Dear Betty,

It has been six months since you left. Half a year later, and it hasn't gotten easier. Missing you is... harder than it should be.

I have been trying to write this letter for months. In all honesty, I feel like I've been trying to write this letter since November, even though you only left in March. November was when we stopped talking; November was when I felt like I lost you for good.

It has been a hard year. I won't bore you with every detail and every slain wizard. Three in one year is too many (but I could have made it four if I skipped town with Janitor Denny and went to that murder trial but actually skipped out on it to kill Old Sparky, the racist wizard who lives in Gatlinburg). I'll just say that it's August, I graduated, and I've been in a slump since April 2nd. (You probably know that. I feel like it's obvious from the way I'm writing. I'm currently on house arrest, but I think it's going to get lifted soon. I'm not sure if the fog will go with it.)

Speaking of house arrest.

So, you know how, when we talked before you left, we were both being super paranoid? I know one of us mentioned the government-- Well, we were right. They're here. They're here, they're in town--

So, we were trying to save the world again. It was me, Eddy, Darius, Mr. Mathew (you remember Percy's dad?), and Aiden, the bouncer from the strip club, and then Ant Brower showed up at the end (they're the one who liked to smoke on the roof with Eliza and Drake? They're Coach Brower's kid). It turned out that Chip Winger was evil the whole time, which made me feel like a real idiot because I trusted him, even when everyone else said he couldn't and shouldn't be trusted. He tried to kill us, and then he killed himself, and he brought forth an extradimensional shadow being we had to fight-- I'm sure that's standard fare over there in the fae world, so I won't bore you more. Long story short, while we were collapsing to the ground, actively dying, the government showed up and arrested us. They put the town under some weird quarantine and now...

Well, everything has gone to shit. I didn't think I would be the kind of person who did my first year of real college in a state where I had to utilize the lab over at the technical school because the government has been monitoring and cucking (gross, I shouldn't say that) the rest of my life, but here we are!

God, I hope house arrest lifts soon. I have listened to way too much Counting Crows since it started. (Indicative of the slump, I suppose.)

I was terrified that I was going to get everyone else in trouble so, as soon as I got home after all the interrogation and the having to convince them that I really don't have powers, I promise, I had to do something a little drastic. Forgive me for this: before I even washed off all the blood and pus or took a moment to realize Kepler was really gone, I took all my notes, maps, and samples and lit them on fire. The only thing I kept was those journal pages I showed you from when I was sixteen. Those have been with me through all of it. They're not going anywhere; they're currently in the pocket of some old shorts I don't like to think about. But-- well, I didn't want to get you or your brothers or your mom or Denny or Kepler or you or Drake or Eddy or Darius or you in a lot of trouble, so I got rid of everything. I hope that's okay? I hope you're not disappointed? I know I promised to share all my new notes with you when you got back. I just didn't think this would happen.

Is it weird, to be so desperate to talk to you and let you in on every little thing that has happened? You were one of the first friends I had when I came here, and you're one of the only people who consistently wanted to be around me. And it killed me to not be able to see you when you were in the hospital after the bus crash last year and it killed me more when you stopped talking to me after you got out of the hospital back in November, and it's killing me now that I can't even TRY to talk to you or I'll risk messing everything up for all of us. Like-- I care about you. You made me feel wanted, like I wasn't a burden for once. And I tried, I really tried, I really tried-- even if I wasn't good enough, I was glad for the journey.

All this is to say that I miss you. I mean, we all do-- Auntie Esther is always asking when "that sweet Betty girl is going to drop by again," and Denny mentioned, when she dropped off a jacket a few weeks ago, that she thought about sending you an email when she was "stuck on a cursed freeway with a bunch of weirdos and a weenie in Georgia," but didn't because she remembered at the last second that you can't check your email. (I find it hard to believe that you were an avid email user before, but I digress.)

I miss you. I can't say it enough. Missing you in November was a different kind of grief. At least I could still see you in the halls, in passing, even if we weren't talking. Now I don't even have that. (I suppose "seeing you in the halls" would necessitate that we were both still in high school. As you very well know, neither of us are.)

So, we're at the explaining part of the letter. Attached (in separate envelopes, because I'm honoring their privacy) is a letter from your mom and dad, and a card from your little brothers. (There's also a card from the rest of the science bowl team, which is kind of funny, because all of us have been involved in supernatural shenanigans now, even the famously-normal Percy. Chip Winger tried to sacrifice him and then an angel named Zebulon whisked him away for a bit. Mr. Zeb is weird. I think you would like him.)

