Summary: Lily and Carina know a lot about each other, except for, well, each other's names. They've been writing handwritten, anonymous letters to each other for an English assignment for a couple months now and during that time, Lily's developed a genuine interest for a girl who's handwriting resembles a child's first attempt at holding a pencil. But she couldn't be more charmed by it. What happens when Lily unexpectedly realizes that the shy girl in her class who she doesn't know a single thing about has the exact same handwriting as in the letters she anticipates reading every single day?
"Earth to Lily," Naomi hums as she knocks on the desk where the Latina sits at with her knuckle.
Lily raises her green eyes from the paper in front of her to meet with her best friend's brown ones and she sees that Naomi has an eyebrow kinked up knowingly. "What?" she asks obliviously. "Sorry, I was rereading the letter." Naomi and Lily are currently in history, waiting for the bell to ring to signal the official start of class as their fellow students begin to pile into the room.
"I asked you if you wanted to hang out with Desi and me later tonight," Naomi chuckles. "Or do you want to spend the night alone in your room dreaming about your secret little admirer who you've become borderline obsessed with throughout the past two months or so?"
Lily feels her cheeks get warm in embarrassment. "I am not obsessed with her," she mumbles sheepishly as she flips the piece of paper over, hiding it from Naomi's lurking eyes. "I do, however, kind of have a crush on her."
Naomi smiles and reaches over to place a hand on Lily's wrist, using her thumb to rub her skin softly. "I know you do and I think it's adorable," she says genuinely. "In the 8 plus years that I've unfortunately known you," she jokes, "I've never seen you this happy and captivated with anyone else before. And it's even more cute that you don't even know who the hell she is!"
It's true. Lily may not know her name or what she looks like or the sound of her voice, but she does know her. She knows the girl's interests, hobbies, passions, dreams, pet peeves and she definitely knows her handwriting, seeing as that's the only way they can interact. The messy chicken scratch that at first annoyed Lily because she couldn't make out the different strings of what she hoped to be letters of the alphabet now enamored her and made her heart flutter every single time she opened a new letter and her eyes took in the different strokes and curls of her pen and the crossed out words here and there (the girl never, ever wrote in pencil if she had the choice because she hated the way it fades with time).
What started out to be a random English assignment that Lily thought was going to be uninteresting and a waste of time turned out to be the single most important thing that she looked forward every day. Her English teacher, Ms. Ashworth, devised an assignment that would extend to all four of her English classes to make things a little bit more interesting and the possible pool of people would be that much greater.
Ms. Ashworth has a total of approximately 100 students between all of her senior classes that she teaches and she made sure to pair everyone up with one other person at random but only she would know who's partnered up with whom. Partners could be in the same class or they could be in another class. It's impossible to tell, really. The assignment is that every night, everyone would handwrite a letter to their partner anonymously and she wasn't going to read it so they were free to write whatever their hearts desired. She would just check to see that they actually did the assignment. The point of the assignment is to be able to free write and to just be able to connect with someone without knowing their identity because she believes that sometimes people are too preoccupied with judging people based on their looks that sometimes that blindness prevents people from meeting others who they could potentially get along with really well. Lily thought of it as like the singing show "The Voice", but with writing instead.
So, every day, the students would put their letter they wrote to their partner into their own individual files in a cabinet in her room and once school was over and all of the kids were gone and all of the letters were turned in, Ms. Ashworth would then go and distribute all of the letters to their corresponding partners' files in private so no one else would ever know who is partnered with who.
Needless to say that English is Lily's favorite class. She would always rush through the door to the cabinet, find her last name, and excitedly open it to take out the letter waiting for her to read before dropping in the one she wrote. It was a constant cycle every day for Lily. Drop the one she wrote, pick up the one from her partner.
Lily's not exactly sure how they even began to get as close as two people who don't even know each other's names can be. It just gradually began to happen after the whole introduce-yourself-without-really-introducing-yourself-because-we're-supposed-to-be-anonymous thing. The girl's interests in books, music, and movies immediately intrigued Lily and she was also taken by her choice of words and her dorky sense of humor. It was definitely lame to say the least, but it never failed to make Lily smile and giggle late at night when she would reread her letters over and over again, her mind too engrossed with the girl on the other end to sleep.
"You did it again," Naomi's voice suddenly enters Lily's ears, shaking her out of her deep thoughts. "You know, for someone so damn smart, I think you have the attention span of a goldfish."
Lily laughs apologetically. "I'm sorry, I was thinking about-"
"-I know you were, kid," Naomi winks. "It sucks that I don't have Ashworth as my English teacher cause she sounds bomb as hell and so does this assignment. Speaking of which, what happens after this little project ends? Are you going to finally reveal yourselves and get married and run off into the sunset with each other with Desi and I watching and crying in happiness?"
The green-eyed girl nudges her friend against her shoulder playfully. "Stop it," Lily chuckles before her face gets more serious. "I don't know, honestly. I mean there is this sense of adventure and excitement of not knowing who she really is, but at the same time, I would actually cut off my left foot if I meant I could find out who she is right now. I'm totally stuck between wanting to know and not wanting to know. I mean, what if she doesn't like me? What if she's not even into girls? What if I'm not who she expects? What if she's not who I expect? What if things suddenly get so weird after the huge reveal that I wind up losing her? What if she winds up hating me? What if-"
"-Lily, you can go forever and ever with all of the 'what if' crap," Naomi interrupts, "but you're missing the single most important one."
Lily tilts her head to the side and looks at her friend in question. "What?"
Naomi smiles kindly, her eyes just barely crinkling at the sides. "What if it does work out?"
