The Perks of Being a Wallflower

when he was my age. He said it was the kind of book you made your own.
    I read the first twenty pages. I don’t know how I feel about it just yet, but it does seem appropriate to this time. I hope Sam and Patrick call on my birthday. It would make me feel much better.
    Love always,
Charlie         
    December 25, 1991
    Dear friend,
    I am sitting in my dad’s old bedroom in Ohio. The family is still downstairs. I really don’t feel very well. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m starting to get scared. I wish we were going back home tonight, but we always sleep over. I don’t want to tell my mom about it because it would just make her worry. I would tell Sam and Patrick, but they didn’t call yesterday. And we left this morning after we opened presents. Maybe they called this afternoon. I hope they didn’t call this afternoon because I wasn’t there. I hope it’s okay that I’m telling you this. I just don’t know what else to do. I always get sad when this happens, and I wish Michael were here. And I wish my Aunt Helen were here. I miss my Aunt Helen like this. Reading the book isn’t helping either. I don’t know. I’m just thinking too fast. Much too fast. It’s like tonight.
    The family watched It’s a Wonderful Life, which is a very beautiful movie. And all I could think was why didn’t they make the movie about Uncle Billy? George Bailey was an important man in the town. Because of him, a whole bunch of people got to get out of the slums. He saved a town, and when his dad died, he was the only guy who could do it. He wanted to live an adventure, but he stayed behind and sacrificed his dreams for the better good of the community. And then when that made him sad, he was going to kill himself. He was going to die because his life insurance money would have taken care of his family. And then an angel comes down and shows him what life would be if he had never been born. How the whole town would have suffered. And how his wife would have been an “old maid.” And my sister didn’t even say anything about how that’s such an old-fashioned thing, this year. Every other year she says something about how Mary was working for a living, and just because she’s not married, it doesn’t mean that she is worthless. But this year she didn’t. I didn’t know why. I thought it might be about that secret boy of hers. Or maybe it’s what happened in the car on the way over to our grandma’s house. I just wanted the movie to be about Uncle Billy because he drank a lot and was fat and lost the money in the first place. I wanted the angel to come down and show us how Uncle Billy’s life had meaning. Then, I think I’d feel better.
    It started yesterday at home. I don’t like my birthday. I don’t like it at all. I went shopping with my mom and sister, and my mom was in a bad mood because of parking spaces and lines. And my sister was in a bad mood because she couldn’t buy her secret boy a present and hide it from Mom. She would have to come back herself later. And I felt weird. Really weird, because as I was walking around all the stores, I didn’t know what present my dad would like to receive from me, I knew what to buy or give Sam and Patrick, but I didn’t know what I could buy or give or make for my own dad. My brother likes posters of girls and beer cans. My sister likes a haircut gift certificate. My mom likes old movies and plants. My dad only likes golf, and that is not a winter sport except for in Florida, and we don’t live there. And he doesn’t play baseball anymore. He doesn’t like to be even reminded unless he tells the stories. I just wanted to know what to buy my dad because I love him. And I don’t know him. And he doesn’t like to talk about things like that.
    “Well, why don’t you chip in with your sister and buy him that sweater?”
    “I don’t want to. I want to buy him something. What kind of music does he like?”
    My dad doesn’t listen to music a lot anymore, and the stuff he likes, he has.
    “What kind of books does he like to read?”
    My dad doesn’t read books too much anymore because he listens to books on cassette tapes on the way to work, and he gets them free from the library.
    What kind of movies? What kind of anything?
    My sister decided to buy the sweater on her own. And she started to get mad at me because she needed time to come back to the store to buy that present for her secret boyfriend.
    “Just buy him some golf balls,