"More than a stunning debut. It is the announcement of a bold new literary voice"
—Stephen Chbosky, author of The Perks of Being a Wallflower

I honestly don’t know if you’re dead or not. So I suppose I shouldn’t be writing this letter as if you were. But I know that everyone writing these is feeling something, and sharing it with a small part of the world, and I know I need to be okay with feeling too, so here we are. I only saw you once, for a few hours, at a Sabrina Carpenter concert of all things. I hardly remember now—it was two years ago, after all, and at the time you didn’t seem important. You were nice, and I liked you, but it wasn’t until a good time after the concert that I realized how… connected we were, I guess. I thought about you a lot, and still do; to this day I don’t know what it is that brought me to think of you so much, and everything happened so long ago that even if I could go back to that night, I’m not sure I’d recognize what pulled me towards you afterwards.
Am I doing this wrong? Everyone else seems to be writing to dead people they actually knew, and know for sure that they’re dead, for that matter. I really hope you aren’t dead, but you were at the concert because of the Make-a-Wish program. Your mom told mine, saying that you had cancer, and the program wanted to fulfill your dream of seeing her while they still could. You were dying, I think. “Dying: it’s a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of a cello: dying.” That’s from Surrender, this really good book by Sonya Hartnett. I think you’d like it—you seemed as if you’d like deep important things, like me. You were quiet when we met, getting the same candy if I remember correctly, Cookie Dough Bites. You and your mom, alone, in front of me and mine. Most of the talking was done by your mother. You were quiet, but seemed so smart, like if you’d only open your mouth, pages and pages worth of wisdom would escape. Wise beyond your years.
I still think of you from time to time. I tried to find you, online and through social media and websites and everything. Your Make-a-Wish program doesn’t have you listed; at least, last time I checked, it didn’t. I still listen to Sabrina. She released a new album, I think a week or two ago, or maybe I didn’t hear about it until then. Anyway, it’s called Singular Act 1. I discovered it on Spotify… I’ve been trying to keep up with her for both of our sakes. I think you’d like the album.
I wonder if you ever felt connected to me like I did to you? I sincerely hope you made it through your sickness. I imagine that it can be hell. I hope that you’re still alive, if you want to be and it’s not too hard for you, so that one day we might meet again: “And we can meet again somewhere, someday far away from here.” That’s from Sign of the Times by Harry Styles, which Sabrina and Jasmine Thompson covered, I think around the same time we saw and met her together. That song still makes me feel, so intensely. Whether we ever reconcile or not, I don’t know. You’ll be with me either way.