Extra Ordinary (Riddle Era)

Chapter 39

Dear Tom,

That was all the paper said so far. It was also all it had said for the last half an hour at least.

Lucy sighed and dropped her quill back into the ink pot. Even if she could come up with something to write, the nib would be too dry by now. And that was rather a big if. Not that it was stopping Lucy from staring at the page in front of her like words would just magically appear. Like she would suddenly know what to say. Or how to say it.

"Another letter, honey?" came a voice from the other side of the dining room table.

Lucy looked up to find her mother setting down a mug of tea in front of her, her own cup already halfway to her lips for a sip.

Lucy smiled gratefully, rubbing her eyes even as she pulled the mug towards herself. "Another draft," she corrected. "I haven't sent any of them." Which was true. They'd started accumulating in Lucy's trash bin to the point where she'd wished more than once that she was allowed to use magic outside of school if only to vanish them. Or vanish the words from them so she could reuse the parchment. It seemed a shame to waste it even if some of it was a crumbled mess thanks to a handful of instances where Lucy's frustration had gotten the best of her.

"You haven't?" her mother was saying now, sounding confused and perhaps a touch concerned. "It's not like you not to know what to say."

Lucy sighed, humming slightly. "No," she agreed, looking back down at the annoyingly blank page. "Though," she added, frowning at those two silly little words she had managed so far, "It's less that I want to say anything and more that I want to... do something, I suppose."

"Do something?" her mother asked, sipping her tea and looking curiously at her daughter.

Lucy sighed, the breath rippling the surface of her tea as she tucked the mug close to her chest, glad for the warmth of it even on this balmy summer's day. "I want to check in on a friend," she clarified, still staring down at the paper. Still hoping for inspiration to strike.

Maybe she could pretend she'd seen something that had reminded her of him, she thought. But what? What could reasonably remind her of him that he wouldn't resent her for?

"Why not say so?" came her mother's voice, interrupting her thoughts again, its tone as utterly matter-of-fact as Lucy's would have been suggesting the same to anyone else. And were she writing to anyone else, she would have simply said so. Said Dear Tom, I hope your summer's going well. I just wanted to write to see how you were doing. I know the days get long when we don't have classes to keep us busy. Have you done anything fun? And were it anyone else, she would have gotten a reply telling her thank you for checking in and here was what he had done and had she done anything either?

But Tom was Tom and, "I don't think he'd ever forgive me for it."

Lucy's mother gave a single blink that Lucy recognized. It was a political response. One she herself gave plenty. One Tom gave plenty.

And there was something that reminded her of him. Not a useful thing, though. She couldn't well write Dear Tom, My mother did that blinking thing that means she's thinking of the most tactful way to respond. The one that says her first thought isn't very tactful at all. It made me think of you. Anyway, how are you? That would be worse than just checking in. It would be admitting she had studied him, noticed him in ways she was reasonably sure Tom didn't want anyone noticing him. It would mean saying she knew him. And she rather thought Tom liked it better when everyone had heard of him and no one in the world knew him. And that last part, at least, Lucy could understand. The obsession with image, with always having the perfect response, with the instinct behind that blink... well. That was less understandable. Even if it was familiar.