M'lady,

I have combed every inch of this island looking for the final pieces of wood needed to complete our wooded treehouse. I marked the path with cryptic carvings of arrows for right turns and bayonets for lefts, and eventually it drops off into a waterfall, and you can rest assured that if anyone sniffs out our steps, every adult will sneer and bet that no one would be dull enough to jump off and into it.

Oh we are growing, but childlikeness is the only way to live, so hand in hand I will stand for nothing less than dives, you hear? Head first. (And also backflips, if you want to backflip, you can backflip).

But we're going to give this whole life everything that we've got, and if that means jumping off really high rocks and into water, so be it. And telling ghost stories with our face-painted friends around campfires (but for the love of god, no acoustic guitars, I hate campfire-acoustic-guitar-guys). And we'll have sleepovers and sleep over one another, and you'll get a chance to see your wishes come true beneath the same stars that I heard you whisper to when I pretended to be asleep all those months ago.

We've been playing our games, but they're just not the same without my Pocahontas to rescue me. Someone always plays your Algonquian dad-chief and I'm constantly John Smith getting my head bashed in with a war club. You'll probably laugh when you read this, but you don't hear any of those giggle-sounds coming up from Jamestown. Virginia is screwed.

I think it's my time to come to your rescue. If all our bottles find their way to one another, then surely our hands can, too. I've been sawing off branches to make room for our rooms and pitching them together to keep the moisture from coming through. I lifted a sail from in between the logs, nailed an engine to the trunk and stood at the front to balance and keep myself from falling off.

Well it's not perfect, but it will do. I'm going to ride our house's roof to come and get you.

So the boy set sail, and pushed off to sea, stood at the bow looking forward and out into everything, confident. And though he had no idea what the ocean would bring, "there are some things that I just know I believe, no matter how irreconcilable they seem."