// Dear Whoever You Might Be //

we received our letters and our partners.

It's Wednesday, which means we get our letter and our partners. my stomach felt uneasy; i wasn't sure if it was from receiving this long letter, or if it was for the person on the receiving end of mine. All i know is that they got one word. I'm not good at this type of thing, opening up to people. It's hard enough to come to a building where you feel trapped, only to be put into tinier rooms to feel even more enclosed than we did before. Now I have to try to make friends with someone who i don't even know, it's like being set up on the blindest blind date anyone could imagine.

I sat patiently at my desk, trying to listen to what Ms. Paige was saying. I couldn't really focus on anything except for the lake of drool that had been collecting on the desk from the kid in front of me.

"That's disgusting." I said to myself.

Looking up at Mrs. Paige I saw where she had the stack of white papers ready to be handed out in her hands. Smiling, she scanned the room and called out our names.

"Teresa." she began.

"Siggy." her blue eyes scanned the room when they fell on a hefty African American boy with a large, but genuine smile.

"You can just call me frypan ma'am." He said as-a-matter-of-factly. any other teacher in this god forsaken building would have been annoyed at his comment, but Mrs. Paige didnt seem to mind. She just smiled at him and stretched out her hand with his letter.

"Newton?" I looked behind me and made eye contact with a boy, who looked my age or so and he gave me a quick smile before getting up to receive his letter. Silently he sat back in his seat and began reading over his letter.

"Winston, Galileo, Harriet, and Rose." She called the rest of us up and handed us our letter that we all face down.

my heart was pounding. Why was my heart pounding? There was nothing to be afraid of; not anything logical to be afraid of, anyways.

I turned over my letter and found some mediocre handwriting. Not, that i was trying to be stereotypical, but my mind automatically assumed that it was one of the boys. I didn't know which boy it could be, but I kept on with my reading.

Now before I talk anymore let me explain how these letter are going to work. Mrs.paige assigned us with these partners to help us get out of our comfort Zone in this class. I thought by taking this writing course, we were going to learn how to write novels and analyze poems. not become pen pals with people five feet from us. Any ways, she has this number system 1-8. She has a different class but they have a different project. We each get our own "mail box" so we can drop off letters whenever we want to.

My letter is addressed with the number 7 and whoever has my letter gets the lucky number 3.

"Hi,

I'm not really good at writing letters but I guess we have to give it a shot? Sorry, this is all that I have to say right now.

-7"