Letters to Angie

Part 2: New Beginnings

"Henry Sullivan?" Mrs. Benson called out in the droll tone she used for roll call.

He languidly raised his hand. "Here."

"Good. Marissa Summers?"

Henry turned back to the blank page before him. He drummed the head of his eraser against it, his eyes examining the emptiness with an internal pang of dread. It'd been eight months since he first started the letter, and he only had one measly line to show for it: Dear Angie,. He considered skipping to the end of the page and adding: Sincerely, Henry but then that would insinuate he'd have thirty lines of paper he planned to fill in. Of which, he had exactly two customary words so far. Thirty lines seemed like twenty-eight lines too many.

Leaning back in his seat, he let out an exasperated sigh. Nothing would make him happier than to tear this stupid letter to shreds, or better yet, to crumble it into a ball and throw it into the nearest recycling bin. But no matter how often he contemplated this outcome, he couldn't bring himself to do it.

"Tegan Wright?" Mrs. Benson said, scrutinizing the library carefully. "Tegan Wright? Has anyone seen Tegan today?"

"I think I saw her in Brenner's English during second," said a boy in the back.

"That was Bev Hilton," someone else sneered.

"Oh, never mind. Haven't seen her."

"Tegan Wright?" Mrs. Benson tried again as if somehow uttering the name enough would conjure her.

Then, as the second bell rang to initiate classes, the library doors flew open. A girl with bleach-blond hair and a freckled face walked in. She wore the usual girl's uniform: a white button-down with a blue and black checkered skirt and a pair of dark leggings. Her leggings had a hole in the knee. She'd probably been reprimanded by every teacher so far for pulling such a stunt.

"Ms. Wright," said Mrs. Benson, "nice of you to finally join us."

"It was, wasn't it," she snapped back.

Mrs. Benson made a mark on the clipboard with her pen. "Where's your tie, young lady."

"Uh, dog ate it."

Tegan didn't have a dog. She was allergic to them.

"Take your seat, Ms. Wright."

Tegan quickly crossed the room as Benson continued with roll call and sat opposite Henry. She squirmed in her seat, excited but restricted from talking until everyone had been accounted for. Henry grinned amusedly at her suffering. These small moments of forced silence were a blessing to him, and in a way, a form of entertainment as well.

"Alright, use this time effectively," said Mrs. Benson. "Get caught up on missing assignments, study for upcoming tests, and keep it down. If you don't have anything to do, come talk to me and we'll find you something." Mrs. Benson replaced her clipboard with a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.

"I bet she monks off to that book at home," Tegan said under her breath, shooting Mrs. Benson a curt glare that was in no way reciprocated, or noticed. "You think?"

"I never considered it," Henry confessed, his eyes glued to the empty letter.

Out of his peripheral, he could see her staring at him over a mound of textbooks and assignments. Most of the assignments were marked in red pen, reading something along the lines of you can do better or keep trying! with percentages ranging in the low fifties. Henry didn't have room to judge. His most recent trigonometry test peered out at him with a whopping sixty-two percent.

"I can't believe you're still writing that damn thing," said Tegan. "It's been eight months now. I would've given up ages ago."

"Yeah, well, I'm not you."