Letter To Joey

Joey,

Hey.  I’m sending you this long-ass e-mail, written on May 30th, 2007, so when you get an up and running computer, you’ll be able to read this and know what all has gone on in my life, as well as answer/ask any questions that are in here as well as may pop up in your mind.

First, why do you have to sneak around to use Hope’s computer?  I mean, I know it may be hers, but that doesn’t seem right that she could hog it and be the only one allowed to use it.  Second, you eluded to you and Mike talking.  Does that mean he finally cleared things up with your parental units where he’s concerned?  (Considering how things were and are with me and Mike, I doubt he’d say anything positive on my behalf, so I’m willing to bet I’m still on their hit list.)  Third, are you in college?  If so, how come you can’t use any computers in a library there?  Or is it that you’re just working right now and saving up money for college?  Fourth, it won’t make a difference once you read this, because once you do, you’ll have online capabilities, but did you happen to get my address to write a snail mail letter to me?

I’ve debated writing to you.  I did find a letter you wrote me from years back, before that whole thing with your parents and all.  But I’ve never been sure that you would actually get it, so I’ve kept myself from sending anything.  Plus, there was another reason.  I’ve thought about you quite often while I’ve been out here in Kansas.  (Yeah, I moved, I’ll get to that adventure in a bit.)  I remembered fun times we had when I introduced you to Jason, when you (probably) fractured my pinkie when we were playing Mercy at Game Factory, showing you that place at Union Beach, and losing my purse, (Groans.)  But through it all, there was a tint on those memories.  I don’t recall where I saw it, but I saw something you wrote to Mike, maybe something he printed out that I happened to see in the spare room or whatever.  The point is, it said something to the effect of that you understood what Mike had to be going through, because I wasn’t the most rational of people, or had the tendency to blow things out of proportion, or some such like that.  I don’t remember exactly what it said, I read it before we ever actually left for Kansas.  That tells you how long ago it was, considering we left the first weekend in October.

You may or may not remember, but you’d wanted to se me before I went, to meet up on another secret rendezvous, maybe to the Panda.  After I read that, I pulled away, not wanting to meet up with you because I didn’t know if you were one of the two-timers that I felt pretty much everyone else who’s in that group is.  I just felt so betrayed by what you said because you’ve told me so many times to my face or over notes that I was loved, admired, respected, and considered this perfect best friend and soul mate by you.  I realize that I should have just faced it, met up with you, and asked you about it then, to find out where you stood as far as me and Mike were concerned, but I was afraid.  I didn’t want to face it head on, asking you where you stood, and find out that . . . you weren’t standing by me anymore.  I knew that whatever you considered me, you also had always looked up to Mike, seen him as this . . . great person who was always a welcome change from everyone else in the "Vroom clan," and I just . . . I couldn’t take you telling me that you had chosen him over me as well.  Well, granted, no one else told me that, no one else had the guts to actually come forward and tell me they didn’t want me around, but that’s the decision everyone else made.  And I just don’t think I could have dealt with that decision from you, especially since I would’ve been asking you directly, and therefore would have gotten a direct answer more than likely.  I wouldn’t have asked you to choose, I just want to make that clear, and I by no means am asking you to choose now, but since everyone else was choosing their side, and it wasn’t mine, I was afraid you were going to jump on the bandwagon, since he was always your favorite relative.

The only thing that could even remotely take that bitter tint off those memories was the thought, (and, I admit, hope,) that if you had chosen him, you’d soon realize that he was more or less turning into a Dan clone.  At least, that’s what I think from everything I’ve heard.  He sems all the more ruthless, rough, and not worried about the consequences of his actions, as long as he gets whatever job done.  I may be wrong, but that’s what it seems like he’s become.  And I was hoping that if that is what he’s like now, you’d realize it, and realize he was becoming more and more like Dan, and therefore turn against him, because somehow, I’m not seeing you ever liking Dan.

Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to actually take up any of these mindsets, I’m just explaining the train of thought my mind took whenever I thought about you since I’ve been out here.

Well, I suppose I should tell you that story, shouldn’t I?  My mom knows this guy who has a house in a place called Pratt, Kansas.  Well, he said it was a fixer-upper, (cough*UNDERSTATEMENT*cough,) but that he wanted to rent it to reliable people for two-fifty a month, because his last tennants had skipped out on him after not paying for about six months.  This was around June, and iIt just so happened that Rob and I were looking into getting an apartment within the next year so that we’d finally have some independence from our parents and be able to be out on our own.  Well, we decided to take a look at the house and set the week-long trip up for mid-August.  We checked out the house and honestly, it was a disaster.  There were mouse pellets, and I don’t mean food, all over the kitchen counters, the carpets were absolutely disgusting, the toilet didn’t work . . .  God.  We should have just turned around and left after seeing the place.  But we didn’t.  My parents, Rob, and I did God only knows how much work in there during that week.  On August 19th, a few days after we came back, Rob proposed to me, so I’m officially engaged!

My mom was going to have a going-away party for us, but since Rob’s proposal, she turned it to a going away/engagement party.  It was cool, we got some great gifts, including this great framed thing from Melanie that has several pictures of me and Rob in it.

We took off for Kansas on October 9th, and made it to Penn. that night.  We were gonna hang out with a friend of mine named Ryan, since he lives in Penn.  We hung out with him the next day and when we did leave Penn., I almost left Smiley the Hedgehog behind!  She’d gotten out of her carrier and was curled up under a blanket on the floor.  Luckily, I picked up that blanket and found her.

We stayed in hotels in Penn., Ohio, I think either Indiana or Illinios, and Missouri.  We also found this great place in Missouri called Nostalgia-ville.  It had a whole bunch of Beatles stuff, Wizard of Oz, and whatnot.  It was a great place.

We got to Pratt on Friday the 13th and didn’

t get our stuff until November 1st, which also meant I didn’t get to dress up for Halloween, which absolutely sucked.  But oh, well.  It was about mid-November when he and I finally found jobs at, get this, a McDonald’s.  (People joke about New Jersey being nowheresville, trust me, tell them to go to Pratt, then they’ll see a TRUE nowheresville.)  Anyway, I went for training one night, the night Rob went, and the third, we were supposed to work together from three till midnight.  Well, that day, November 18th, about half an hour after we got to work, Rob had a grand mal seizure, (the stereotypical kind people think of,) and wound up having to go to the hospital.  It was horrible for both of us.  I was a mess, he hated having the neck brace on that they made him wear, it was just bad for both of us.  He was transferred to another hospital that had a neurosurgery unit after it was discovered that there was some amount of internal bleeding around where he hit his head.  He finally made it out and was able to come back to the Pratt house on the 21st.  Unfortunately, we’re still dealing with doctor bills and such, which completely sucks.

In early January, after we’d both been working for over two weeks staright, I’d put a request in that we have a Thursday and Sunday off, about a week before we needed said days off.  Well, the owners refused, saying we didn’t need a day off for what we needed to take care of, and when I tried to talk to one of the owners, she basically gave me an, "oh, well, it’s not my problem," response, and told me that "everyone knew" you had to put in requests for days off two weeks in advance.  Yet we were never told that, and everywhere else I’ve worked, it’s been one week, unless otherwise written and posted somewhere by the manager.  So, we didn’t show up to work that Thursday and basically got our last paychecks and walked away from that job.

The problem was, we needed a source of income.  So we started looking around Wichita, a much bigger and more populated town about seventy miles away from Pratt.