Family Letters
Copyright© 2014 by Allan Joyal
Chapter 7
Dearest Willow,
I think you know Anna O'Connor? The heavyset girl who lives across the street and a couple houses down from us? Ask her about what a pickup is like. It isn't just standing around in your tights (even if they are not much more than your all in all) while being inspected before performing on stage.
If you're at all as much of a romantic as you seem, and you decide not to pursue Tai Chi or some martial art with at least as much passion as you have for dance I suggest that you make fast friends with someone who can sponsor you. Find out who else he or she (though it is much more likely to be he) will be sponsoring and make friends with them. Build the relationship as much as you can. As soon as you're 14 you could move in with a prospective sponsor. I'd suggest against that unless you have a signed contract. The only reason that marriage can be broken so casually by the Confederacy is that they really don't understand it as a contract. I'm sure if they did they wouldn't let men put aside their wives or let women put aside their husbands. They will not allow someone to break a contract, at least that is what I understand.
They didn't shoot us at the pickup, but afterward they turned a stunner on the lowest setting possible and hit all the concubines with it. At least I think they did. Everyone who was a concubine from the pickup at the ice cream parlor got hit I think...
Marissa, Katy and I had a long talk. Mostly she's embarrassed (a lot like you I guess) that she's had to join a group for what would have been private things. The reason I was there at all was so that I would understand Katy. Marissa says that it's really important that I understand all the women in our family. She said I might defer to Holly but she'd observed that Holly rarely did anything that she thought would upset me. That was a heavy burden to drop on me. I'm not ready to be the leader of our family! Not that Marissa told Katy that she had noticed that but she explained it to me...
I don't think I'd want different flavored body washes, though Marissa embarrassed me by telling me that there are flavored lubricants! Huh!? Oh!! She explained after a bit but I don't think you want to know about the hows and whys of flavored lubricants. I was just commenting on how everyone in the bed smells subtly different.