Last week I wrote some letters to my characters. Today they wrote back.

Dear Author,
I’m not that complex. I’m a kid who wants what ever other kid wants, a normal family that doesn’t hassle me all the time. A best friend to do things with. Less homework and more pizza.

If you want to tell my story, maybe you need to go back farther than what you thought was the beginning. Mr. Mac says that there are some seeds that sleep for years just waiting for some kind of explosion in their life to wake them up and start them to growing. Like a fire. One day they’re just a bunch of seeds in a bunch of dirt and then suddenly, a month or two or three after a fire, when everything else is black and dead looking, those sleepy seeds wake up and punch through the ashes toward the sun.

Of course not all of those seeds wake up. Some of them just go right on sleeping forever.

Maybe my family is just like those seeds, sleeping in the dirt, waiting for the explosion to wake them up. Or maybe that explosion happened a while ago, like when my dad died, and now they’ve forgotten how to do anything else.

Signed,
Plant Kid

Dear Author Who Will Figure Out the Balancing Act When She Needs To,

You asked me to surprise you and I’m sure how to do that. I was going to tell you that me, Frankie, and that other guy you were writing about, Cooper, were probably the same guy but it looks like you figured that one out for yourself already. You already know I used to have a baby sister but now I don’t.

Did you know that it’s my fault that she’s dead?

Signed,
Frankie

Dear Authory Person,
Before you give up on us you might want to know the story about how one of us, and probably not the one you were thinking of, had to make a visit to that grey building over on Galindo Street. You know, the one that has the people carrying signs out front and screaming at the people going inside? The one where you practically have to have a guard or a boyfriend with really big muscles walk you from the car to the inside? Yeah, that one.

And she wasn’t going there to pick up some more pills.

Signed,
The Sisters