We sat in silence, which I thought was both of us processing this until I realized she’d fallen back asleep a few minutes shy of midnight. I wondered what alternate reality Marta had been thinking about; I’d been busy resisting quizzing her about the other thing I’d found, something better than a journal. My quest to see if Georgina owned the second part of Little Women had hit the jackpot in more ways than one: Tucked inside the pages, right near where Jo finds out that Laurie went and married that unrepentant book burner Amy, was a letter:

My darling,

That you should ever read those words, and see my soul in them, sends a tingle down my spine. It would take the courage of this entire nation for me to even give this to you, but I cannot live with all these words pent up inside of me, bursting to escape, wrapping you in their cursive arms, each dot in every ellipsis substituting for the kisses I long to give you…and then…and then…everything. Ellie says I’m silly, flighty, a terrible flirt. Perhaps I am. But my heart beats, too, just as hers does. Or will you agree? Will I send you this and then be told I’m only seventeen, that I don’t know my own mind, that I can’t know my own feelings, that I must sit still and behave?

I don’t believe you could ever be so cruel. I may not be serious, but you have always taken me seriously. Did you feel what I felt when we bumped hands? Did your skin cry for mine with every touch? It must have. Mine could not burn so hotly without there being a spark in return. I am passion and I am fire, and all of it is yours, if you’d come find me.

Unless…and remember what those dots represent, my darling…unless I don’t send this at all. Unless I fold it up and tuck it to my heart and keep you there instead, the only way I can guarantee that I can hold you close to me forever. What do I do? What would you do, my love, my only, my life, my