All the same, I grew attached to my pen pal from the very first letter I received during the first week at my new school. Maybe it was because no one gave me the time of day at All Saints High. Black had decided to start our conversation like this:

Is morality relative?

—Black

It was a philosophical question an eighteen-year-old wouldn’t normally ask. We weren’t supposed to share our letters with other students, but I knew for a fact most pen pals talked about school, homework, the mall, parties, music, and just regular stuff, not this. But it was the beginning of the year, and I was feeling hopeful and pretty damn good about myself, so I answered:

It depends on who’s asking.

—Pink

We were only required to exchange one letter a week, so I was excited to get a letter back in my locker only two days later.

Well played, Pink. (Technically, you’re breaking the rules since I can tell by your name that you’re a girl.) Another question coming your way, and this time, try not to get around it like a pussy. When is it okay, if ever, to disobey the law?

—Black

I actually giggled, for the first time since I’d gotten to Todos Santos. I licked my lips and thought about the question all afternoon before I wrote back a response.

Well, Black, (and I fail to see how Pink is any different from Black. Clearly, you’re breaking the rules too, because I can tell by your name that you’re a guy), I’ll give you a straight, surprising answer: I think it’s okay to disobey the law at times. When it’s a necessity, an emergency, or when common sense overrules the law.

Like civil disobedience. When Gandhi went down to the sea for salt, or when Rosa Parks took a seat on that bus. I don’t think we’re above the law. But I don’t think we’re below it either. I think we need to be level with it and think before we do things.

P.S.

Calling me a “pussy” is breaking the no-foul-language rule, so technically, you’re practically an anarchist in the realm of this pen-pal world.

—Pink.

The answer came the same day, and it was an all-time record. Nobody was overeager to write more often than they had to, but I liked Black. I also liked the anonymity of the project, because I was starting to believe that Black, like everyone else, was treating me like crap daily just because I was the daughter of servants. I could use a friend.

I’m semi-impressed. Maybe we should break more rules by you coming to my house tonight. My mouth is not only good for talking philosophy.

—Black

I flushed red and crumpled his letter, throwing it into the trashcan next to my bed in my room at home. Here, I thought I was talking to someone who was actually funny and smart, and all he wanted was to get into my pants. I didn’t answer Black, and when I absolutely had to send my weekly letter, I responded with:

No.

—Pink

Black, too, waited until the very last day before he answered me next time.

Your loss.

—Black

The next week, I decided to stop playing games and write something lengthy. It was a bad week. The week when my calculus-book incident happened. Vicious took over my thoughts, so I tried to quiet him down by thinking of other things.

Do you think we’ll ever crack the riddle of aging? Have you ever wondered if maybe we were born too soon? Maybe one hundred, two hundred years from now they’re going to find a cure for death. Then everyone who lives will look back at us and think, “Well, they were screwed. We’re going to live forever!” Muahahaha.

I think I might be a pessimist.

—Pink

He answered the next morning.

I think it’s more likely that these people will have to deal with the wrecked, polluted world we left them because we did fuck-all and partied hard when they weren’t even a sperm and an egg yet. But to your question, no, I wouldn’t want to live forever. What would be the point in that? Aren’t you hungry for something? Don’t you have dreams? What weight and significance do your dreams have if they don’t have a deadline? If you don’t have to chase them today because you can do it tomorrow, in a week, a year, or in a hundred years’ time?

I think you’re just realistic, and possibly weird as shit.

—Black

I didn’t write him the next day because I was getting ready for another important exam, though I was planning to write him that evening. But it was too late. Black wrote another letter.

I didn’t mean it in a bad way. Your weirdness isn’t a turn-off.

—Black.

I bet that’s just a pickup line to try to ask me to come to your place again.

—Pink

I sighed, hoping this wouldn’t mean another dry-spell from letters. But Black wrote me after two days.

