I sat on the floor of my dead best friends room, looking at the blue walls and the white comforter and feeling out of place.

This felt so wrong.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Nic, glancing at me every now and then. I knew he was itching to tear open the letters, but I wasn't so sure that I wanted to anymore. What if Sarah said things about herself that I didn't want to hear? Knowing she killed herself was hard enough. I didn't need to relive it.

Reluctantly, I opened the July envelope. I started the first one, July 20th, for the second time.

Dear Aves,

I love and miss you! I can't believe I only saw you for a few days! I miss miss miss you. You were everything I could've hoped for in a friend. I had the greatest time with you.

You might wonder why I'm writing a letter. Nobody writes letters anymore, right? Well the truth is, I need someone to talk to, but I don't want to burden you with my problems. So instead I guess I'll write these letters to you, without the intention of ever sending them.

I bet California is great. I wish I could come down there soon.

Love you.

Sincerely,
Sarah Miller

I read the words again and again, until they didn't make much sense anymore. So Sarah had decided to write me letters, but never send them? And why not? Why wouldn't she just call me and tell me what she was having trouble with?

"This doesn't make sense." Nic was saying. I looked up to see he had taken the letter and read it. He was holding the thin paper in his hands so tightly that it was starting to crumble.

"Easy" I Said, taking the letter from him.

"Why wouldn't she just call you?" He asked.

I shrugged. "That's what I was thinking." I responded.

He shook his head. "She needed help, but she was too proud to admit it."

I had started to pick up the July 21st letter, but what Nic said had caught my attention. "She needed help? For what?" I asked.

"Well something was bothering her so much that she decided to kill herself. So I would assume that." He retorted.

I hated his use of sarcasm in dealing with his dead girlfriend. It sounded like he hated her.

I knew that it was just his way of dealing with the grief, so I shrugged it off and opened the next letter.

Dear Avery,

Today was really cold and rainy. But what else should I expect from Seattle? I made breakfast because mom and dad went to the city. Me and Taylor went for a walk, but the whole time all I could think was how much she was hurting. I feel helpless.

Right. I never told you about Taylor. I'm not sure why. I guess I had this idea of myself in my head, a normal girl without a vegetable as a sister. When I first met you I didn't tell you because I wanted you to like me. But then, when he got close, I never said anything and it became too long to say anything anymore.

The short version is Taylor was born like this. I don't know what her voice sounds like, or her laugh, even her smile. I don't see the point of her living like this.

Tell me something, if you were Taylor, would you be grateful that you were alive?

Sincerely,
Sarah Miller

This letter definitely had more to it. She had finally told me about Taylor, but not while she had been alive.

"Do you think she meant for me to read these?" I asked Nic. "I mean, I know she says she didn't, but what if somewhere in her heart, she really wanted me to see them?"

Nic was a silent for a moment as he read the second letter. "I think that's what she was holding on to." He said quietly. "Why she didn't do this sooner. She was holding onto the fact that one day you might understand everything going on in her life."

"I wish she told me." My eyes started to well up.

He shook his head. "I don't think it would've changed anything. Sarah does what she wants without much outside influence."

I took a deep breath and read the next one. She wrote about what she did that day, when her parents came home, and what she ate. Nothing really stuck out.

"It's almost like she's writing a book." I said. "Sarah's autobiography."

Nic nodded. "She did want to be a journalist. She loved writing."

I swallowed. It felt horrible talking about her as if she wasn't here.

Because it felt like she still was.

The more I read through July, the more boring it got. Sarah wasn't really writing her thoughts as much as her day to day life. And her thoughts were always the same- that she hated Taylor being in pain.

Once I got to August, things picked up. Sarah has come to visit me in August, and in the time leading up to that, her letters perked up. She used more exclamation marks, she seemed happier. She talked about me for pages and pages. How great I was, how much she missed me.

I was starting to get uncomfortable. Nic was reading these too, and it was starting to look like Sarah was a bit obsessed with me.

"Sarah seems, a bit obsessed." Nic said, not looking up from the letter he was reading.

I squirmed. "We were really close." I said.

He looked up. "How close? Like...?"

"What? No!" I exclaimed. "Not like that, we were just were so alike." I hated this conversation.

He put his hands up in defense. "I'm just covering all the bases." He said.

"Okay" I mumbled, and returned back to my letter. It was August 19, the day after she came to California. Her writing went back to the way it was before. Bored, upset.

I put the letter down. My eyes hurt. It was getting late, and I was tired. Then I remembered that I never told Nic about Detective Peterson.

"Hey remember the cop that came to talk to me? He seemed kind of suspicious." I told him.

"Suspicious?" He asked. He looked up, his green eyes seemed very intrigued.

"Yeah" I started. "Of me."

He frowned. "He was suspicious...of you?" He asked.

"Seemed like it. But I was being kind of weird, I was nervous." I said.

"Why didn't you tell me about this?" He questioned suddenly. "What was he asking?"

Oddly enough, I felt like I was being interrogated again. Something deep inside my gut told me not to tell Nic about Peterson's words. I think because it would make him a criminal too.

"Not much, just about Sarah and Taylor."

He seemed relieved. "Okay, it sounds like it wasn't a big deal."

I paused. I should tell him. It was his idea to keep the letters a secret.

"It wasn't." I said instead. "I'm going to go to sleep, if that's okay."

Nic nodded, and took a stack of letters. "Okay, can I take these to read then?"

I felt weird about him reading them before me, but I wasn't willing to say that out loud, so I nodded.

"Goodnight Avery."