You just left. I found your window open and the purple curtains sailing. I knew you would leave, but why didn’t you say goodbye? I have known you for years, I know how dramatic you are, but if you really did leave for good, I always hoped you would at least say goodbye to me. Maybe you were to busy dreaming about the purple mountains you are on your way to see. I wonder where are you going to go. To the Rockies? Yellowstone? I know you have always wanted to go there, see the geysers and the rainbow colored pools. Or, are you going to go to New York? You said once you think you would find home in the chaos of rushing cars and busy people, and would love to fall asleep under human made stars of advertisement lights. I bet first, you are going to visit the ocean. Wear the pretty, woven straw hat your favorite character wears, as you walk along the shore in the blissful morning. Where ever you go Lila, I hope you have the time of your life, and I hope you never find the silence and boredom that Cameron, Missouri offers.

Its surprisingly cold here in your room. When exactly did you leave? In the middle of the night while all of us where sleeping? No, thats not like you, to just leave without being dramatic. But its to cold in here for you to have just an hour or so ago open the windows. Did you leave as I left your house after watching Harry Potter. Did you smile as I left, because I, and everyone around you, were blind to the fact that in mere hours the population of this town would go down one? What did you feel as I left and as you crawled out of your window. I have known you for years Lila, but to begin to understand what goes on beneath your brunette wavy hair would take millennia to comprehend.
What did you take with you? I am walking around your room as I scribble this letter. Nothing seems to even be touched, much less moved around or taken. All your books, all your movies, all your poetry, untouched. Now that I think of it, you would wrap yourself in words. Words of distant lands, strong characters, and unforgiving plots. You dreamed to live within a story. You wanted to be the main character and you wanted your life to be full of commotion and color. You wanted to have a happy ending full of pretty gardens and a perfect husband. You wanted to work in a coffee shop and have the sun always glow golden. You wanted to have a christmas that Hallmark would envy. But mostly, you surrounded yourself in the dream that you would leave this boring town of Cameron, Missouri. Lila, did you ever think for a second that in leaving this town you would also leave me? Or, were you ok with that?
In just an hour, your parents alarm clock is going to ring, they are going to wake up, make your breakfast, and then call you down for eggs and toast. However when you don’t answer and they come up the steps, they will instead find me on your bed staring out the window you escaped through. Did you think about what would happen to us, the people that were just side characters on your conquest through life, would be like after you left? Your parents, your brother? Me? What about me Lila? What am I supposed to do now? Who am I to sit with at lunch, whose house am I supposed to spend more time at than my own, who will I talk to even. You where all I ever focused on, you where the only person I put my life into you, and now you have just left. And you didn’t even close the window.
You probably didn’t expect me to come up here this early. To your room I mean. I bet you didn’t expect me to find at 6:30 am that you had left. Then again, we have been friends for years, and its not uncommon for one of us to break into each others rooms early in the morning. I needed to grab my math homework back from you, and anyway I have been in your room at more awkward times. Remember summer of 2016? Ok, lets not go there. Or shall we? I don’t know. What actually did happen? It was so long ago I don’t know how it started. Was it you who crawled into my tent? I think it was, because you said you wanted excitement, and I said you came to the wrong person. You always want excitement Lila, everything is too boring for you. But, I do hope I gave you even a hint of the excitement you wished for.
I just heard a chime, you left your phone here? You, Lila Hemming, left the only form of entertainment that you could constantly rely on, in the room you are running from! The text was from Sydney, she said that she hopes not to wake you, but that she wants to borrow your white flats. What are flats? And how kind of you to leave before you received to the text so she wouldn’t wake you. How kind of you to drop of the face of the world without saying goodbye. How f***ing kind of you. So kind and sweet. Yep. Thats you. Goddamnit Lila. People do love you! People do care for you! And you would think I would show that perfectly. Why the hell did you leave. Yes I know you were so agonizingly bored with this goddamn town, but in it did you leave me. Why did you leave me here Lila? Why did you do this to me? You left me here alone with out you. Why didn’t you take me along to where ever the hell you went. You told me your dreams, your doubts, your devilish thoughts, and I in return kept them hoping that when you walked out of this boring old town, my hand would be in yours, and you would be the one dragging me along. But no Lila, you had to leave empty handed, searching for someone to fill it when they were right here this entire time. Lila you bastard, come back.

