Love, Rosie

1

From: <keepmovingforward@gmail.com>

To: <loveitifwemadeit@gmail.com>

Oct 1, 2021, 7:54AM

yellow,

100% agree with you on the whole senioritis thing and I'm not even a senior like i legit do not want to be in high school anymore. think part of it is coming out and i'm not even entirely in the closet? people who matter to me know, like my family and my best friend. and you. you matter most.

it's funny how much you mean to me when i don't even know what you look like. i guess that's part of it in a way. even though you're a real person, someone who goes to my school, someone that i'm quite frankly crazy about, it's like you're also this non-judgemental ultra being. i could tell you anything and you'd accept me for it. granted you've got no idea who i am so you kind of couldn't judge me on it, but that's besides the point.

i know that one day we're going to agree to meet, when we're both out and ready. but right now just having you like this is enough.

love, aussie

------

Chaeyoung presses send on the email, before pushing back the sheets and yawning. Monday. Great. She checks her phone again, already refreshing her emails to see if Yellow has replied, but since she sent her own response 0.2 seconds ago, obviously there's nothing there. Sighing, she forces herself up and out of bed, and into her bathroom to get ready for the day. She sets her shower running and brushes her teeth while the water heats, thinking about Yellow, the faceless girl she might be kind of crushing on. Jennie keeps telling her they have to find out who she is; Chaeyoung's entire high school career of romance had been so far uneventful, barring that awful first kiss with Evan in a freshman year game of spin the bottle that basically confirmed she's gay.

But Chaeyoung likes the mystery. She likes the comfort of a non-judgemental presence, knowing she could tell the girl on the other side of the screen anything. She could tell Yellow things she couldn't tell Jennie, because with Jennie there's the constant fear of being laughed at. Like when she told Jennie about Yellow in the first place.

"I don't know, I saw her post on the school's Facebook confessions page about thinking she might be gay and not knowing what to do about it and I just... wanted to know her. So I made a dummy email and we've been talking for a month. Since late August. And I think... I think I like her."

Jennie blinks at her like she can't process that, before she bursts out laughing. "You don't even know if she's a real person! She could be a fifty year old serial killer who wants her next victim."

Eventually Jennie had stopped laughing or telling her she was going to get murdered and started pushing her to find out who Yellow is. And she wants to, but she also doesn't. Finding out who Yellow is would basically confirm or deny the feelings she thinks she's having, and she knows that at present, Yellow feels the same way as her. But what if she meets her and she's like actually, you're not my type, and leaves Chaeyoung heartbroken? And on top of that potential calamity, Yellow is like her safe haven, the place she goes to talk. If she meets her, the anonymity and non-judgemental safe space goes away, or is at least altered in some kind of way.

She yearns for Yellow, needs to know her, to see her, to kiss her. But she also needs to protect what they have.

Once she's showered and dressed and ready, she checks her phone for the time - and for any potential email - and then heads downstairs for breakfast. She pours herself a bowl of Lucky Charms, and smiles when she thinks back to a previous email from Yellow. Lucky Charms? That's such an unhealthy breakfast, you're basically just injecting sugar into your system.