{i miss paper letters}

Lily was an anxious girl.  She often trembled incessantly for no obvious reason.  She sweated a lot.  She chewed on the ends of her hair.  She stress-ate, and as a result she was quite “heavy”—her grandmother’s euphemism.  In spite of this, she wasn’t entirely unhappy.  She was funny and friendly, and as a result she had a few close friends in the eleventh grade at Thornton Wilder High School in Madison.

Each spring there was a big dance at the school.  Lily was the head of the planning committee and she enjoyed the duties very much; one could say she threw herself into them, whole hog as it were.  Her balloon arches were infamous, and she somehow managed to squeeze a little more money out of the administration each time, so that word of these dances would be three towns over by the morning after.

This spring, however, Lily found herself somewhat distracted by all the talk of the Junior Prom.  All the girls on the committee with her ran out the clock on the time allotted to planning the Spring Fling deep in discussion of gowns and up-dos and manicures.  Lily became perturbed.

Listen, Ladies.  I know we’re all excited about the prom, but that’s not ‘til June and we’ve got to get Spring Fling off the ground; we haven’t even been able to agree on a color scheme—any suggestions other than pastels?  They’d been listening, sure enough, but as soon as she lost her tenuous grip on their attention, the prom-talk returned at the expense of more pressing decisions.  She tried again to regain control of the discussion and steer it in a more productive direction, to no avail.

Ladies, PLEASE!  Can we gain some traction on the decision about the streamers?

No response.  LADIES!  PLEASE!

Why does she keep calling us ladies, one blonde ponytail asked another.  Lily stormed out of the corner of the library where they held their planning committee meetings and went directly home.  Once there, she closed the door to her room and refused to come out for dinner.

The other girls remained seated and continued their conversation.  She’s just jealous ‘cause no one asked her.  I heard Billy daring Sam to do it as a joke; I hope she accepts.  If only she could lose that weight, you know she’d be as pretty as the rest of us.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen.  Yeah, let’s just hope all of her doesn’t come, packed into a fuscia casing like Fall Formal!  Hahahahahahaha.

Alone in her bedroom, Lily’s ears began to burn . . .