You only get one chance, sweetheart. I’m not going to ask again. You missed the train. Besides, I have a nagging feeling that I know who you are, and if that’s the case, I don’t want you anywhere near my bed, or inside my house.

Can wars ever be just?

—Black

My heart pounded fiercely in my chest for the whole day. I looked around in the hallways, trying to catch someone who might’ve looked at me funny, but no one did. Everybody acted the same way. Meaning they either ignored me or sneered at me. Other than Dean. Dean was hitting on me constantly. I wanted so badly to tell him no, wanted to explain that it was a bad idea, that I had feelings for his friend, but even I knew how pathetic that sounded. Falling in lust with your bully. Craving someone who found you disgusting.

Either way, I didn’t answer Black. I’d decided I’d give him a curt answer when I absolutely had to and steer the conversation elsewhere like last time. But I couldn’t. Because another letter came the following day.

I asked you a question, Emilia. Do you think wars can be just?

—Black

Now I definitely knew who he was, and every time I sat next to him in Lit class or saw him down the hallway, I looked the other way, somehow feeling angry with myself for talking to Black so freely. It was like Vicious had an intimate piece of me, now that he had access to my unabashed truths. Which was, of course, stupid. And as if there was any doubt left, my next letter from Black came to me two days after, but it wasn’t waiting in my locker. It was sitting on my desk, in my room, at the servants’ apartment.

Why do you never fight back? I stole your book. I bully you. I hate you. Fight me, Help. Show me what you’re made of.

—Black.

We exchanged blank pages for the remainder of the month. My letters to him were devoid of words, though I sometimes doodled something offensive when I was particularly bored. His letters to me contained nothing at all. I sometimes smelled the pieces of paper he sent me. I sometimes rolled them between my fingers, knowing he’d touched them too.

And then I started dating Dean.

I felt bad about it the whole time, but I did it anyway. I wasn’t using him, because I did like him. I didn’t love him, but love wasn’t something I necessarily thought I should feel at such a young age. It might’ve been easier to think that Dean didn’t love me either. Besides, we were good together. We had fun. But we both wanted to go to out-of-state schools and it made things lighter and less serious between us. At least I thought so.

Shortly after I started dating Dean, Black began writing again.

Can you tell the difference between love and lust?

—Black

I humored him, not because I wanted to, but because I relished every chance I had to talk to him.

Lust is when you want the person to make you feel good. Love is when you want to make the other person feel good.

—Pink.

The next time I got a letter from him, my hands shook. And they would continue to shake for the next few months as Black crawled into my soul and took a seat in the pit of my heart, making himself comfortable.

And if I want to hurt the person, is that hate?

—Black

I answered:

No, it’s pain. You want to inflict pain on the person who caused you to hurt. I think if you hate someone, you just want them gone. Do you really hate me, Black?

—Pink

It was the bravest question I’d ever asked him. He took the whole week to get back to me with that one.

No.

—Black

Do you want to talk about it face-to-face?

—Pink

Another week passed before he answered.

No.

—Black.

 

We ping-ponged for the remainder of the year, talking about philosophy and art. I was dating Dean, and Vicious was sleeping with everyone else. We never mentioned our real identities again. We never admitted to one another, not in person and not in the letters, that we were who we were. But it was becoming clearer that we were compatible.

And every time I saw him walking down the hallway with his lazy smirk and a harem of cheerleaders or his football crew trailing behind him, I smiled a private smile. A smile that said that I knew him more than they did. That they might hang out with him every day and attend his stupid parties, but I was the one who really knew the important things about him.

Even when he tried to kiss me that night, we didn’t discuss Black and Pink. If anything, the next week, he wrote to me as if nothing had happened. As if Vicious and Black were completely different people.

The one and only time he’d admitted to being Black was on the day I left Todos Santos for good. Our pen pal project had ended weeks ago, but I still found an envelope on top of my suitcase. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but I still knew who it was from. The outside said: