Yours Truly

Chapter 2

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."

--

Lily immediately covers her mouth over with her hand, completely unaware that she actually cursed out loud. Luckily, it wasn't loud enough for her teacher to hear, but it was loud enough for Carina and a few of her classmates around her to hear seeing as their heads turned to look at her oddly.

Carina raises an eyebrow and whispers innocently, "is my handwriting that bad?"

Lily's cheeks get insanely warm and her heart rate accelerates as she stares at Carina's wondering face. She probably looks like an idiot right now staring at the girl in front of her, completely dumbfounded, but she physically cannot pull her eyes away. There's no way that Lily could possibly be mistaken. She knows the handwriting better than her own. Carina has to be the one.

Carina continues to look at Lily, her brown eyes now squinting at her a bit strangely. Lily definitely looks like an idiot. She finally regains some control of herself again and clears her throat quietly. "No-I, uh, just suddenly realized that I forgot my-uh, math homework at home," she stutters stupidly. "Guess it totally slipped my mind while I was hauling ass out the door this morning." That earned a shy smile from Carina and Lily can't help but smile back. The smaller girl then shifts her body back towards the front of the classroom again, leaving Lily to stare at the back of her head.

Every single ounce of confidence has vanished from her body, her fingers trembling and her breathing uneven. Lily's spent hours, days, weeks, months wondering who the person she's grown to adore through simply exchanging handwritten letters could have possibly been and now that she's found her, she was so taken back at the abruptness and unexpectedness that she already made herself look like a fool in front of her. What a lovely first impression.

Lily stares down at Carina's paper, eyes inspecting every scribble on the paper and the more she looks at it, the more certain she is that Carina is in fact the person she's grown to be so intrigued and captivated with. Every single stroke of the pen perfectly resembles what she's been so used to reading the past couple of months.

Lily runs her fingers through her dark, wavy hair and lets out a huff of air. What the hell is she going to do with this sudden information now? She does, however, know for sure that she will not tell Carina that she knows. How does one even drop a news bomb like anyways? She can't just go "Hi, I'm Lily and I immediately recognized your chicken scratch handwriting from the letters you've written me every day because I'm your writing partner. SURPRISE. How are you?"

But how could Lily not have ever spoken to Carina until now? She's sure she's seen her around school all these years but never made a point to interact with her in any way and now that it's their last year of high school, Lily can't help but get sort of angry with herself for potentially missing out on such a lovely person. Just solely based on the sloppily written letters every single day, Lily can undoubtedly tell she's someone so sweet and genuine, even if they've never formally met before.

Lily can't help but want to talk to her again. Even if it's just a single word, she wants to hear her voice and look at her face again, considering she's missed out on it so much already. She believes that things happen for a reason and there's a reason that they were partnered up out of everyone else possible and there is a reason that Carina's actually in this English class with Lily and there's a reason why Lily was able to find out today. Things like this just don't happen and Lily doesn't intend on letting it slip past her fingertips.