Sincerely, Anonymous

February 14

February 14

Dear Annabeth,

I know I promised not to wear the clothes Brianna gave me until my Procedure but I can’t help it. Whenever I am alone I slip into them and just walk around. Whenever I wear those clothes I feel beautiful, even though I’m ordinary. I’m so fearful that I will spill something on the clothes, or rip them, or that they will somehow magically fall apart while I’m wearing them. Because of this fear, I only wear them for a few minutes at a time before changing back into my normal wear. The moments when I am in Brianna’s outfit are some of the best, though.

Tomorrow is the day that I get to meet Isabella. I was tempted to wear the outfit Brianna gave me, just to prove right off the bat that I was an individual, but I had to remind myself that the outfit was only for my own eyes until the day of the Procedure.

I was tempted to try and contact Emma on my tablet to ask her to paint some of my clothes for tomorrow before remembering that she would never answer. It was a risk for her to have even brought her tablet with her. Each tablet is equipped with a GPS on it. In sophomore year, Amy had managed to take her tablet apart and get rid of the GPS. She has always been a wiz with electronics. To this day she is the only person I have ever heard of successfully removing their tracker. When she originally did it, Emma begged and begged for days for Amy to take the tracker out of her tablet too. Amy tried to tell her that she had only done it to hers because she wanted to see if it could be done. She told Emma that she would only get rid of the tracker if she gave her a “damned good reason to”. Emma must have told her something pretty great because after that Amy told us that she would take the trackers out of all our tablets. We all let her, but mostly because we had some misconstrued idea that by doing so Amy would tell us what Emma had said to convince her. Of course Amy didn’t budge. She is really strict about keeping secrets.

I guess that it proved handy after all because now Emma can use her tablet as much as she would like and nobody would ever find her. I desperately wanted to ask Amy what Emma had said now that she was gone but I didn’t have the heart.

Since Emma was out of the question I decided to call for some seriously desperate help, my brother’s girlfriends Lila, who desperately wanted to be a designer. She might as well get practice now. I had one art class with her last year and she was actually pretty good. She was a smart girl too, but she just never shut up. I was scared to invite her, knowing that doing so would risk me having to listen to my brother and her nonstop talking, but in the end I was desperate and did so anyway. The subways were thankfully working again, and since it’s a Saturday, Lila was able to get to my house less than 15 minutes from when I had my brother ping her tablet.

She brought with her all the supplies she could find at her house, along with a square of printed floral fabric that had been one of the only salvageable parts to a set of curtains her family had inherited. The fabric was a pretty floral print and Lila had brought it down as “inspiration”. She could sometimes be one of those really eccentric art kids, a little out there, but she was a nice girl.

We took an old tunic dress of mine that I had never worn and got to work quickly. I cut apart pieces and threaded things back together to give the dress some shape and movement while Lila painted on an almost exact replica of the floral print from the square.

It took hours to finish the dress and by the end we were both covered in paint, with sore fingers and eyes, but it was worth it. We made a good team. The dress was beautiful, almost as much as the clothes Brianna owned but the fabric wasn’t quite right and the pattern was painted on instead of made in the cloth. I hung the dress up to dry and Lila and I sat back to admire our work.

“So any special reason why you pinged me in the middle of the day to come help you make a new dress,” she teased. There was no way of her knowing I was meeting Isabella tomorrow and  I knew right away from her tone that she assumed this was for some kind of date. I quickly brushed it off as no big deal and I didn’t care, but she didn’t quite seem to believe me. In the end I told her I was just really bored with my wardrobe and though it would be some good bonding time, which she didn’t seem to buy for a second.

But I will admit to you, I wanted, just a little, to impress Isabella. I wanted this mysterious girl, with the friends who said no, to like me. I wanted to be able to put my trust in someone who respected me and I didn’t think I could do that in my drab everyday clothes.

“You’re going to scare him in that you know,” Lila laughed, “you’re always intimidating when you wear good clothes.”

“Intimidating?” I replied, jokingly trying to form my face into a threatening stare, and once again brushing off the obvious attempt to see if I was going on a date.

“Oh I’m so scared,” Lila rebuffed, faking an overdramatic faint.

We both laughed at the ridiculousness of the whole situation. It was a good laugh too, the kind where you are snorting and nearly crying and you’re whole body is shaking and you look totally insane but you don’t care because you are having fun.

Sam came in soon after that, telling us not to have too much fun or Lila might leave him for me, which only caused us all to laugh harder. I left Sam and Lila alone after that and just spent a long time staring at the dress. I kept staring, even after Lila had left. I didn’t know what she meant by me being intimidating. I was far from intimidating, I was far from anything really. I was average in every way possible. But the dress really was quite pretty and I was excited to wear it. And dare I say it, but I was excited to meet Isabella too.

Love Always,

Lilly