The Way We Learned to Love ✓

07 - lily

october 2013 : 6 years and 11 months ago

October 30th, 2013 was the day Lily almost died.

Well, okay, maybe that was a bit dramatic, but only a little bit. She definitely saw her life flash before her eyes.

It started like any other day. Even better, actually. The fall weather finally seemed to have settled in for good, so Lily pulled on her favorite sweater and when she walked downstairs for breakfast, she found that her mom had made cinnamon rolls. Henry was drinking coffee when he picked her up - she supposed he had to survive all of those AP classes one way or another - and it made the car smell so cozy (although the fact that he had it sitting in the cupholder without a lid on it stressed her out). And he even tolerated her music without any snarky comments about it.

They were somehow running ahead of schedule and arrived at school a little earlier than usual. Lily was not one of those people like Henry who could just sit down and do homework first thing in the morning, so she found Olivia and they complained about their English teacher on the way to their lockers. Theirs were on the same floor, but at opposite ends of the hall, so they stopped at Olivia's before heading to Lily's.

She mindlessly turned the dial to punch in her combination and kept chatting with Olivia while she opened the door - and just about had a heart attack when a massive plastic spider tumbled out of her locker. She and Olivia both jumped, Lily biting down on her lip to stifle the shriek that almost came out of her.

Oh, she was going to end him.

A few students passing by were staring as she reached down and picked the spider up off the floor. "You'll have to excuse me," she told Olivia calmly. "I need to go deal with this."

She marched upstairs to his locker with the spider dangling from her hand, receiving quite a few weird looks along the way. Henry tried to put on a poker face when he saw her coming, but the mischievous glint in his eyes and the way the corners of his mouth were threatening to twitch up into a grin completely blew his cover.

"Who gave you the right to put this abomination in my locker," she huffed indignantly, holding it up in his face as if he couldn't already see it.

A snicker finally escaped him now that he could see just how mad she was. "I was simply trying to get you in the Halloween spirit."

Lily was unimpressed. "How did you even get my combination?!"

Henry closed his locker and leaned against it with that stupid grin still plastered on his face. "If you don't want people seeing your combination, maybe try not writing it in giant numbers on your planner," he suggested.

"You're unbearable."

"But I'm not wrong," he said annoyingly cheerfully. "You know, you should really appreciate my commitment to carrying that thing around all day yesterday just for you. I put it there while you were waiting for me at the car."

He had taken longer than usual to meet her in the parking lot after school the day before. Ugh.

"You suck," she muttered, playfully swatting him with it, but that only seemed to entertain him more. He grabbed it from her and whacked her back.

"You guys," Lily heard an adult's voice start from nearby, growing closer. Uh oh, they were in trouble. "Can we not hit each other with- oh, I should have known it would be you two."

Lily turned to find none other than Uncle Robert next to them, his expression somewhere between exasperated and amused. She had quite frankly forgotten that they were near his classroom.