Free The Noah Confessions by Barbara Hall

to me.

• 2 •
    When I got home, the letter was waiting, and except for a snack and a quick glance at MTV, I didn’t avoid it.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â 
    September 28
    Dear Noah,
    You tried to talk to me as we were leaving English class today. You asked if you could look at my notes for the test next week. I told you that my notes were a mess and that you should ask someone else. You looked kind of upset. I realized that you didn’t really care about the notes—you were just trying to talk to me and I blew you off. You were aware that I was blowing you off. I felt bad about it and I wanted to explain. What I would have said to you is that we can’t get to know each other. The whole idea is that we don’t know each other—that’s why I can write the letter to you. If I get to know you, I’ll have something to protect. After all, I have plenty of friends and relatives and even my pastor whom I could tell this story to. I’ve had the opportunity but I let it pass because by virtue of knowing me, they will want to disbelieve me. They will want it not to be true. They might even try to tell me it’s not true and that would make me completely crazy, crazier than I already fear that I am.
    But I’m not crazy. I’m just someone who was born into insanity. I’m sane, and this letter is my last best hope of hanging on to that.
    By the way, what I want you to know when you read this is that I’m probably completely in love with you. I don’t really know you so it’s not entirely accurate to say that. But I love who I think you are, the person I’ve made up in my mind. That person is warm and funny and worldly and sweet and wise. I know you’re handsome; that’s not a subjective thing. It’s just a fact. I just want you to know I love you for bigger reasons than that. Believe me, I have imagined it so many times—me and you in a perfect world, or at least a world in which I’m not carrying around the secret of my criminal life. In a weird way, I have to keep you at a distance and write this letter to you so you won’t make the mistake of falling in love with me, too. Because you can’t have me. I can’t have you. I’m damaged goods. I’m the wrong girl for reasons you can’t even imagine. I am the enemy.
    It would have been nice. I want you to know that. You and me holding hands at assembly or at a movie. Us being a couple. Noah and Cat, Cat and Noah. I think about it all the time. It stirs up the same feeling I always had watching kids playing on the playground, on the monkey bars and the swing set and the slide. They get to do that because they aren’t me. Because they don’t know what I know. They haven’t done what I’ve done.
    And I also want to tell you that never in a million years did I ever think you’d be interested in me. That was not in the game plan.
    But I digress.
    Now for the story of my brother.
    My brother Gregory is twelve years older than I am, the product of my mother’s first marriage. He’s a half brother but that hardly matters. He is a minister in North Carolina and he’s married to a very nice woman named Suzanne. They don’t have any kids yet. We see them periodically. They come to visit and the visits are always stiff and awkward. He doesn’t know my mother well, because she didn’t raise him, and he resents (I suspect) me and my sister because my mother did raise us. You can imagine his position. Why were we good enough for her and he wasn’t? He doesn’t have any perspective on it, that’s the problem. The person who does have perspective is his wife, Suzanne. She gave me a lot of the history I’m about to tell you.
    I realize I’m bad at creating suspense because now I’ve revealed that my mother never got her son back. He was raised by my grandparents. My parents had me and my sister, but Gregory’s