Letter to Anthony Lambert, Esq.
Andy, I need your help. I really, really need your help. Sorry about the letter, but I need to be sure they won't be able to read it and I would appreciate it if you sent your reply in a letter too, whatever your reply may be. Anyway, I know we kinda drifted apart after uni and I am, again, so sorry to be asking this of you, really and truly, but I need a lawyer and I don't have any money anymore and I can't get a job or anything and it just feels like my life is falling apart and I have no fucking idea what else I can do. I'm at my wits end here, Andy. I hope you can believe me when I say this was my last and most desperate choice. I really don't wanna use our friendship to make you work for free, but I don't have a choice. If you can, if you still have any lingering sentimentality over our time spent together, I'm begging you to help me. You always were so much smarter than me.
Do you remember Smokey Hill? You always told me that place would be my dead end. Well, I moved there. I'm not sure if you knew that already or not, but I moved there. I got a job as a librarian's assistant and a small shitty flat - third story, I'm not stupid - and I've been living there going on three years now. And you know what? You were wrong. And right, I suppose, but not in the way you meant to be. Until about four months ago, I loved that place. I didn't have that much money, obviously, but I made enough that after rent and paying off loans I could still afford a social life and some small pleasures. The job's great too - was great, I mean. Its quite a social job, really. People asking for recommendations, asking for help finding things, lots of downtime chatting with coworkers. It's wonderful. I know its not for everyone, but it's certainly for me. I think if things had just stayed like that forever, I would have been just as happy the whole time. But they didn't stay like that.
The library has newspapers at the front that folks can buy - some people like a paper every now and then, but don't really want to buy a subscription, and thats fine - and up until four months ago we only had one paper, the Smokey Hill Observer. But then one day I walk into work and theres another paper sitting on the shelf - the Jefferson Times. Weird, right? I was a bit put off by it, as you can imagine, but its not like my surname is super rare or anything, so I just assumed someone with the same surname as me opened up a new publication and named it after themselves, and that was that. Just a weird coincidence. But when I picked up the paper to leaf through and see what exactly the Jefferson Times was reporting on, I saw it wasn't just an odd coincidence. Right there, page one, was an article titled 'Valerie Jefferson Breaks Wine Glass While Drunk'. I flipped to the next page, and again another one, 'Valerie Jefferson Sleeps With Windows Open Despite Dropping Temperatures', and on and on, article after article all talking about me. Talking about things nobody but me should even know about. I assumed it was just some fucked-up prank by my coworkers, so I picked up the whole stack and plopped it down on my coworker Angie's desk, saying it was very very funny but she or whoever did it shouldn't waste paper on a creepy joke. But she just looked confused. She said it wasn't her, wasn't any of them, it was just a new paper that had started. I told her it was creepy as hell and even if it was just a new paper we shouldn't be selling it because it was, again, creepy as shit. But it was like she just didn't understand. She told me that people had the freedom to report on whatever they liked, no matter my personal opinion on it. I tried to tell her I did have a right to object to the content of the thing because the content was me, but it was like she just didn't get why I cared about having my privacy violated. She even tried to pick up a paper to read for herself, but I snatched the stack away and threw it out before she could.
I went to the police. Obviously I did. I didn't know if I could actually get someone for this kind of thing, but I at least knew that I had to try. But they didn't care! They didn't understand why I cared! One of them joked about my fucking drinking habits! It was like the Jefferson Times was the most normal thing in the world to everyone but me, and the fact that I didn't like people being able to read about what I did in a day anytime they liked was an issue with me! And it really was anytime they liked, because the publication kept going. The Smokey Hill Observer was a weekly thing, a general report, but this thing was daily. It wrote about my visit to the police, about my sleepless night, it included pictures. Fucking pictures, Andy. Snapshots taken from right outside my window, branches still visible in frame from the bush my stalker hid in. As it went on, it just got worse. Interviews with people in town, people I knew, about what they thought of me, articles about my time at uni, about my childhood, about everything. There were articles about my expulsion from St. Josephs when I was 13, about my addiction, about me cheating on Melody six years ago, about all this horrible shit I'd put behind me that some creep had dug up and plastered in this paper for everyone to see. And it was everyone. Every fucking person in town it seemed was reading it. They would stop me at work, in the gym, at Co-op, commenting on the latest articles from the Jefferson Times, asking me questions about the affair, about my drug use, about how I was handling my dad's cancer diagnosis, like it was all perfectly normal small talk and not invasive questions about my personal life. Sometimes the papers would have pictures, grainy ones clearly taken from some hidden place outside my house. I tried again and again to get the paper taken down for harassment, but no one in that whole town seemed to understand my problem with it. I honestly thought it was supernatural for a bit. I thought I had gotten some curse or something, like some evil spectre was making these newspapers out of all my deepest darkest secrets. To be honest, that would've been better than finding out it was actually just some guy. Toby Kovalchuk. He's nineteen years my senior, used to work at the Boston Pizza near the edge of town before starting the Jefferson Times. He's nothing. He isn't a murderer, he isn't mental, and he isn't some evil paranormal monster. He's just some fucking guy who decided, out of the blue, to write a newspaper all about me. I did the only logical thing, of course. I found out where he lived and I took a hammer along and beat him until I knew he would never use his hands again. I had already been fired three weeks ago at this point after an article about my teenage shoplifting phase sent my boss over the edge, so I was far past the point of worrying about consequences right up until I realised I had just put a man in hospital and would be sent to prison unless I proved I did it for a reason. But I can't. Like I said, no one in this entire godforsaken town sees anything wrong with the Jefferson Times. They all think I'm a crazy vindictive bitch who beat a man half to death for writing about her unflatteringly. They think I'm a dangerous egotist. But I'm not. You know I'm not. I have the papers, I can show them to you. There was nothing else I could do. I mean for god's sake, he's still writing. Some nurse offered to write for him while he dictated so the paper could keep coming out. Andy, they think he's the victim here. I don't have a fucking chance, and I can't move because all of my money is going to paying rent because no one will hire me. I'm in deeper debt than I thought was possible and my court date is coming up and every fucking day someone leaves a paper on my doorstep with more articles about my private life. This isn't normal, right? I mean, it's harassment, plain and simple. Right? I think these months of people telling me this is normal is starting to make me believe it. I deserve my privacy, don't I? I know I want it. I don't know what to think anymore. Please write back soon. I don't care if you don't help me and I don't care if you call me insane, just write back. I need to know if I'm right or not. I'm so paranoid it feels like I can't breathe.
Yours,
Valerie Jefferson