august 2013 : 7 years and 1 month ago

For as long as she could remember, Lily's cousin Henry had hated her.

In fact, it was through him that she first learned what hate was. She understood it before she even knew the name for it. The very first time someone had ever tried to explain the concept to her, she'd simply thought, Oh, like Henry. Henry hates me.

At first, in elementary school, they would fight any time they were put in the same room together. Which was entirely too often because their parents wanted them to try to get along. Henry would call her names and yank her hair and one time he even stuck a worm in it. All of their encounters ended the same way - with Lily running to her parents in a puddle of tears because she didn't comprehend why Henry was always so mean to her. Only once she was old enough to understand the term resentment did the pieces start to fit together a little better.

He slowly started to grow out of the constant arguing, but he would still make a point of complaining whenever he had to be around her and make sure she could hear him. Then, by the time she was in middle school, they ignored each other. She avoided being in the same room as him at all costs.

Lily had certainly given up on the possibility of them ever being friends a long time ago. She believed that Henry was always going to despise her. It was simply how life worked, no less of a fact than that the earth makes a full rotation on its axis every twenty-four hours or that there are 206 bones in the human body.

He behaved as if three-year-old Lily had somehow singlehandedly murdered his sister and wasn't just an innocent bystander to her untimely death, but she never tried to argue with him about it. She didn't let herself get too mad about it to his face, partially because she didn't want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had irritated her. But there was also something else that always stopped her from standing up to him. She retained a singular memory - her earliest memory - from those dark times eleven years ago and it was always enough to get her to hold her tongue around him.

Ignoring him had been a perfectly acceptable arrangement for her. The last time they'd seen each other, on the 4th of July, a polite nod was the extent of their interaction. She couldn't even remember the last time they had actually talked to each other. Maybe the last time their families had gone to Italy together to see their grandparents? She recalled making some comment and him regarding her with about as much affection as one might view a piece of gum they just stepped on with.

But today, she faced a new problem. For the first time in seven years, she and Henry were going to be at the same school.

Their three-year age difference had been enough to keep them separated since his last year of elementary school. Since middle school only consisted of grades 6-8 in their district, he had already been in high school by the time she got to middle school. They didn't have to risk running into each other.

Today, that all changed. It was her first day of 9th grade. Henry was a senior.

Lily's problem was exacerbated by the fact that she had absolutely no idea what she was doing right now. She had been sick for the past week and missed the freshman orientation where you could walk around the building to learn where everything was.

She stood in the cafeteria, near the front doors, like a fish out of water, her paper schedule clutched tightly in her hand. She had no clue where her locker or any of her classes were and didn't even know which direction to go from the cafeteria.

She also didn't have any friends here. Pretty much everyone she knew from middle school, including her best friend Kathleen who lived right down the street from her, was going to the nearby public school.

That meant that there were only two people in the building Lily could think of to ask for help: her uncle Robert, who taught history on the third floor, or his son, Henry: the devil's spawn himself.

Uncle Robert was nice, but marking herself as a teacher's pet on the first day of school would be social suicide. Even more so than talking to her nerdy cousin would be.

Any of this was assuming that she could even find Henry. Her mom had dropped her off early on her way to work and Lily sat in the cafeteria and watched the students slowly start to trickle in from the parking lot. Now, fifteen minutes before class, they swarmed inside in hordes.

She watched the doors for him, a knot forming in her stomach. She couldn't believe that she was willingly trying to subject herself to him. He surely wouldn't let her get away without at least making some sort of snide comment.

Her eyes drifted back to the clock on the wall. Ten minutes until class. She was running out of time. But just as she was about to get up and ask a random stranger for directions, she spotted a familiar head of brown hair in the sea of students coming through the doors.

She took a deep breath and stood up. Her feet were already moving towards him by the time her brain started seriously regretting all of her life choices. She was going to have to be faster; he was disappearing down the hall. She had committed at this point and rushed after him, but an anxious knot formed in her stomach.

He's going to do something, isn't he? He hates me, he's not going to help me. Oh God, he's gonna find a way to make fun of me in front of the whole school for this. This is a terrible idea why did I think this was a good idea-

She blurted his name before she could back out, but it sounded more like a nervous squeak. "Henry!"

He turned around, his eyebrows furrowing when he saw who was talking to him. He was clearly just as surprised that she was talking to him as she was. With his black backpack slung over his shoulder, he thankfully didn't look very threatening. Just confused. Very confused. "Uh-"

"I, um," she stammered, but she felt frozen now that she was looking at him. "I'm sorry. I have no idea where I'm going. I missed my orientation because I was sick."

He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. "Yeah, Mom mentioned that. Are you, uh, feeling better?"