--
Lily does in fact politely declines Naomi and Desi's invitation to hang out on this warm Thursday night. She is particularly tired tonight seeing as she's in the late stages of getting over a slight cold and she really just wanted to curl up in her bed with a mug of tea. There are, disgustingly, a lot of people sick at school so she's not exactly who the culprit that transferred it over to her is.
As soon as she gets home from school, Lily greets her mom and dad with quick pecks on their cheeks before running up the stairs and flopping down on her comfortable bed, the letter already in her hand. Lily's read it already this morning (a good 10 times) as soon as she received it from the file cabinet, but it won't hurt her to read it again. She smiles as soon as she sees her mystery girl's chaotic handwriting.
Dear don't-insert-name-here,
First off, in response to your question on the last letter, I do think that cats understand us when we're speaking to them, they simply just don't give two craps about us to really care what we say. Have you seen them? They're so prideful and think they're so high and mighty, which is exactly why I am a dog person.
Also, I've been watching Friends on Netflix like you told me to and I am absolutely in love with it. HOWEVER, Ross makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out. He's easily my least favorite character out the cast. I do adore Phoebe though. I feel like she's someone who needs to be protected at all costs. Who are your favorite and least favorite?
Also, I hope today was a good day for you and that you feel better! I know you've been a little sick and gross lately and I don't see why you still drag your butt to school every morning. Are you trying to get everyone else infected too? I know you like and work hard in school but dude, your health is far more important. I'd like it if you get better soon, yeah?
I think it's kind of weird that we as humans don't appreciate just being normal and not sick until we DO get sick and we suddenly forget what it felt like not to have your nose running or stuffy or your throat not hurting and we're just miserable until we're not sick anymore. I wonder if that's where the expression "you never know what you have until it's gone" came from. Maybe they were puking up their guts and just wanted to be able to retain everything they eat and drink again.
Ew, gross. Sorry for that image in your mind since you probably don't want to hear that. So anyways, I do genuinely hope you get better soon and you take it easy until then! As always, looking forward to your next letter :)
Yours truly,
She-who-shall-not-be-named
Lily smiles at the closing name. Since they aren't allowed to give each other their names, they decided to go with nicknames and since the mystery girl is very much in love with Harry Potter, Lily referred to her as "she-who-shall-not-be-named" once and it sort of just stuck. And she always ends her letters with "yours truly". Always. And it's totally endearing.
Lily received her nickname from the very first letter that they ever exchanged and she left a blank space after her closing statement, completely unsure of how to end it and her partner teased her about it. Things just constantly went uphill from there.
--
Lily's awoken the next morning by a shake on the shoulder roughly and she groans in annoyance, her eyes refusing to open and immerse themselves in the sunlight that's peeking through her window blinds. "What?"
"Honey, you overslept," her mom's voice rings clearly in her ear. "It's 7 o'clock now."
Lily's eyes shoot open and the sudden rush of adrenaline and anxiousness immediately washes any trace of drowsiness in her body. She normally gets up at 6:15 so she's definitely late. "Shoot," she mutters, flinging the blanket off of herself and hopping off the side of her bed. "It must have been the medicine I took last night that made me sleep through my alarm."
"Are you sure you're well enough to go to school?" her mom asks, slight concern in her voice. "I know you hate missing class but I also don't want you to feel like you have to go even when you're sick."
Lily strips off her pajama and slides into comfortable and worn-out jean shorts. "Yeah, mom, I'm positive," she reassures her, sneaking a glance at her mom, Cecelia, who's practically a spitting image of her. "Until I'm on the verge of death and hacking my lungs out, that's when we can reconsider."
Cecelia chuckles softly. "Well, if you hurry now, you can still make to first period and only be about 15 minutes late or so. English, right?"
Lily smiles to herself. "Right."
--
"I'm sorry I'm late," Lily apologizes as soon as she walks in the door of Ms. Ashworth's classroom and all eyes are immediately on her. "I overslept."
"It's okay," Ms. Ashworth smiles kindly as she walks up to Lily, her blue eyes shimmering brightly. "Only 20 minutes tardy and you just missed a few slides of the presentation. Think you can get the few notes you missed from someone you sit near?"
"Oh, yeah, definitely."
"Don't forget to put your letter in your folder," her teacher reminds her.
Lily smiles as she swings her backpack off of her shoulders and takes out the crisp piece of paper. "I won't." She then heads over to the file cabinet and sticks it in her folder while Ms. Ashworth resumes teaching the class about whatever she was talking about beforehand.
Lily then takes her usual seat in the middle of the room and takes out her notebook. She looks around to see who she could ask to see the notes that she missed and decides to ask the girl in front of her considering she was the closest person near her. Lily knows her name is Carina, but that's the only thing she really knows about her. She hasn't ever really noticed her before and this is the only class that they share together, but Lily's memorized just about everyone's names already since school has been in session for a couple of months.
Lily gently taps her on the back and she turns around slowly, her shoulders slightly hunched over and her brown eyes shy. Pretty eyes though. "Hey, Carina, right?"
She gives a small nod in confirmation.
"Do you think I could see the notes I missed?"
Carina nods again politely as she grabs the sheet of paper off of her desk and places it on Lily's desk. "I'm probably the worst person to ask because my handwriting is hardly legible," she smiles timidly.
Lily grins reassuringly. "No worries. I think I can manage. Thanks, Carina."
The smaller girl smiles once again before turning around in her seat to continue listening to Ms. Ashworth's lecture. Lily grabs a pen from and paper from her backpack and she's about to start copying down Carina's words on her own paper when her eyes widen suddenly in recognition.
She knows the handwriting. She's looked at it every day for the past two months. She's read the scrawled letters thousands of times. Her heart has fluttered seeing the scribbles numerous amounts of time. This is the same initial illegible handwriting that eventually became the easiest thing Lily's ever learned to read.
"... Oh shit."