I'll admit that I told Max to make the card back in March and then forgot to get back in touch with him in April when the "slump" started. Even so, there are multiple cards and letters because they just kept making them and then they dropped them off on my doorstep when my house arrest started and I stopped lurking outside your house and looking at your window like a weird fucking idiot, expecting you to be there when I know you wouldn't and couldn't be and because I promised I would have the communication thing figured out by "August at the latest," but I guess I didn't because here we are. Here we are, writing into the void instead of looking at different syllabi...

You'll also find half of a friendship necklace. I know it's silly, but I remembered I had bought them back in November while I was in your room to steal your hair. (It was important. I needed it to build a grease bomb to kill the Mop Wizard who lived under the school. You understand. Science never sleeps, even if I haven't touched the supernatural kind in months.) I figured you would appreciate the purple more than the green. You don't have to wear it. It just made me think of you.

Okay. I covered the basics-- graduation, government invasion, world-ending apocalypse thwartation, how I'm too afraid to go near your house because I don't want to look your parents in the eye and know I let them down... Yeah, that's basically it on my end. Believe it or not, I haven't done much since April. I also broke my computer by accident (actual accident this time), and I've been trying to be normal now, so it's not like I'm scouring the internet these days.

That's right, I'm trying to be normal now. It's a new school year. It's my first year of college, and I'm trying to turn a new leaf. I'll be a model citizen. I'll wear a jacket when I'm on my motorcycle. I won't talk about a "Bigfoot" who can "teleport" and "has a pegleg" for hours ad nauseum ad infinitum. I won't think about the mysteries of Lumberland or what happened in the drug tunnels in the 1990s; I won't think about the chemical composition of ectoplasm in class; I won't doodle demons in the margins of my notes. I'm normal now, Betty. Bazinga?

So...I'm a bit torn. I want to ask you every question in the universe, but I think we all know I'm never actually sending this letter. This is one I'm writing because... Well, I miss you! That's 99% of the reason! I miss you, and I need somewhere to put all of that. I fully plan to write something more coherent when I actually figure out how to send it.

Tradition and instinct win out, though. So!

I want to know absolutely, positively everything about this place. What's life like in the fae realm? Are you unraveling the mysteries? (Please, god, I want your notes.) What's the culture like? Do you need recipes from home or is the food there just so amazing? (If it is, send me those recipes.) What's the citrus situation? You're both half-human and thus susceptible to scurvy! So help me god, if you two have scurvy, I'm going to whack you. There's so much I want to know, and I can't ask everything.

I'm assuming that everything between the two of you is fine and that you are learning more than you could in a lifetime about your heritage and fae customs. I want to know everything. I can't wait until you can tell me about your new life.

Maybe I'll find a different way to send this. They're going to charge me with killing Lewis, right? New Greg has some serious pull, I would assume; he is a god, after all. So if he gets his shit together and decides to prosecute me (like he should, because I killed someone), then maybe that could be my final wish. Maybe all the gods in the cosmos like Greg Dealerman and New Greg could help me get through to you. (Note to self: strike the bit about somehow killing Lewis Ferrier despite the bounds of science and logic. Betty doesn't need to know about that.)

I tried the interdimensional communication thing. The fairy circle broke when you and Drake went through (thanks to Chip Winger), and all my plans hinged on that or portals like it; I can't do magic (Drew says magic isn't real, Aunt Esther says there's something wrong with our blood); science isn't cutting it; and wishing and wanting never got anyone anywhere.

I don't want to give up. I just don't know what to do.

But, well... You don't need to know that I have exhausted every avenue. This is my first draft. I plan to strike it from the proverbial record. I can seem cool. I can come across as aloof, as remorseless, as "good old Tiff." (I need to stop talking to Denny so often. Her vocabulary is rubbing off on me. It's not my fault she keeps coming over to check on me for some reason. I think Drew asked her to when I asked him to stop looking through my window and trying to get me to listen to something other than Counting Crows.)

Well, that's the first draft done. Here's to hoping my second one goes better.

There is never a good way to end letters, including drafts of them.

I love you, Betty.

-Tiffany May Sheridan