Maeve - April 18th, 1989

 April 18th, 1989 

Dear Jessica, 

Yes, I am naming you Jessica, after Angela Lansbury’s character in Murder She Wrote. Mom gave me this plain black journal with lined pages for Christmas a couple of years ago, and I haven’t had a need to use it, until tonight. I guess she forgot I only use unlined pages for writing and for sketching. No matter, Jess, because you will now be my squire in this new quest I’ve apparently begun. 

My best friend Rhiannon says she writes to her diary as if she were speaking to a real person. I don’t know if I want to necessarily refer to you as a diary because I am now 18, and it just seems too Rainbow Brite to refer to a journal as a diary at this point. But if I were 81, I would still love Rainbow Brite, and I will speak to you like a real person. I’ve never been big on journaling but this might actually be helpful, and right now I need all the help I can get. My apologies ahead of time for the over abundance of pictures, stickers, and doodles that will likely end up here. 

So if we are going to start this relationship off on the right foot, let me tell you a little bit about me. I graduate from high school in two months, and I work in a pet gift and supply shop in my home away from home - the mall. My favorite stores are Sam Goody, B Dalton, and Caldor. My passions are writing stories (certainly not about my life otherwise we would have had this conversation a long time ago), drawing stories, singing (though never in front of people), and cassette singles. I live with my mom and dad in a two bedroom apartment. We used to have a four bedroom Cape Cod in this prototypical, somewhat close to the Jersey Shore nook called Eatontown. That was before we lost Sebastian, before Dad lost the business, well..before my dad lost everything, and before Mom started having a nightly affair with Jack Daniels. More on that later I guess.     

I’m writing in this long forgotten book tonight because I cannot sleep. It’s actually 2 o’clock in the morning on a Saturday right now, and for the first time in..maybe..ever, I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Not necessarily the Disney version, more like the TV mini-series version with Sammy Davis Jr. as the caterpillar, and Carol Channing turns into a goat for some reason. You see, I met these 5 guys who are in this band that’s getting pretty popular these days. They did a signing event at the mall and during my entire shift I heard nothing but screaming girls, mostly hormonal and ravenous teenage girls. One of the guys tried to escape an ambush by taking a walk on his own near closing time. That didn’t work out too well since he came running into my store looking for cover.

“Please, you didn’t see me, okay?” he begged before diving under a round rack of cat sweatshirts. I didn’t see much at first. He moved as if dodging bullets, but I knew right away he looked leathery and slightly foreboding. A trio of bubbly blondes covered in buttons with the band members’ faces on them came charging into the store, on the hunt, ready to tear him apart like curtains to cats in heat. I played dumb, of course, which they didn’t appreciate, but I offered them free dog biscuits to help ease the disappointment. I don’t think I’ve ever been flipped off before today. At least nobody has done it to my face. But no matter. I’m used to the “popular” girls treating me like a pariah, all decked out in their Lee Press On Nails and frosted lipsticks, reeking of hairspray and Luvs Baby Soft eau de toilette. 

I’m bulky sweaters, band T-shirts, glasses, and no make-up. I am Sarah Plain and Tall, and I love that book. Here are some pictures that kind of sum me up, including a picture of me Rhiannon took when she was going through her Annie Liebovitz phase.

                                      .   .             .                 

Anyway, getting back to my unexpected visitor. After I told him the coast                         seemed to be clear he laid low for a while, and at first I wasn’t expecting him to             strike up a conversation. I know I sure as hell wasn’t. You see, when it comes to                 boys, I am hopeless without Rhiannon around to do the talking for me. Half of me             doesn’t get the male species at all. The other half is usually too timid to learn                 more about them. But this was different. 

Right away this guy spoke to me like a friend he hadn’t met yet, and I felt every second of his penetrating stare. To say this man was hot or cute would be a total disservice. He almost didn’t seem real at first. A lot of people have hazel eyes. I have them. But his eyes seemed to glow like the late afternoon sun hitting a Monet painting of waterlilies, mostly green with subtle smatterings of brown. I have more green than brown too, but you can only see the green under the right lighting. His thick chestnut hair was slicked back with the perfect amount of gel. A few wisps fell onto his forehead and after a few moments he’d run his fingers through his hair to put the escapees back in place. He didn’t look like a total greaser, but he could have been in Grease 2 maybe. 

