It was the last week of 8th grade and Ms. Simpkins made us all write a letter to Amanda Cartwright who had just tried to kill herself. She cut her wrists in the bathtub like you see in the movies. But she didn't die. She'd been in some special hospital for ten days, and Ms. Simpkins thought letters from her class would make her feel better. But I didn't know Amanda Cartwright. She was just the tiny quiet blonde girl that sat in the back of my science class who always tapped her foot machine-gun fast, like she was late for something important and the bell wouldn't ring soon enough. So what do you write to a girl you don't know to make her not want to kill herself again?

That was also the week the giant squid washed up on a beach in Japan. It was all over the news. Record size, they said. As big as a mansion. People said its tentacles could wrap around a boat and take it down to the bottom of the ocean no problem. Others said it had enough ink in its sac to cover an entire city. I thought it was the coolest thing. Most of the kids just made dumb sushi jokes or started calling Ronny Wilhelm a giant squid. But I wanted to know what else was hiding deep, deep down in the water that we didn't know about. Were there crabs as big as Hondas? Whales the size of Rhode Island? And how tragic, something big enough to be king of the ocean just washing up on shore so people could take pictures and make stupid jokes.

No one knew why Amanda Cartwright tried to kill herself, but everybody talked about it. Kids at the lunch tables whispered rumors. My mom buzzed around on the phone with other moms, always leaving the room when I came in. I bet even the teachers were talking about her in the office when they disappeared to make copies. Just like the giant squid, everybody talking but nobody really knowing anything. It wasn't right and only made me feel worse for Amanda. I just kept picturing her alone in a hospital room, tapping her foot at record speed getting fifty letters from classmates all telling her how much they missed her and how algebra or history or lunch just wasn't the same without her and how much fun high school was going to be next year and she should hang in there, be strong, get well soon, or other stupid stuff that meant nothing but made the writer feel good about themselves. If I was Amanda Cartwright those letters would just make me feel worse.

So when I finally wrote mine, I just told Amanda about the giant squid. I used big words to describe its size and how strong the tentacles were. Could drown a hundred men no problem. I described what Tokyo would look like covered in squid ink. Everything dripping in black and everyone blind. I didn't say anything about school or what happened, and I didn't try to pretend like we were best friends or that I even missed her. If I was in a hospital, in a small room locked away from the world, I would want to know about things like giant squids. I would want to know about things so much bigger than me I couldn't even imagine. About whole other worlds that existed inside ours, other worlds where anything was possible.


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