Love Letter

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My English teacher assigned the class a project. We were to write a "Book of Love," since we'd been reading Cyrano De Bergerac (it's a play. I highly recommend it). Part of this assignment was to write a love letter to someone or something you love. Strangely, instead of writing about Carcer or theatre or writing or God or singing or dancing, I wrote a love letter to my future husband. 

It was so ooey-gooey with mushy romance that I had to put a warning label on it. 

I'd only written two pages, and the letter had to be three. I had already covered the part about remaining pure for my husband, and the part where we meet in the woods under a full moon with the fairies dancing around us, and I got stuck. I thought, 'Hey! Tori knows about love. She's got a boyfriend. I'll ask her!' and pranced across the choir room to the tiny practice rooms where she was. 

Liz and Tori were goofing off in there. Adena sat at the piano, trying to work out a song. I gave Tori a mopey look. 

"I don't know what to write next. It's the love letter. I figured, 'hey, Tori's got a boyfriend, so maybe she can help me!' and now here I am. I warn you, though, what I've got so far is pretty mushy. I even wrote a warning in the front--"

Liz snatched the paper out of my hand and started reading it out loud. "Warning: Ooey-Gooey, lovey-dovey, cheesy, corny romance is included."

Adena snapped. "If you're gonna read that out loud, go outside!"

"'Kay." Liz shrugged and pranced into the choir room. I didn't follow; I didn't expect anyone to pay any attention to it. I stayed in the practice room with Tori and Adena, distracted from my original goal, singing the song Adena plunked out until I peered through the practice room's tiny window and saw a small crowd gathered around Liz as she read the letter aloud.

I had no clue what to do. Do I go out there and demand my letter? Do I pretend I never wrote it? Or do I just pretend that I no longer exist? Not really knowing what I was going to do, I tried to slink out of the practice room unnoticed. Of course, the small crowd gathered around Liz saw me.

"Did you write this?" Jonathan, one of the crowd, asked. 

Lie. Lie, Natalie. Don't tell him you wrote it. 

"Yeah." Good morals strike again. 

He tried not to laugh. I had to explain this before I fainted from embarrassment. 

"It's for an English project. I promise!" I practically screamed. "Here, I'll show you the rubric."

I dug the rubric for the assignment out of my stuff and showed it to the crowd. Most of them were satisfied. 

"Okay," One said. "But did you mean what you wrote?" 

Alright, Natalie. This time, you're gonna lie. It'll be too easy to tell them, 'no, I just wrote what I thought would be funny.' You can do it! 

"Every word," I told them. Inwardly, I slapped myself. Idiot, idiot, idiot, idiot, stupid-head idiot....

They laughed at me. 'The writing's good,' they said. 'I like it'. They meant that, at least. Still, they thought it was silly. Granted, a lot of it was. The part with the fairies and the moonlight in the woods was VERY silly. It was meant to be. The parts, though, that talked about purity were completely serious, and, unfortunately, foreign to them; they didn't understand it, and that made them laugh. What we don't understand, we either laugh at or are afraid of. They chose to laugh. I choose to not let them push me down with it. So they laugh at part of who I am. So what? I can't please everybody all at once. Why bother trying? The only thing that should matter is pleasing God. No lying, no bending the truth. I wrote that letter, and I meant every word of it. 

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I've decided to type and post the letter for posterity. 

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