He didn’t have to introduce himself as Cayden Donnelly, the bassist for The Sleepless Knights, but he did anyway. I guess at first glance he didn’t think I listened to their music. I do give off more of a Kate Bush, Pat Benetar, perhaps a little bit of Joan Jett energy - any girl singers with a lot of presence and a lot of attitude. I look like I would admire them for being everything I’m not, and it is true to an extent. But in reality I listen to pretty much everything and never in a million years did I think I would be speaking to a semi-famous musician, in my mall, on a regular old Friday night.

But he was there, and he stayed there, wanting to know about me and my life. As time passed, I found myself not so reluctant to ask about his. A man that intimidated me in the first ten minutes of our interaction became someone I felt I knew for years. 

I even showed him my big leather bound journal with the Tree of Life carved on the cover. My grandmother gave it to me years before she died, and I just started using it this past year, giving into temptation. It’s something I tried to keep unused, wanting the feeling of receiving the gift to last a little longer.   

I don’t let anyone look at any of my journals. Sometimes I fear someone might want to cast me in a sequel to One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. When I’m totally “with it”, I write and illustrate stories you could easily find in a Waldenbooks. My favorite genres are mystery, fantasy, and sometimes just some slice-of-life kind of stuff about what it means to be a woman in the late 1980’s. 

But when I am not with it, when I go into my trances, losing most (sometimes all) control over my mind and my hand -  bizarre and troublesome words and pictures come out of me. Random places and people that are often frightening end up on my pages. Once I’m snapped back into reality, I look over what I created and try to make sense of it. Sometimes I get tempted to rip the pages out of the book and forget about it, but a little voice in the back of my mind tells me not to.

I wasn’t expecting Cayden’s response. As he flipped through some of the pages, he looked as though he spotted Halley’s Comet. Right away be hinted toward what a lot of people say about my work - that I should illustrate professionally and write New York Times best-sellers. Don’t get me wrong. I certainly wouldn’t say that I suck. Art and writing are in my blood, but my grandmother and her son (my dad) spent their whole lives trying to make it in the art and literary world. Both slipped away before making a dent in a museum or bookstore. My father’s not dead. But he might as well be. More on that later too..maybe. 

I kind of had to pull the book away from Cayden, as if he didn’t want to let go. It was a little weird, but that soft and astonished look on his face made it a good kind of weird. But then it got really weird when out of nowhere he asked me if I wanted to hangout with him and his bandmates on their tour bus. 

We can read about these scenerios in tabloids, right? A mystery woman, while partying with famous dudes, ends up dead in a pool or is lost at sea after “accidently falling off” someone’s yacht. Honestly, I didn’t get literal lady killer vibes from him at all, but I was taught to hope for the best and expect the worst when it comes to people. At least that’s what Mom always says. 

Needless to say, the offer was tempting but horrifying at the same time. What if this guy and his buddies were actual serial murderers? Hot, famous people get away with murder all the time, don’t they? But then I thought to myself, ”Maeve Elizabeth Wicklow, you need to stop watching Unsolved Mysteries in the dark, right before bed.” Just the theme song gives me the willies, but it’s like passing a car accident on the highway. You can’t look away. 

Anyway, he did eventually leave the store once I lowered the gate, a subtle way of letting him know it was closing time. He called me Agatha, as in Agatha Christie, because I had kept my name a mystery the whole time we were talking. Fair enough since I kept calling him James, as in James Dean. He doesn’t really have the bruting face Dean had, if anything Cayden’s big bright eyes and his stellar smile made his Rebel Without a Cause look blend with a Disney prince motif. As soon as he started walking back towards Sam Goody, I regretted chasing him away. I screamed my full name to him as if trying to pierce his skull with it and permanently embed it into his brain. All he said in return was “beautiful”, threw me that killer smile, then walked away. I could have killed him for that. 

I went through all of my closing duties like a self-loathing robot, but luckily fate had a different plan...to be continued.