Love Letter

Lynne:

Mr. Coffee, who I now know is named Ian, starts chatting with me like we are long-time friends.

I just want to sit in silence and read.

Yesterday I was looking forward to the bus ride home.

I just was not looking forward to the part where I actually arrived at the house.

The bus ride was supposed to be peaceful and full of listening to my music while reading.

This morning's start, this ride has been nothing but chaotic and non-peaceful. When I make it home, it will be loud and obnoxious. Fights will occur, and my mother will have a few crazy moments thrown in there as well. This was if things had not changed since I left.

That is why I needed this ride to be calm and quiet, and everything my house would not be. But this was not happening because of Ian across from me. It was nice having the space away from him, but I was still tempted to glance up at him from time to time. He was interrupting my thinking process and my reading. Every time I looked up at him, he seemed like he was in deep thought. I was almost tempted to ask him what he was thinking about. Almost, but I did not since I was never brave enough to talk to any men besides Luke... Luke was my only friend in high school, but he had more to be embarrassed about than I did, so it was easy to talk to him. I had the upper hand when it came to our friendship.

When I get home, my plan is to hibernate in my room, stay up there, and read as long as possible.

Knowing my sisters, they could throw a wrench into this plan of mine. Breaks during school were my favorite since I cleaned and read new books. I wanted to work in the publishing industry. I did not want to be a writer; I wanted my job to be reading novels. My dream job would be the person who got to read new material and suggest publishing it.

Dream job...

I imagined I would be giddy whenever a book I had helped with was published. I would walk by the shelf with the book on it and snap a proud selfie of me standing in front of it. And then the world would know that I had helped get that novel out to the masses, whether it was through a book store or an e-reader.

Books primarily had been my friends throughout high school.

Having six siblings, you would think I would have had a best friend out of one, but I did not.

I was closest to the twins Fred and Zach, but they were each other's best friends. Not to mention they were the popular jock boys – with every citizen of Light Falls worshiping the ground they walked on. They led the team to state three years in a row for football in a city the size of Light Falls that made them the closest thing to a celebrity. I hated going out to eat with them and having a random person come up and ask them about their training regime. "Are you going to win the game this Friday?" many of the citizens of Light Falls would stop at our table while we were out to eat. I would sit there rolling my eyes and making sure to hold my tongue since that question drove me crazy I wanted to say – "no one knows if they are going to win, but they are sure going to try their hardest. How about you come to the game Friday and leave us alone, so I can eat my two pounds of fries in peace."

But I never once spoke up; I was the invisible Bettendorf, the one everyone forgot about.

After my dad passed away, it was even easier to shrink into the background until it was almost like I never existed. 

There were my two faithful and loyal sisters, Kelly and Lisa, they were always there for me when I needed them. They had my back, especially when Rich, another popular jock, put his girlfriend Rebecca up to taking pictures of me in the locker room. I was half-dressed in the ones they had sent out. Every last student at Light Falls had received the pictures on their phones, including the twins. Lisa came home the next day from college after hearing about the embarrassing pictures floating around of me half-dressed. Lisa and Kelly marched into Principal Hopkin's office the next day, ready to break skulls if they had to. They were the ones that demanded that both Rich and Rebecca be suspended or expelled. My mother did not show up – she was absent in all of it. Rich and Rebecca were suspended for a week. Since Rich could not play in the three basketball games that week, more jokes and ridicule fell on me.