Dear Lily,

It's pretty safe to say that, at this point in our friendship, you were my best friend. I was still a little bit of an ass, but I think that, slowly, you were starting to tear away that obnoxious, hard exterior and work your way inside my soul where all that squishy, emotional stuff is.

I think the first time I heard your laugh was when we first started showing off our Pokémon cards to each other, and I learned that you were even more of a nerd than I'd originally thought you were. It's kind of unfortunate that the same day I first heard you laugh was also the first day I saw you cry.

I still find it hard to believe that I didn't start learning about the real you until the end of our junior year, when I'd known you for a year already.

"I have way more cards than you, Alex!"

"Yeah, no kidding. You're just a huge nerd, Dandelion."

"Whatever," she said, rolling her eyes as she put her alarmingly large binder of trading cards back into her backpack and pulled out the worn copy of Lord of the Rings, flipping to her marked page. Her bookmark was an old photograph of a young girl and a woman, and I could tell from a quick glance that the kid in the picture was Dandelion.

When she started to read, I realized I probably wasn't going to get much else out of her for a little while. I picked up my guitar from where I'd set it when I came in, absent-mindedly playing a simple riff. I couldn't stop thinking about the woman in the picture, and how I'd never heard Dandelion talk about her mother. Or any of her family for that matter. I didn't know much about her life at all, I realized. I had known this girl for almost a year and a half, and I hadn't learned anything beyond her study habits (which were impeccable) and the fact that she loved all things nerdy, and she adored music of all different kinds.

"Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question," I asked her after about fifteen minutes. She looked at me over the rims of her glasses and raised one eyebrow. A sign I learned that, coming from her, meant for me to go ahead and ask. "Who's the lady in the picture you use as a bookmark?"

Dandelion's eyes widened, and her eyebrows curved upward and in slightly. Her eyes cut to the side, and I could see her incisors and canines digging into her lower lip.

"Why do you care," she asked, her voice clipped and jaw clenched.

"I was just curious," I shrugged. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

"No, sorry," she said, letting out a heavy sigh and looking back over at me. "I mean, I'll tell you, it's just. . . No one's ever asked me before."

I held my face in one hand and set my elbow on the table, watching Dandelion collect her thoughts and emotions before sighing again and starting to talk.

"It's my mom," she said quietly, and once she started talking, it was like a dam had burst and words came flooding out of her vocal chords like a typhoon on memories and emotion. "And it's such an old picture because it's the last picture I have of her; she died in a car crash when I was eleven. I was the only one of us to survive the crash and now I'm stuck with my father who blames me for what happened to her, because I was the only one in the car with her when the other car hit us." She was talking so fast now that I was having a hard time keeping up, her words like rapid-fire machine gun bullets. "And I always keep it in this book because it was her favorite and-" oh God she's crying. I don't know what to do now. "She always used to read it to me when I was upset, so now whenever I need to calm down or I'm sad, I read it to myself and I imagine that she's reading it to me and-" she stopped abruptly when I crouched next to her and wrapped my arms around her shoulders.

"After summer," I said slowly, not quite believing what I was saying, "once we're seniors and I'm allowed to drive to school, one day after we get out of class, let's go do something together, okay?"

She laughed, and I could still feel her shoulders shaking as she hugged me. "Are you asking me on a date, Alex?"

"Maybe," I muttered into her short hair, my face heating up, and this time I knew it definitely wasn't sunburn.