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I don’t know how not to shrink. I think about what you said as I close in on myself, but I can’t stop it. I want to, though.
You never told me which part I wasn’t wrong about.
Xoxo platonically,
Birdie
Little Bird,
Highlight of your life?
How old are you?
Callum
Dear Callum,
I should lie, but I have a dreadful habit of telling the truth. I’m 17 and a senior in high school. I know you’re 21 and you’re going to say this is all sorts of inappropriate, but I swear, I don’t have designs on you. I just like your emails and feel like we could be friends if we were the type to make friends. I don’t know. My stomach is sick right now because I have a feeling I won’t hear from you again.
Your platonic friend,
Birdie
I almost deleted her email, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Seventeen should have been too fucking young for me to be entertaining even a conversation, but I believed this girl. And she was right. If we were the type to make friends, I could see that happening.
But that wasn’t what this was, and she seemed to know that. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t want to stop writing to her. Not today. We’d see about tomorrow.
Little Bird,
You’re right. I wasn’t going to reply. I shouldn’t. But I have a bad habit of doing the wrong thing. The thing about being on the road is there’s a lot of downtime. I get bored and tired of my own thoughts. Your emails are entertaining.
You were wrong about some things. I don’t shrink like you. I’m just not there, you know what I mean?
Glad you don’t have designs on me. That would be a mistake. If you’re going to choose one of the band members to have a crush on, it should be Iris or Adam. Rodrigo’s cool, but he’s the marrying kind. Not your kind.
Callum
Dear Callum,
Hi. Hello. After a month, I didn’t think I would hear from you again. But here you are. Did I say hi?
Does your band know what a terrible social media manager you are? A month to reply to a fan is beyond the pale. They should fire you.
Speaking of the band, thanks for your attempt to foist me off onto one of the other members. That’s kind of you. Unfortunately, I’m a weird one who doesn’t really get crushes. I go from zero to hopelessly in love in a heartbeat. There’s no in between. This has only happened once, when I locked eyes with a boy named Karthik Singh in 9th grade. He had the deepest brown eyes I’ve ever seen (yes, still to this day, none have compared). I followed him around like a puppy for two years until he finally kissed me. One kiss was all he could spare. It was a perfectly nice kiss, but I fell out of love with him by morning. So maybe the kiss wasn’t as nice as I thought…
I don’t think I would get tired of your thoughts ping-ponging around in my head.
Where are you right now?
Your almost-legal friend,
Birdie
Karthik Singh could die.
That was my first thought after reading her email.
It alarmed me, but after a lot of introspection, I determined I felt some twisted sort of protection toward this little bird. A girl like that, who wore her heart on her sleeve, needed protecting. I grew up surrounded by criminals, so I knew firsthand how cruel the world could be. It wasn’t my role to protect her as her half-assed pen pal, but instinct was instinct. The leftover caveman in me beat his chest and pounded his club.
