The poor postman only just met me yesterday and by the way he frowns when I come in the door, he is already tired of me. I pestered him all day today, waiting for the mail to come. He never says a word—just shakes his head and scowls. But now I sit writing on the little bench right outside his door, with your letter tucked safely away in my hip pocket. It is such a treasure to me.

I will try my best to answer your questions about this place, but I first must say that I hope you do not wait at home for letters from me. You should go back to school. You should kiss the girl. You should fight the boy, if it comes to that. Do not spend your life waiting for things. Go to school, even if the things there fill you with so much worry they make you sick. As soon as you get this letter from me, take a vow to go back to school and face your fears.

OK, that’s enough fatherly advice for one day. I don’t know if I have earned the right to advise you at all, having only known you for five brief years before I left. And I fear that I spent far too little time with you during those years. The memories I have are some of my most cherished, but they are fading. I hope you can help me recall them.

Where am I? Not hell, certainly, but likely not heaven, either. Some of my neighbors disagree with me and claim it is one or the other. I’ll sit over a plate of fish and chips at the Laughing Gull with my two neighbors. Martin, who was a city councilman, will claim we’re in heaven. Carl, who was a realtor like me, is sure we’re in hell. My vote is neither. Meanwhile we’re all in the same place and all eating the same food.

It’s not a bad place, I suppose. We’re on the water—either a sound or a bay. There are a couple of shops—two restaurants, a general store, a small library and a post office. There’s a fishing pier that juts out over the water, but no one fishes there, so I’m suspicious of its real purpose.

I stay in a small cabin set about a quarter mile back from the shore. When I arrived here, the cabin lay empty and no one stopped me from moving in, so I did. The cabin has a single large room and a bathroom with a toilet and a shower. It has a covered porch with a porch swing, which is where I spend most of my day. From the swing, I can look out over the center of town and over the water. It’s very foggy here much of the time and you have to keep an eye out if you want a view of anything. So that’s what I do most of the time. I swing in my swing and look out toward the water. It probably sounds very boring to you, but it gets me from morning to night.

And no, I can’t see you from up here. I can’t see much of anything, except the tide coming in and going out, twice a day if it’s not too foggy. I suppose it goes in and out even if it is foggy, but then I can’t see it. I wish I could see you. I think about you and your sister and your brothers and your mother more than anything else, worrying about how you all are doing without me. I have so many questions that I want to ask you.

The first time I went into the post office, the postman looked at me suspiciously when he handed me your batch of letters. I’m guessing he doesn’t get many letters from your side of things. But he didn’t say anything. Matter of fact, I’ve never heard him say a single word. I don’t know if he can even speak.

I can tell you more about this place. Not a lot. But I’ll save that for another day.

Dad

I had my first soccer practice today and guess what? Not that many kids tried out for the team and Mr. Schick said no one would be cut. That’s good news for me. He also said I have a real strong kick and would make a natural defender. I’m pretty sure that’s what he tells kids who aren’t any good, but still, it was pretty cool of him to say it to me. Honestly, only a few of the kids look any good at all and I don’t think I’m any worse than the rest of them.

He asked if I was the brother of Steffan and Keith. When I said I was, he said, “Well, if you’re half as good as either of them, it will be a pleasure to have you on the team.” I just nodded. I’m probably not half as good as either of them. He didn’t mention Rhett at all, even though he played soccer, too.

There are a lot of new kids at school this year. I guess that’s another thing that happens in junior high. There are still kids I know from sixth grade, but a bunch of other schools dump their sixth graders here, too. Like the goalie on our soccer team—he’s a new kid named Rick Jarvis. He thinks he’s some kind of superstar soccer player, but he’s only better than me because I bet he’s played on club teams. He wears one of those shiny black jackets around school and it says “Hawks” on the back in orange stitching, which is probably the name of his other stupid team. He told me he is going out with a girl named Misty Lee. She’s new, too. Is every one in seventh grade required to have a girlfriend by the end of the first week? Misty Lee is cute, I guess, in an annoying sort of way.

I had my first math homework today. A take-home test. I just finished it. It took a lot longer than I thought it would. I’m hoping it was one of those tests where they just want to see how much you know, because there was a lot of it I didn’t know at all. I’m guessing that everyone else did about as bad as me, because I was kind of a math ace in sixth grade. Were you any good at math at my age? I know you were an English major at college, but I assume you did some math in seventh grade, right?

Not that I need it, but I wish you were here to help me with my math. Anyway, time to stop writing and mail the letter. I hope I have your address right. And I hope one stamp is enough.

Your son,

Trevor