Silently Saying

1: The Beginning

It is very late, but I am here writing in this flimsy notebook to say a couple of things—no, a lot of things to you. I'm seated on my bed, warned by my lamp to tell you these things. My mind endlessly talks to you—day and freaking night. To stop my mind from thinking of you, I decided to write.
I am going to talk about us. How this unspoken relationship began.

First of all, I have to thank you. You shaped me—you helped me become the person I am today. You made me truly feel for the first time, and you inspired me to make beautiful things. I made an infinite number of poems and pieces of art because of you.

I wrote to you I think five or eight letters in pieces of graphic papers, ripped from my math notebook and other papers. Still, I have not given them to you. Most of them do not contain your name, and once, a letter flew away. And..I did not catch it. I was so scared it would have met the hands of another person.

I should introduce myself now, though I am very certain you know me. The year we were constantly meeting was when I was grade eight and you were grade nine, but it truly began in 2014.
I was friends with Robin Oconnor. I was grade seven, and Robin somehow became my best friend. I was insecure and not confident at this time—my voice was drowned out. I found it hard to fit in. {I am one of the few white people of our school in Asia.} I was in section B, a dark area in our school. Your grade at that time, grade eight, was only ten steps away from me.

My hair was extremely short then. "The Fault in Our Stars" came out earlier that year and I chopped it up. People always said I looked like Hazel Grace, the movie's main character. I read the book months before the movie, and knew who died. And spoiled the ending for everyone.

I was bossy, nerdy, and isolated. People expected me to have friends because I was a "popular kid." Well, I did not have that much friends. This was before theatre club changed me.
I usually ate outside of the school's large theatre, where a group of "loners" were brought together by loneliness. We were actually close together. It was fun.

My mom was actually worried about me. Grade six I was loved by nearly everyone. I had a large group consisting of Emily Warner, your younger cousin, and a Sabrina Gaffney. We were best friends, and I led that group. Then Sabrina left to Singapore.
I'd say I was "maturing" in grade seven. I was growing up. I was noticing things—if I was thin or pretty enough. If I was nice or friendly. This was all before I was confident, like now.

Robin and I got closer by each term. She did doe thing bad that made her a "hated" one in our batch. I still do not know why, but I was still friendly with her because I knew she needed a good friend. She's short, she has short hair—otherwise, it wouldn't look good on her—and she has a weird voice when she speaks. But when she sings, her voice is beautiful like a bird.

It was in the third semester when she told me about you.

You were my best friend's crush.
Be surprised. Say "omg!" Yes, it was not me who liked you.

I never saw you in this grade. I wouldn't have even have a second thought of you. {I probably would say "Wow! Another white kid in the Philippines! Great!" At the most}
Or paths did not cross at all then. We were not meant to meet then. Perhaps, we were never meant to meet. Perhaps our chance of knowing each other was an accident—something that should have never had happened.

It would be simpler if that was the truth.

Well, maybe in the end when we are in our twenties, or thirties, we would look back and see our old selves and be like, "Oh I remember that girl in my school. We always knew we liked each other, but never had moved forward. Nothing happened."

That is why I'm writing to you right now.

Wait, I hear my mother talking to my dad. I'll continue tomorrow.

It is the morning. My eyes are on my phone. I am texting James, my friend since year four. He asked me:

Hey. Do u wanna hang out later?

I responded:

k. lets do hw n shit there.

I left the van to the school, my eyes still tired of last night's reading. I'm not a reading person, but I will do it for her.

As I walked to the gate, I looked up and saw her there.

She was there with her new best friend Kate. She stood there against the wall like a princess, perfectly made. She looked unreal—how could someone like her exist? She is so beautiful.