against you, even in words.
You were my sister before you were a mystery, or a victim, or the center of a wish. You liked blue. You were annoying and bossy and beautiful and scared, and I loved you even when I was trying hardest not to.
I am not asking you to come home because I need you to save me. I am not asking you to forgive me because I said sorry in an email you might never read. I just need you to know that I am sorry, and that I am trying to become someone who would never say that to you again.
If you want to come home, tell me. If you want me to let you go, tell me that too. This time I will listen.
Love,
Jess