Lines // hemmings

Chapter 1

ABBY

“Dad?”

I enter the living room, knowing he’ll be there, sat in his old chair. And I’m right. Dad looks up from the newspaper in his hands, peering at me through his reading glasses. 

“Yes darling?”

“Why do you always call me that?” I sigh, annoyed by his nickname for me.

“Because I can, darling,” he smiles and I roll my eyes at him. “What do you want?”

“What’s this box? I’ve never seen it before but it says my name on it?”

I hold out the small brown box, its edges damaged and it smells old. Like really, really old.

“Where did you find it?”

“In the closet,” I say. “I was putting away some stuff.” And by stuff, I mean stuffed animals. My best friend Calum always shook his head every time he went into my bedroom.

‘You’re 19 years old, Abby. No one your age has stuffed animals in their room,’ he always says, but secretly I know he likes them. I caught him cuddling with my elephant once, but he still denies it.

“Probably just some of your old things, from pre-school or something. Look at it and if you don’t want it, you can throw it away,” dad says and returns his focus to the newspaper.

As I enter my room, I blow the dust off the box and cough a few times as the dust reaches my nostrils. It didn’t look that dusty when I found it. I open the box and scrunch my nose a little at the smell. It smells even older when I open it, as if that was possible. I look down in it and see a pink jewelry box, a few rocks, shells and underneath, a couple of magazines. The jewelry box starts playing when I open it and a little ballerina starts rotating. I remember when I got this. I was about 4 years old and just like every other girl back then, I loved pink and jewelry and ballerinas. I even went to ballet because I wanted to become a ballerina. That dream died two weeks later when my dad took me to my first ice-hockey game. Guess I wasn’t that much of a girl after all.

I pick up the shells and turn them over. They’re still glimmering and I can’t help but think how beautiful they are. Why did I throw these away? I put them aside and decide to keep them in my room, along with the red and orange amber rocks. 

Then I hit the magazines, old kids-magazines dated back to 2002-2005. I scrunch my nose again and start flipping through the first one, the one with Britney Spears on the cover. Can you imagine, she’s still in this business?

“Did you find anything interesting?” 

I jump at the knock on my door and see dad standing in the door way. His blue eyes looking amused. “Did I scare you?”

“No,” I lie. “Did I use to subscribe to these?” I hold up the magazine with Britney Spears on the cover and dad nods.

“You even sent in one of those ads for pen-pals.”

“I did what?” I frown.

“You wanted a pen-pal so I helped you send in a little description along with your name and adress. But no one ever replied. You were quite sad actually. Then you stopped subscribing to them,” he shakes his head. “I think the mag is still in the somewhere,” he adds before walking away again, humming some random song like he always does when he’s happy.

I flip to the page of pen-pals in the first magazine but don’t find my name. So I take the next one and then the next one but it is all the same. As I reached for the fourth one, the one looking a little more read than the others, I see I have an extra copy of it underneath. This has to be it.

Yes, there it is.

Abby Carson, 9 years old, NY.

I like to draw and I like movies and ice-hockey. My favorite team is New York Rangers. My favorite movie is Toy Story and my favorite color is blue. I want a pen-pal so please write to me. My adress is…

The scariest thing is that everything still applies to me. My favorite color is blue and my favorite movie is still Toy Story, don’t judge me. And well, I’m a Rangers fan for life. When it comes to drawing, I only doodle on things I shouldn’t doodle on – like the counter at work or dad’s important papers. They’re mostly comics because I could never draw real life people. I tried once, but it ended up looking like the opposite gender and I haven’t tried since.

That’s when I see his photo. A young boy with blond hair, smiling at me and I can’t help but smile back because even if he’s like 10 in the picture, he’s really cute. 

Luke Hemmings, 10 years old, NY.

I like soccer and music. I have just started playing the guitar but I hope one day to be a professional at it. My favorite artists are Justin Timberlake and Busted. Green Day are good too. I don’t care if you’re a girl or a boy, write to me here:…

He did have great taste in music, I wonder if he still likes these artists and if he still plays the guitar. He’d be about 20 years now.

I bite my bottom lip. Would it be weird if I sent him a letter? It says he’s from New York and from the look of the adress, he’s not too far away. I wonder if he still lives here. Maybe, just maybe, could we be friends. I could need some new friends, considering I only have Calum and Rebecca, and they recently started dating so there’s not enough time for all of us to hang out. I also think Calum has gotten pretty tired of me since I always call in the middle of their dates.

I grab a pen and a piece of paper from one of the drawers in my desk. How do you start a letter? Would it be weird if I wrote Dear Luke? Yes. That would definitely be weird. He doesn’t even know me, he’ll think I’m some kind of creep, a stalker. What if he’s like me and has forgotten about putting his ad in a mag? Whatever. He doesn’t know me and if he’s moved, then he’ll never get this letter so I’ll just do it. What could possibly go wrong?

To Luke…

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