The Love Letter

Chapter Fourteen

The outlines of the room faded. The letter in my hands became lighter and I could no longer feel it. My focus on the present blurred and I turned back to the past. The past where I left the only person who ever called me Raisy.

***

When I was 8, a new family moved in our neighborhood, with a boy my age, and a baby girl at almost one and a half. The boy's name was Stephen, but everyone called him Stevie, and the girl's name was Michaela.

I went to meet him, but he showed little interest - he saw me, stayed for a second, and then run back upstairs. His mother excused him, and I shrugged and left. Though I was thinking we probably wouldn't become friends, deep inside, I hadn't fully excluded this possibility.

He got closer to the boys in the neighborhood, and somehow we couldn't meet and give our possible friendship another try. He was stranger to me, and I shouldn't mind to leave things that way. It shouldn't bother me at all. But it did. I felt uneasy, and like something wasn't right, it wasn't how it should be. I tried to neglect this feeling but the day he started teasing me made it worse. I felt angry, and hurt, and the bigger problem was that I didn't understand these feelings and where did they come from.

As I said we didn't met on his first day in the neighborhood and in any other day after as well, but all of a sudden he started talking to me like we knew each other for years. Did I say talking!? No, that wasn't right. He started irritating me over and over again with one simple thing - my name.

The first time he actually spoke to me, I decided that he was ready to meet and maybe be friends. I got thrilled when he called me. But he called me Daisy. I wasn't mad because I was sure he just got my name wrong, so I corrected him with a gentle smile. Smile that was erased almost immediately. His response was, "I know," and he kept calling me Daisy. I got angry but he didn't noticed it, and even dared to laugh, as if my reaction was the funniest thing. The boys with him also laughed and I figured out that his behavior was probably stupid boyish game and they just wanted to make fun of me. So, I ignored them all.

But it didn't work, because day after day he appeared out of the blue and provoked me.

He always chose the moment I was having fun with my friends and I had forgotten about the uneasy feeling inside. And as I was smiling and laughing, he popped out of nowhere and teased me, "Daisy this... Daisy that..." I got all red and angry, the uneasiness restored and my feelings were all over the place. But apparently my reaction amused him because he didn't give up and pushed further and further.

He was impossible, and I couldn't stand him! I was exhausted of feeling angry and hurt all the time, and this couldn't continue like that. And it didn't.

Our summer vacation was coming to an end when my patience wore thin, and everything changed.

Two of my friends and I bought the last ice cream of the season. There was a convenience store in Lavender, my hometown, called Papa Joe's and the owner sold homemade ice cream that was beyond delicious. His wife was the one who prepared it and she always made it only for the span of the summer and the first week in September Uncle Joe (what we called him, even the adults who were his age or around it) was selling out the last batches of ice cream and my favourite strawberry ice cream was always the first to run out. 

So, on that fateful day, my friends and I were enjoying our last ice cream of the season, actually we were enjoying it all - the sun, the last days free from school and the sweet creamy delight, and everything looked perfect, when it happened. 

We walked around the neighborhood and passed the group of boys. Then Stevie shouted, "Is the ice cream tasty, Daisy?" I frowned and replied, "Rose! My name is ROSE!" I really didn't know why but I was expecting every time, every single time that he'd learn my name and say it right. But he didn't of course, and instead he joked, "Well, it's a flower, isn't it? What's the difference?!"