collage or tagged with annotations (“Found near the south bridge, November 1”). Other items contained instructions (“Please send to Claire Maenza immediately”; “Send to someone you don’t know. Don’t delay”). Some messages were anagrams, acrostics, cryptograms, some were in foreign languages, Esperanto. I always had to cheat and go search on the Web to find out what the hell I was getting. “That’s not cheating,” she said, if she said anything at all. If I didn’t mention the mail, she wouldn’t either.
Once she sent me an envelope with a single sentence written over and over on it, except for the small block where my name and address appeared in large red letters and numbers. When I opened the envelope, I found the same sentence written over the entire inside—she must have taken the envelope apart, written on it, then folded it back together—except with all the letters backward. The sentence was: “There are realms of life where the concepts of sense and nonsense do not apply.”
One of my favorites was a charcoal-and-ink drawing of her silhouette, with dotted lines around the edges, like outlines of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with instructions on each of the sections. “Mail this to Claire Maenza,” was written on one. “Put this between pages 104 and 105 of the book Literature of the Supernatural, edited by Robert E. Beck, in the school library,” was on another. If you cut the sections along the dotted lines, her silhouette was transformed into another silhouette, mine. I didn’t follow any of the instructions. I had the drawing hanging on my wall, but took it down whenever Anna came over. I didn’t want her to know that I hadn’t done what she asked.
She made her own stamps. She would take pictures, or find them, and manipulate them into templates she’d gotten online or created herself, and would then print her own stamps. Almost everything she sent me had her handmade stamps: presidents and movie stars, writers and artists, faces of people in town, her father, a few of herself. You can imagine my surprise when I saw one with my own picture. I don’t even know where or how she got the picture. Maybe she took it herself, in her room or at school. I didn’t remember it at all, but there I was, at middle distance, looking straight ahead, a little droopy-eyed, my hair slightly in my eyes. Nothing unusual, except I didn’t remember that picture’s being taken.
“They never notice,” she said about the post office. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a letter returned. It must be the computers—they can’t tell the difference between a real stamp and one of mine. Besides, Archie doesn’t care.” Archie Wilkes was the mailman in town. He lived down the street from us. He didn’t have that many stops, he drove his own car, and you never saw him wear a uniform. He delivered the mail whenever he had time, it seemed. He would show up in the evening, or on Sunday morning. It was all very casual. The real work was done in Hilliker, at the central mail facility, where the computers sorted everything out. Once it cleared there, Anna’s stamps were as good as the real thing.
It was a game to her. Everything was a game, or a piece in a game only she knew the rules to. Every day there was something new, something surprising.
I now wonder how much of it she planned and how much of it just happened.
I thought that Anna should meet Mr. Devon, take a class from him, or we could go visit him after school one day. She was against it.
“I heard he’s a creep.”
“I don’t think so. Everybody seems to like him.”
“He’s not for me, then,” she said. That was the end of the conversation.
Anna didn’t like talking about Mr. Devon. She didn’t like him, although she never said why. I always thought they would get along. Mr. Devon was the second most interesting person I knew. You don’t have too many football coaches who also teach drawing, sculpture, and photography.
Once she sent me an envelope with a single sentence written over and over on it, except for the small block where my name and address appeared in large red letters and numbers. When I opened the envelope, I found the same sentence written over the entire inside—she must have taken the envelope apart, written on it, then folded it back together—except with all the letters backward. The sentence was: “There are realms of life where the concepts of sense and nonsense do not apply.”
One of my favorites was a charcoal-and-ink drawing of her silhouette, with dotted lines around the edges, like outlines of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, with instructions on each of the sections. “Mail this to Claire Maenza,” was written on one. “Put this between pages 104 and 105 of the book Literature of the Supernatural, edited by Robert E. Beck, in the school library,” was on another. If you cut the sections along the dotted lines, her silhouette was transformed into another silhouette, mine. I didn’t follow any of the instructions. I had the drawing hanging on my wall, but took it down whenever Anna came over. I didn’t want her to know that I hadn’t done what she asked.
She made her own stamps. She would take pictures, or find them, and manipulate them into templates she’d gotten online or created herself, and would then print her own stamps. Almost everything she sent me had her handmade stamps: presidents and movie stars, writers and artists, faces of people in town, her father, a few of herself. You can imagine my surprise when I saw one with my own picture. I don’t even know where or how she got the picture. Maybe she took it herself, in her room or at school. I didn’t remember it at all, but there I was, at middle distance, looking straight ahead, a little droopy-eyed, my hair slightly in my eyes. Nothing unusual, except I didn’t remember that picture’s being taken.
“They never notice,” she said about the post office. “I don’t think I’ve ever had a letter returned. It must be the computers—they can’t tell the difference between a real stamp and one of mine. Besides, Archie doesn’t care.” Archie Wilkes was the mailman in town. He lived down the street from us. He didn’t have that many stops, he drove his own car, and you never saw him wear a uniform. He delivered the mail whenever he had time, it seemed. He would show up in the evening, or on Sunday morning. It was all very casual. The real work was done in Hilliker, at the central mail facility, where the computers sorted everything out. Once it cleared there, Anna’s stamps were as good as the real thing.
It was a game to her. Everything was a game, or a piece in a game only she knew the rules to. Every day there was something new, something surprising.
I now wonder how much of it she planned and how much of it just happened.
I thought that Anna should meet Mr. Devon, take a class from him, or we could go visit him after school one day. She was against it.
“I heard he’s a creep.”
“I don’t think so. Everybody seems to like him.”
“He’s not for me, then,” she said. That was the end of the conversation.
Anna didn’t like talking about Mr. Devon. She didn’t like him, although she never said why. I always thought they would get along. Mr. Devon was the second most interesting person I knew. You don’t have too many football coaches who also teach drawing, sculpture, and photography.
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