But when she found out she was too short to become a cop, she became a skinhead instead.

The excitement I felt could barely be contained within the frame upheld by my bones. I re-read the short letter, a page and a half of smudged blue ink on off-white lined paper. (He writes that he's left-handed and that the pen sucks).
I stared out the window onto the dismal dying summer that easily has given in to even colder autumn winds, gushing leaves onto our wilted lawn. I took a few deep breaths and opened the desk drawer where I kept my stationary.
I liked writing letters. I always had. Always would. Or so I thought at least. Who could have predicted that the art of letter writing with all that entailed. Like picking out pretty stationary, and then personalizing it further by adding stickers, scents and glued-on pictures, would so quickly become extinct? I had pen pals almost all over the world.
There was Sharon in Australia, Scott in Scotland and Annie in Texas. She was a total dork. In the photos she sent me she rocked thick glasses and a snaggletooth smile. And her letters bored me to tears. She would ask me questions like: How many books do you have? What did you have for dinner on Friday night? Do you like animals? But a sense of duty kept me responding in a timely manner to her letters mailed in flimsy airmail envelopes from the desert plains of the hottest state. I tried to outclass her in tediousness, by in detail describing every bland meal I'd had during the week. For lunch on Wednesday I ate boiled potatoes, about three of them, with some green peas and string beans, a dollop of gravy, three medium-sized pieces of boiled carrots and a slice of whole wheat bread with a thin layer of margarine and a slice of cheese and three cucumbers.  By doing this I hoped she would stop writing me. Which she finally did. I guess it was the pen pal version of being too much of a coward to break up with someone. I also had several Swedish pen pals. One of them was Helena. I had gone to visit her by train once. Then she was into horses and wanted be a police officer. But when she found out she was too short to become a cop, she became a skinhead instead.
And there had been a pen pal boy who didn't live that far away. He had good taste in music and dressed sort of new wave. I had liked that style back then. We had actually met after a few months of 'pen fighting' and exchanging of cassette tapes in padded envelopes. I fell in love with him right away. But could sadly tell he didn't reciprocate my teenage feelings.

So I had a lot of stationary to chose from, and I carefully selected a neutral light blue sheet of paper and grabbed my best pen.

Thank you for your letter, I begun. Real good to hear from you. What kind of music do you like?
Quickly moving onto the essentials.

I could only think about the face, the hair, the lips, the tattooed arms. That icy blue gaze. Was it the sky or nothingness between those dark eyelashes? He said he was innocent, that he hadn't done nothing. And I wanted to believe that. I had to believe that.

I poured over that letter. Contemplating splashing a little bit of cheap drugstore perfume on the envelope. But I held back. I held myself together. But fell apart when my sister banged the door open and shrieked: What are you doing?

I pulled her onto the floor by her flaxen hair.