The Way We Learned to Love ✓

02 - lily

august 2013 : 7 years and 1 month ago

For as long as she could remember, Lily's cousin Henry had hated her.

In fact, it was through him that she first learned what hate was. She understood it before she even knew the name for it. The very first time someone had ever tried to explain the concept to her, she'd simply thought, Oh, like Henry. Henry hates me.

At first, in elementary school, they would fight any time they were put in the same room together. Which was entirely too often because their parents wanted them to try to get along. Henry would call her names and yank her hair and one time he even stuck a worm in it. All of their encounters ended the same way - with Lily running to her parents in a puddle of tears because she didn't comprehend why Henry was always so mean to her. Only once she was old enough to understand the term resentment did the pieces start to fit together a little better.

He slowly started to grow out of the constant arguing, but he would still make a point of complaining whenever he had to be around her and make sure she could hear him. Then, by the time she was in middle school, they ignored each other. She avoided being in the same room as him at all costs.

Lily had certainly given up on the possibility of them ever being friends a long time ago. She believed that Henry was always going to despise her. It was simply how life worked, no less of a fact than that the earth makes a full rotation on its axis every twenty-four hours or that there are 206 bones in the human body.

He behaved as if three-year-old Lily had somehow singlehandedly murdered his sister and wasn't just an innocent bystander to her untimely death, but she never tried to argue with him about it. She didn't let herself get too mad about it to his face, partially because she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had irritated her. But there was also something else that always stopped her from standing up to him. She retained a singular memory - her earliest memory - from those dark times eleven years ago and it was always enough to get her to hold her tongue around him.

Ignoring him had been a perfectly acceptable arrangement for her. The last time they'd seen each other, on the 4th of July, a polite nod was the extent of their interaction. She couldn't even remember the last time they had actually talked to each other. Maybe the last time their families had gone to Italy together to see their grandparents? She recalled making some comment and him regarding her with about as much affection as one might view a piece of gum they just stepped on with.

But today, she faced a new problem. For the first time in seven years, she and Henry were going to be at the same school.

Their three-year age difference had been enough to keep them separated since his last year of elementary school. Since middle school only consisted of grades 6-8 in their district, he had already been in high school by the time she got to middle school. They didn't have to risk running into each other.

Today, that all changed. It was her first day of 9th grade. Henry was a senior.

Lily's problem was exacerbated by the fact that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing right now. She had been sick for the past week and missed the freshman orientation where you could walk around the building to learn where everything was.

She stood in the cafeteria, near the front doors, like a fish out of water, her paper schedule clutched tightly in her hand. She had no clue where her locker or any of her classes were and didn't even know which direction to go from the cafeteria.

She also didn't have any friends here. Pretty much everyone she knew from middle school, including her best friend Kathleen who lived right down the street from her, was going to the nearby public school.