This story is very much inspired by Dash and Lily’s Book of Dares, a book I highly recommend. It’s also loosely based around me, so if you want to learn about me, here’s your chance. I hope you enjoy it, leave me feedback and make sure you vote Jx
Dear stranger,
I’m not sure who you are, and you don’t have any clue who I am, but if you’re willing, I’d like to be friends. Nothing more, nothing less, just comfortable friends. I don’t have very many of them, well actually I do, but not very many that I can pour my heart out to, that I trust with every single one of my dark secrets. Would you like to be the one I can tell everything to? I’d return the favour of course, I would keep your secrets, if you’d like? I’m a very trustworthy person, I can promise you that.
Sometimes I like to think there are good people in the world, people who won’t hurt me or lie to my face or back-stab me, I classify them as good people and I like to think I will meet a good person one day. Can I ask you a question, stranger, are you a good person? Well, do you think you’re a good person? I sometimes consider myself a good person but other times I’m at loss and can’t seem to see any good in me.
In every letter I’ve decided to say something about me, so you can get to know me better. This is the first one: I absolutely hate the beach, if it were up to me I wouldn’t live anywhere near one. I think it’s because when I was younger my father and I would go there all the time, and I mean almost everyday. One day we would go down to just swim, the next we’d do a bit of fishing. I still remember, quite clearly actually, I had this little fishing rod, it was very cute. It was pink and even though it was designed for children my age, it was much bigger than me, is that how fishing rods are supposed to be? Tell me, stranger, did you or do you still enjoy the beach? I’m sure if we were friends I could grow to love it again, I just haven’t had any reason to since my father left. Of course, you don’t have to tell me some deep, personal story about your past, I’m not expecting you to trust me with that kind of stuff just yet, but if you feel like it, I’m always here to listen.
Thankyou for reading this, if you’d like to reply, simply leave a letter in the envelope I’ve enclosed, I even put a stamp on it, so you have nothing to lose. I look forward to your reply, stranger, I really, truly do.
Love always,
Michellie.
I slipped the letter and a slightly smaller envelope into a bigger one before licking the horrid tasting glue and sealing it shut. For my new years resolution, I’d decided to become friends with a stranger, an easy enough thing, I thought. What I didn’t think about was that I’d actually have to leave my house, something I tried to avoid as much as possible.
I just really didn’t like people looking at me, feeling their eyes burn through my skin with judgement made me sick in the stomach, it still does to be completely honest. Anyway, I’d come to the conclusion that I would have to figure out some way to make friends with a stranger, and writing letters seemed like a good idea at the time. I wrote down an address on an envelope and focused on them. I knew I was potentially putting my life on the line, giving a complete stranger my address and telling them personal things, letting them know things about me no one else did, but if they were going to kill me, atleast I would’ve died completing my new years resolution, right?
I walked out the door, locking it behind me and hurrying down the path to the bright red mailbox across the road. I popped it in the hole after kissing it and praying my stranger would reply.
‘I just need a comfortable friend.’ I whispered before bowing my head and returning home to my heaven. I put on Katy Perry’s ‘Not Like The Movies’ and logged onto tumblr, the website that occupied most of my life. I subconsciously sang along, very loudly and very badly.
‘You really should stick to studying, Elle.’ I heard my mum yell from the lounge room. I don’t think she ever realised how much her smart remarks hurt me, but I let them go because she was my mother, and mothers are supposed to love you, right?
That was the day I sent the first letter, the letter that would change my whole life.
