Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

don't, and they all work so hard - they've got bumper stickers, bracelets and postcards, and, for what it's
worth, a ghostwriter will soon be doing a book about Cheryl's life which may or may not help other
young people or their parents. It won't help me. I shouldn't be telling you this - this letter may never even
find you - but nothing in the past months has brought me any solace, and how could it? In the last year of
her life, my daughter was no longer my daughter. She was somebody else. I have no idea who it was
who died in the shooting. What sort of mother would say that about her child?
I've just had one of those moments. Maybe you've had them, too - a moment when the distance and
perspective I think I've put between me and Cheryl's shooting dissolves, and I'm right back on October 4
again - and then suddenly it's months later and I'm a middle-aged woman sitting in a rainy suburb on a
weekday, and her daughter is dead for no reason, and she never knew her daughter at all. Her daughter
chose something else; Cheryl chose something else over me and what our family offered, and she did it
with smiles for everybody, but with condescension. And what am I to do? There is nothing I can do.
Some man or woman is going to write Cheryl's life story, and they're going to ask me questions and I
won't have a thing to say.
I don't know if I'm angry with Cheryl or angry at the universe. Do you get angry, Jason? Do you? Do
you ever just want to take your car out onto the highway and gun the engine as fast as you can and then
close your eyes and see what happens?
Lloyd and Chris are taking things much better than I am. I'm lucky in that regard. Chris is young - he'll
heal.
There will be scars, but he'll make it through okay. We have no idea what to do with him and school.
He's having a hard time readjusting at Delbrook, which they've just reopened - they bulldozed the
cafeteria and built a new one in just four weeks. We might have to send him to a private school, which
we can't afford. That's for another letter.
Jason, I apologize. You don't need this on top of everything else, but then maybe you do. Maybe you
need to know that there was someone else out there who loved the girl beneath the perfect smile, the girl
who, to my mind, foolishly prayed for suffering so she could play at martyrdom. Jason, there's no one to
talk to about this. All systems have failed me. In five minutes I'll be fine again for a while, but right now
the inside of my head feels like Niagara Falls without the noise, just this mist and churning and no real
sense of where earth ends and heaven begins.
I beg your forgiveness, wherever you are. Please write or phone or visit if you can. Please think of me
kindly and know that is how I think of you,
Yours,
Linda Anway
A letter from Mr. Anway came three days later:
Dear Jason,
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