What do you like to do in California? Do you have any pets? I have a hamster, but I really want a cat. My mom says that I can have a cat when I’m a little older, but she’s been saying that since I can remember. I’m ten now, and I feel like I’m old enough to take care of a cat. Or a ferret. If I can’t have a cat, then I really want a ferret. What about you? Do you like ferrets?
Love,
Naomi Light
I was in fifth grade when I wrote my first letter to Luca. My teacher made us choose pen pals at random by pulling names out of a hat. That’s how I ended up writing a letter to a kid named Luca Pichler who lived in California. I was excited to be making a new friend who lived in another state. I had never had a pen pal before, and I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to end the letter. My mother had always made me sign all my letters with ‘Love, Naomi,’ so that’s how I ended this one. It wasn’t until after I wrote it out that I wondered if it was weird to write ‘love’ to a boy I had never met. I had only ever written letters to family before.
It was too late to rewrite the letter, and I didn’t want to scribble it out and make myself look sloppy. Mrs. Goble was walking down the aisle toward my desk, picking up all of our letters on her way. I stuffed mine into the envelope and handed it to her.
She explained that the letters would go out in the mail the next morning, and then it would be a few days before our pen pals received them. Then it would be a few more days before we heard back from our new friends in California.
We received the letters from our pen pals two weeks later. I was so excited to have mail addressed to me that wasn’t from someone in my family. When I opened the letter, the first thing I noticed was that Luca Pichler’s handwriting was atrocious. It took me twice as long to read it than it would have if he’d at least tried to write neatly.
Dear Naomi,
You sound really boring. My mom says that Oklahoma is in the middle of the bible belt, and you’ll probably end up pregnant at sixteen. Also, ferrets stink. If you want a real pet, then get a dog because cats are boring. On second thought, maybe a cat would be a perfect fit for you after all.
Do you get tornadoes in Oklahoma?
Love,
Luca Pichler
The fact that I had to put in a lot of effort to decipher his terrible handwriting made it all the more infuriating. My letter had been so nice and cheerful, and he responded with … this? My chin quivered. I couldn’t let Mrs. Goble see me like this. I folded the letter up and took a deep breath. I blinked away the moisture in my eyes. Then I unfolded the letter and read it again. He had closed it with ‘love’ just like I had. I wondered if that was something his own mother had taught him, or if he was just copying me. Maybe he had put it there to be ironic after writing such a hateful letter. Were fifth grade boys in California capable of that kind of purposeful irony? I doubted it. He was probably mocking me, just like he was with the rest of his letter.
I carefully ripped a clean sheet of paper from my notebook, picked up my pen, and wrote back.
Dear Luca,
Your handwriting is terrible. I couldn’t even understand what you wrote in your letter. It kind of looks like you said that you have five cats of your own, and your favorite thing to do on the weekends is clean their litterboxes. That seems a little weird. You should probably stop drinking so much salt water. Maybe it’s a good thing I live far from the ocean after all.
And yes, we get tornadoes here.
Love,
Naomi
His next letter was easier to understand. It was clear that he had taken his time, focusing on making his handwriting neater. That felt like a win, even if this one was meaner than the first.
Dear Naomi,
I wrote this one more slowly so that your simple Oklahoma mind can keep up. I’m sorry to hear that your parents are brother and sister. I’ve heard that incest can cause a lot of birth defects, which explains why you turned out the way you did.
I’m happy to hear that there are tornadoes in Oklahoma. If we’re lucky, a tornado will destroy your house and keep your parents from breeding more of your kind.
Love,
Luca
I was furious when I got that second letter. I didn’t understand how anyone could be so mean and disgusting. I folded up the letter and stuffed it in the drawer in my desk, vowing never to write to him again. I had thought that maybe he’d just had a bad day the first time, but now it was clear he was doing this because he was just a terrible, terrible human being.
* * *
“But you did write back to him, right?” Anne asks. “You said it’s been two years since you heard from him. Did he just keep writing back to you all that time with no response from you?”
“I wrote back. Eventually.”
“Did your teacher ever see his letters?”