Coney Island 3

Dear Jack,

Because a man needs a mission, Lucky tells me.

The Warriors are born of the necessity of that mission.  There's no need for the Warriors to be in Coney Island until we feel like it's our land, and we want to protect it from outsiders.  Until we know in ourselves that there's something special about Joshua worth defending.

I'm sorry about what happened with Joshua.  Maybe you would've been able to stay if things went differently first with me, and then with Joshua, and then with Rosie.  Maybe everything would've been different.  We really couldn't know what we were getting ourselves into, but there was no way to tell you that back then and have you believe in it.  There was no reason to believe in us.

In a way, it's good you left.  Joshua is home now, and safe, but he's a scar on my heart a mile long, like where the wing of Buddy Holly's plane tore the frozen ground of Clear Lake.  You don't want a scar like that.  After you left, me and Rosie probably both had them, but we kept accidentally opening them up again, over and over.

When she said she was going to die if we kept at it, I shut up all my love for him and my hope for him into a little box, and I buried it inside me.  I remember she screamed it at me one night: "Joshua is never coming back."  So I chose to believe that, and move on, so we could both survive.  I guess you decided that, too, but on your own out there.

I'm glad you weren't home when my brother died because I think I would've gotten pretty arrogant with you and driven you away anyway.  I'm glad you weren't home when Joshua left those other times because we would've let you destroy anything you wanted to.

Hey, you want to hear something funny I just realized?  I always drive you away and Rosie always lets you leave.  Ain't we got fun?

I never had the right idea about you, Jack, but at least I was man enough to admit it.  You've never had the right idea about me, and you walk around with your head up your ass thinking the whole world is wrong and you're the only right one.  The whole world is out to get you and you're the only sane one.  The whole world is going to kill you and you've got to fight me to exist.

Maybe you do.  I was the one who shot Joshua, after all.  But who cares, right?  Who cares because this is the house where dead boys don't stay dead and with the right combination of words, maybe you could make Matthew love his way out of hell and back to you?

Yeah, maybe.  But I don't know.  It feels like we didn't account for... death being fine for the dead and ultimately damaging for the living.  We couldn't live here with Joshua, and just knowing that about myself makes that hole appear in me, not anything I did because of it.  I just couldn't love him enough to believe it was going to all work out.

But on the other hand, you never knew what I knew.  You never heard what Clyde said to me that night on the cliffs, when he confessed to me the truth of Gray House and all it's occupants.  Do you want to know what he said?  I've read it over and over and over again, just so I'll never forget.  On the cold cliff-side, he blinked back tears and he said:

Got a secret. Theeeeeese walls, theeeeeese bones, theeeeese cracks, theeeeeese skies, if they're empty they're full with let's do a little regret. Too hard to climb so tie it to a chair n beat the shitoutofit. We think we're men but we're children, fox. Okay?

You and I always wanted to believe that Clyde was the grown-up, but he never was.  And I guess it kind of makes it worse to think about Joshua's innocence at the same time I think about how he had to stop existing.  It kind of makes me wonder what happened to my own innocence.  We're children, aren't we Jack?  We get so stupid and careless with people's hearts.  Everything you did to Clyde - it makes it worse you did it to someone innocent.

But you couldn't face it, and I did.  I don't know if that makes me braver.  I think it makes me more masochistic, and maybe that's the same thing.  What I do know is that I came out on the other side of it knowing Joshua - maybe all of them - are worth defending.  Sometimes I feel I know it best because while it was me who pulled the trigger so many times, I cleaned up the blood afterward.  I buried the bodies.  I tried to bargain with God.  And that's how I became a Warrior.

-Evelyn