I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wrote that. I shouldn’t have called you that. You are no bastard. You are brave and I am weak. You, Lila, are the only one brave enough to follow your crazy, wild dreams. You are the only one who can pick up the wand and command the music of life to follow your beat, you are the only one who can not yell, but simply ask the world to bow and they will kiss the floor for you. Lila, I miss you and your wild ways. I wish I could be just as brave, I wish I could follow my dreams, but they left out of a bedroom window for me to find open and the purple curtains sailing. Lila, why couldn’t you wait just a little bit longer to run after your purple mountains so I could come with you?
Ok new topic, lets go for something happy. Remember Spring Break when the band and Choir when to Disney World, and we and a few others got drunk off of our asses? From what I could remember, you made me try on one of your bras while Jason sang the Scooby Doo theme song. That was fun. What was really funny though, was seeing how much of a lightweight you were. I hope you get drunk one day again. I hope its with whatever new friends you make and I hope it will top Disney World, even though in my opinion that will be pretty hard to beat. I mean, no one can bet my drunk bowling with beer cans and those shampoo bottles you find in hotel rooms.
Remember Halloween 2016? You refused to dress up because thats what everyone else did, but helped me into a crappy Robin Hood costume. Nothing really exciting happened, so you probably don’t remember it, but I do. I remember how we went to a bunch of haunted houses and how you jumped into me, and how when the chainsaw guy came out, you ran right into me and we went crashing down taking out a plastic scarecrow in the process. I remember how hard you where laughing in my ear as you turned us around so my back was to the chainsaw, and you said to take me instead.
What about when your family took me to St. Louis and we went to the City Museum thats actually not a Museum, but more a jungle gym for teenagers and adults. We went down the 10 story slide and I almost had a panic attack at the top of one of the wire tubes that crawled the side of the building. I’m terrified of heights, but of course your not. Your not afraid of anything are you. Actually, now that I think of it, I have known you for years, but I cannot name one thing you are afraid of.
But not everything is always happy. Remember that one night- Oh shut up Lila, I can hear your sarcasm all the way over here. I mean, the one night you called me, crying, saying that you were almost raped. I can still hear how damaged you sounded, your voice was hoarse and you where hiccuping because you were crying so hard. I don’t think even to this day you completely understand how I broken I was. After I speed my way through a few dozen laws on my way toward you, I found you curled up in a ball in a bed of white flowers, and it took all I had to fight back tears. Your clothes were torn and matted with something dark, later I found out just dirt, and you had a couple cuts and bruises here and there. But all of that was just aesthetic. You where sobbing, clutching your chest, hiccuping. I just sat down next to you and held you. Do you remember how you grabbed onto my shirt so tight like I was going to leave you? Oh, Lila, I was never going to leave you. You were the one that was, and did, leave me. Lila, do you remember how I held on to you just as tight, and did you know, that I cried with you? I know your self confidence crumbled and character melted into a puddle, but you were wrong when you said that you can’t rely on someone to save you. I know that I am not the knight in shinning armor you scowl at, but Lila, you mean everything to me, and the fact that you dug your nails into my back and said no one could save you, only you yourself can, hurt me almost as much as seeing you lie alone scared, in that bed of flowers.
Sorry turn the mood so sad, but its right of me. Its not running away, you told me once. Its running after something that is not here. You would never run away from anything, not even bullies that made others cower. Sure, your black eye made you think twice, but your stance hardly wavered. Even if you did not know it Lila, everyone loved you, and everyone will miss you. Even if you did not know it Lila, I am crying because you left.
Beyond the purple mountains, the green grasses, and the shimmering blue waves do I know you stand. Above it all I know you live and thrive. You know and hold every secret to this world, and I envy you. Lila Hemming, do you grow more and more every second you walk farther from here, and every second I write this with emotions as strong and changing as the ocean’s currents, do I fall more and more in- well you know. How could you not? You know everything about me, and I know nothing about you other than I want you back.
I will wait here for you. I know you said you may never come back, but I know you just might. Where ever you are, I hope you found your purple mountains and red flower walls. I hope you find the man of you dreams I could never be, and I hope you have the two beautiful twin girls you wanted. I hope you wear a woven straw hat, wear polka dots on stripes, and be blissfully happy. But mostly, I hope you think of me, stuck here in the town that was so boring it drove you insane. I hope you think of me.
Live long, Lila.
     ~Christian M.