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When I checked our old school’s website, it said you play drums.
Ezra
September 9, 2019
Hi, My Miller.
I played college football this past weekend!! NCAA, baby-
I passed for 197 yards, ran for 66, and I split starting time with Hollis even though he’s got seniority and he’s been playing well lately.
I’m not gonna lie- it was everything I wanted. I got a little freaked out right before we ran out on the field, but after that, it was like riding a bike.
The coaches are happy. I feel like I’m living in a dream. When I walk around now, everybody knows me. It’s weird.
You watched football this weekend at a sports bar. I saw it on your Snapchat.
Did you watch me?
I like to think you did. That maybe we were friends, at least, and you were happy for me.
I’d like to think you thought about me.
I feel weird that I’m writing these fake letters to you.
For a while, I felt happy. Like at least I have this good thing, even if it is weird. Now I feel more weird, though. You have your own life, and I guess I do too.
My mom left a message with the floor monitor at my dorm saying she’s coming to visit me Wednesday and Thursday this week.
I know this is devious as fuck but I’m going to take a bus up to Richmond at that same time, break into my bedroom window, and steal back my Jeep. It’s a black Wrangler, and I miss it. I lost it when I bounced from Sheppard Pratt. But I paid for almost all of it myself. I waited tables at a restaurant starting when I was 15, and I didn’t stop until I went to Alton.
I’m thinking of deleting Snapchat. If I’m going to feel this way about you, I kind of want it to be more organic…not because I watch you on snap all day and have this feeling we’re connected- when maybe we’re not.
Ezra
October 16, 2019
Miller.
I’m eating all this protein. To help me recover from the games.
Fuck, Miller. The first day of October, I think I remembered you. I was getting in my Jeep to go get more eggs. I looked over at the passenger’s seat, and it’s like…I could see you in it. Not even “see” you- I could feel you sitting there. And feel the way I felt about it. How I would feel if I had you in my car. Like the whole world is limitless. Like anything might happen- but not any bad thing. Good things. It was a Christmas morning feeling, and it seemed so real.
I hadn’t looked at Snapchat in a while, but after that, I downloaded it again.
Yesterday at practice, someone hit me too hard. Knocked the air out of my lungs and sort of rattled my head for a second. Someone mentioned pulling me into the clinic room inside the locker room. Scared the fuck out of me. You know what?
I whimpered, “Mills.”
Mills.
Not Miller.
Mills.
I’m in Auburn right now. Sitting under a tree near the stadium. I walked by your apartment building, or the one I think might be yours.
Maybe we had something.
Maybe.
I guess it’s over now.
I found some papers in my hiding spot in my old room at Mom’s, when I went up there to steal my Jeep back. I’m getting my old phone restored as soon as I can drop by the AT&T store.
Auburn-Alabama’s coming up fast.
It’s here on your campus this year.
I’m seeing a therapist. A nonbinary one that I like.
After the season is over, we’re going to start doing trauma therapy. I think the person likes me okay. I’m trying to be honest.
They say it’s okay to watch your snaps, but I don’t know if it is. I don’t want to be that weirdo.
Soon, I’ll have to read the letters I found in my bedroom.
Soon, I have to go and get the phone and turn it on and see what’s in it.
Soon, I’ll know if none of this is real.
I still don’t want to.
Two
Josh
November 18, 2019
I watch the drumline over in the marching band section—beside the stadium’s student section, where I’m sitting. There are six of them, three guys and three girls, if their appearances sync with their genders. They seem happy, like they enjoy playing drums in Auburn’s Marching Tiger Band. One of them is eating popcorn.
It was a bad thing, coming to the game tonight. Jenna tried her best to talk me out of it, but in the end she stayed home with some kind of flu thing. I think she’s too sick to worry over me. I’ve been texting Shawna, her roomie, to keep tabs on her.
At every other moment, my eyes are locked on Ezra. University of Alabama—Auburn’s archrival—number 14. He’s run for two touchdowns and passed for some obscene number of yards I can’t keep track of.
