Dearest Josephine

you. That’s not an excuse for my lack of communication. I know I’ve been rotten and selfish—and you deserve to hate me. I can’t even blame cancer.
You lost my dad too.
I want to be friends again. Remember our first slumber party at my house? Dad made the worst jam roly-poly, and we filmed videos of us singing karaoke. We promised to stay friends forever. Swore it. Heck, I think we did a friendship ritual to seal the deal.
Please forgive me, Faith. London is rubbish without you. I’m rubbish without you. Really, everything in my life seems destined to go wrong. I forgot to post my application to university and won’t be able to re-enrol until the spring term. I ruined our relationship. Dad passed away, you returned to America, and Rashad . . . well, Rashad ended up being Rashad.
How did you put up with me for so many years? I can’t even be alone for a couple hours without getting annoyed or wanting to dye my hair pink. That brings me to my second bit of news. I’m on my way to Atteberry—a village only an hour drive from Scotland’s border. After Dad passed, I learned he’d purchased an estate in the town. He liked to renovate historical homes, but he never told me about the property. Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise.
Dad got a kick out of surprises.
I need to be alone (and hopefully not dye my hair) while I figure out what’s next for me. I feel like a volcano about to explode, like I haven’t breathed—really breathed—in months. I threw some clothes into a suitcase, texted my boss at the café, and left Dad’s townhouse without even feeding the cat. (Don’t worry. Mum agreed to care for Antoni while I’m gone.)
My first term at uni starts in January, which means I have seven months to decide what I want to do with my life. I’m seriously considering becoming a hermit with pink hair.
So far this holiday isn’t off to a good start. My bus stopped at a petrol station not long ago. I went inside and had a mental breakdown while waiting to purchase tampons, jelly babies, and chocolate. Tears and snot everywhere.
The cashier gave me a pervert stare, you know, like the guys at Stonehill Academy. His lopsided name tag read: HELLO, MY NAME IS NEIL. He touched my candy with his tobacco-stained fingers and said, “One awful period, huh?”
All manners went out the shop’s window. Instead of answering the question with a polite NO, I wiped my tears and yelled, “Neil, I’m having a real crappy day. Give me the chocolate.” And that’s how I managed to embarrass myself to a point of extinction.
My bus reaches Atteberry in a few minutes, so I must bring this monologue to a close. Overall, I want to tell you . . . I know I messed up. I messed up when I ignored your phone calls. I messed up when I didn’t talk to you at Dad’s funeral. I’m a mess. I’ve been a mess for a while. But I don’t want to be messy anymore.
You don’t owe me a second chance, but would you forgive me just the same?
If you ever want to FaceTime, let me know. I’ll be at Cadwallader Manor for the next few months, so I’ll have plenty of free time.
Cadwallader—sounds like a creature I’d fish out of a pond.
Yours truly,
Josie
(Sent from iPhone)
From: Faith Moretti <Kardashian_4Life@mailbox.com>
Sent: Monday, June 20, 3:16 PM
To: Josie De Clare <JDeClare@mailbox.com>
Subject: Re: Neil is Rubbish – We Hate Neil
Hey Josie,
Thanks for reaching out! I’ll be honest. I stared at my laptop for a solid thirty minutes before I typed one sentence. And look at what I landed on!! Some corporate, autogenerated response that seems like I don’t care about you. But I do care. I am glad you reached out.
I want to be angry and send you all the emails I typed up after graduation. I want to express how much you hurt me, that I thought Rashad was an idiot who used his good looks to manipulate people, that . . . I wasn’t okay after your dad passed. I needed you like you needed me. I wanted to be there for you, to cry with you at the funeral, to get angry at God and life and growing up.
Maybe that’s what hurt the most. Not being there.
During one of our last school lunches, I sat in the refectory with Hannah and Hope while you ate with Rashad. I watched you drape your legs over his lap and snicker at the faculty, and I got so mad because you weren’t you anymore. I almost took the BFF slap bracelet (the one you gave me during our first year at Stonehill) off my backpack. I almost whacked you over the head with it. Not to hurt you. I just wanted to beat some sense into your thick skull.
All that said, I think I forgave you a long time ago. I’m not mad anymore. We promised to stay friends, right? Through all the good and bad. Even when it seemed hard.
So yeah, I’d like to give you that second chance.
Returning to New York was tough. I visited my family in Rochester before I moved to Brooklyn for college. My parents threw an Italian-style welcome party and invited everyone—my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, godparents. (You would’ve loved it. So much food.)
After dinner I brewed a cup of tea while Mom served coffee. My uncle was like, “You fancier than us now, Faith?” He made jokes about England and my second family—what he called you and your dad. He talked about how my cousins went to public school and didn’t need an expensive education to get into college.
Everyone at the table seemed to forget I got into Stonehill on scholarship and because Aunt Sylvia recommended me to