Letters exchanged between Ava and Gideon

Letters exchanged between Ava Spirini and Gideon are the material record of a friendship that grows through careful, funny, and increasingly candid written exchanges. They give two teenagers room to disclose what is difficult to say face to face, but they do not erase bereavement or prevent misunderstandings. Their significance lies in both effects: the letters create a dependable connection, and they show that connection cannot make painful choices simple.

Beginnings and Form

The exchange begins after Ava has been expelled and her father gives her a mint-green envelope. Inside are two A4 pages in Gideon’s unusually neat handwriting. Gideon admits that he has never written anyone an actual letter before and is unsure how long one should be or what important thing he has to say. He settles on telling Ava that he is glad they met. The modesty of the message is part of its force: rather than make a grand declaration, he offers a plain statement of value at a moment when Ava feels that several parts of her life have gone wrong.

Ava reads the letter twice. She finds Gideon dorky, smart, cool, and funny, and is surprised that he really followed through on his promise to write and disclosed something of himself. Her uncertainty about how to answer is tied to a practical concern: she does not want him to think she does not want his friendship. The letter therefore does more than pass information. It makes the possibility of friendship tangible, while leaving Ava to decide whether and how to meet Gideon’s gesture.

Ava’s reply arrives in a white envelope with her name quickly written on the front and no stamp. Its casual presentation contrasts with Gideon’s careful handwriting, but the exchange is already becoming reciprocal. She thanks him, teases him about calling her cool, and wonders whether calling him an idiot so early in her letter is bad etiquette. From there, she ranges through dislikes and preferences, asking about fruit and mentioning snakes, bananas, mangoes, avocados, lychees, and caperberries. Ordinary details and jokes let the two get to know one another without requiring every sentence to carry the weight of a confession.

A Shared Practice of Candor

Ava’s first reply also asks Gideon to explain his decision to live without a phone or internet. She writes late at night, worries about her handwriting, and wonders whether letters are an excuse to rant. Her postscript explicitly invites him to write again. The letter’s loose, self-conscious movement—from teasing to curiosity to uncertainty—makes the correspondence feel like an ongoing conversation rather than a polished performance.

Gideon answers in another mint envelope, this time with five stamps that fall to the floor as Ava opens it on the porch. He explains that he has set himself a thirty-minute limit and promised not to reread what he writes. The rule is a response to his tendency to think too much: he wants to be honest without endlessly revising himself. He tells Ava that a friend, Robbie, has been urging him to be bolder, and gives a concise reason for abandoning phone and internet use: they were not making him happy, so he decided to find out whether going without them might help. He also describes himself as anxious rather than naturally carefree. The letter discloses a vulnerability that his measured handwriting might otherwise conceal.

Ava adopts Gideon’s thirty-minute, no-rereading rule in her next letter. Before writing, she looks up a word on her phone and uses the small incident to challenge his interest in what counts as normal. She argues that people hide how badly or well they are doing behind performances of normality. Her account turns personal: she remembers having been positive and future-oriented, but says that what has happened has unsettled her confidence that things become all right again. She tells Gideon she has been expelled for punching Trevor Lane in maths, has started at TAPs, and does not know whether she wants university or what she will do after school. The letter records not a settled plan but the honest uncertainty of someone trying to imagine a future while still grieving.

Despite that uncertainty, Ava can identify what the correspondence gives her. She tells Gideon that his letters make her happy, even if only briefly, and that he makes her laugh. She also offers to tell him about her difficult year if he will eventually tell her more about the phone and internet decision. The exchange thus creates a promise of mutual disclosure without demanding that either person reveal everything at once.

Humor, Gifts, and Misread Signals

The letters carry everyday comedy alongside serious disclosure. In one exchange, Gideon clarifies that it is bananas, not fruit in general, that he dislikes. In another, he sends flowers and a brief note after spending more than an hour deciding what to buy. Rather than present the flowers as a solution to Ava’s unhappiness, he hopes they might at least make her smile. He says he has no proper letter that day and turns to a bullet-point account of his life, including Robbie’s impending move, a strange party, and a story from work about Ricky’s unusual tattoo: a green boxing kangaroo shaving a kebab, with Make Magic written above it.

The flowers expose a limit in the apparent ease of written communication. Ava is confused and angry when she sees the mint-green envelope among the leaves: she had hoped the flowers might be from Lincoln, worries that Gideon has misunderstood their relationship, and feels that his kindness makes their friendship more complicated. At the same time, she recognizes that the flowers are thoughtful and feels bad about her mixed response. The correspondence can carry care across distance, but a considerate gesture does not guarantee that the people involved understand it in the same way.

What the Letters Can and Cannot Hold

The exchange develops against the continuing pressure of Kelly Waititi’s death. Six months after the loss, Ava experiences time as slowed and believes that others expect her to get over her grief too quickly. Being with Lincoln sometimes makes the surrounding trouble recede and lets her feel something other than misery, but she recognizes that this temporary relief is not the same as forgetting Kelly. In this context, Gideon’s letters offer another brief point of connection: Ava names them as something that makes her happy, not as a cure for what has happened.

Later, as Ava struggles to understand Kelly’s final suffering, the return of a mint-green envelope and a homemade card from Gideon makes written contact part of a larger pattern of reaching toward one another. The correspondence’s importance is cumulative: each letter carries small particulars as well as harder truths, so trust is built through repeated acts of answering rather than through a single revelation. Even so, the letters cannot spare the two teenagers the consequences of their relationships and choices.

After Gideon’s graduation, Ava sends him one final letter despite his saying he does not want to talk to her. She thanks him, apologizes for hurting him, says that she misses him at work and that Ricky does too, and describes how Gideon helped her laugh, feel beautiful, and recognize that her life was not wholly wasted. She credits his poems and support with helping her gather the broken pieces of her heart so that she could begin putting it together herself. The image makes the limit of his help clear: Gideon can accompany her, but Ava must do the rebuilding. The letters end not with proof that grief or separation has vanished, but with Ava finding words for what the connection gave her and offering that recognition in return.