What was this? She blinked a couple of times. Was that a serious question?

"Oh...yeah. Thanks," she managed.

This was horrendously awkward. And shocking. Since when did Henry care how she was doing? He had to be faking it, right? Or getting her hopes up just so that he could hurt her more. Henry had never cared about anyone but himself.

Regardless, she had to get to the point. "So, would you be able to, um..."

She clenched her jaw and braced herself for rejection. But it never hit. Henry nodded and held out his hand. Lily's eyes widened as she realized that he was actually trying to look at her schedule. She passed the now-crumpled piece of paper over to him.

He gave it a quick once-over and nodded in the direction he had previously been heading. "Yeah, come on."

She held back a sigh of relief as she followed him, but she had no idea what was causing him to be nice. She didn't know he was even capable of being nice. The words "Henry" and "nice" never belonged in the same sentence unless "nice" was preceded by "not."

Maybe his parents anticipated us running into each other and told him he couldn't be mean to me, she thought. His parents' scolding had never stopped him as a kid, but they had more they could hold against him now if he disobeyed, like his phone and his car.

While he walked her to her locker and then to her first class, she was waiting for the inevitable. For the bomb to go off, for him to finally say something cruel that would leave her teary-eyed her whole first day of high school. But he didn't. He just gave her directions to all of her other classes.

She listened carefully and turned to thank him once they were outside her English classroom, but he was gone. She let out the tiniest sigh. Of course he wouldn't want to stick around a second longer than he needed to.

That was what she thought, at least, so she was even more perplexed when she found out that he had the same lunch period as her.

Her head was aching from all of the new information that had been shoved into it, so she took the opportunity to get some fresh air and sit at one of the tables right outside. She was attempting to stealthily use her phone - students weren't allowed to use their phones during school hours, not even during lunch - and wasn't paying much attention to anything else, so she nearly jumped out of her skin when Henry came out of nowhere and sat down across from her.

Okay, this definitely had to be some body-snatcher nonsense or something. There was absolutely no way this was Henry.

He didn't even talk to her. Or eat, for that matter. He just pulled out a textbook and started doing homework without acknowledging her existence, even though he had already done that by sitting down.

She felt herself start to blush. This was getting ridiculous. "You don't have to do this, you know," she told him.

He finally looked up at her and closed the book. "Uh, okay, I can leave-"

Her annoyance led to a sudden burst of confidence. "I just mean- Look, I'm not your pity project. If your parents asked you to be nice to me or something, you can cut it out."

Henry raised his eyebrows. "They didn't ask me to do anything."

"Oh."

He didn't move. They went back to being quiet. Two very separate entities who just happened to be at the same table. This was the weirdest day of her life.

Lily couldn't help but sneak a curious glance at his textbook. AP Chemistry. The pages were covered in all sorts of confusing diagrams and definitions of words she'd never heard of. He seemed to be plowing through the homework with no problem, however, and she wasn't exactly surprised. She was well aware of the fact that he was incredibly intelligent and was probably taking only AP courses this year. She'd heard the stories about when he was a kid, how people would make fun of him and call him dumb just because of his hearing aids. So he'd gone and proven them all wrong by making sure he was the smartest.

She had been to her first chemistry class that morning after English and it had been a nightmare. After spending ten minutes going over the syllabus, the teacher had jumped straight into the first lesson and he might as well have been speaking in a foreign language. He'd given them a few minutes at the end of class to start on the homework and Lily was very confident that she had done it all wrong so far.

Since she and Henry were already interacting more than they had in the past couple of years combined, she decided to see if she could push it a little further. She unzipped her backpack and pulled out the chemistry homework.

"So um, since you know how to science could you tell me what I'm doing wrong here? I'm already so lost."

When she handed over the paper, it took him all of half a second to figure out where she'd messed up. He was making a weird face. Was that...Oh my God, he's totally trying not to laugh.

Had she ever even seen him smile? She must have been astoundingly dumb if she was actually getting an almost-grin out of him.

"Well?" she insisted.

He handed her homework back, his voice not giving away any amusement."N is nitrogen, not neon."

"Oh..." Wow, I'm stupid, she thought. "Right."

"But you already knew that, of course."

Who was this and what had he done with Henry? Henry didn't tease her unless he was being a jerk about it. This was obviously an alien.

"Um, yes. Yes I did."

Lily didn't know what to say after that and neither did Henry, apparently. He went back to his homework and she went back to her phone. But when the bell rang, indicating that they needed to get up and go to class, she suddenly found herself wanting to say a lot. Henry had already packed up and was just starting to walk off.

"Hey, um, thanks," she told him sheepishly before it was too late. "See you around, I guess."

Henry only halfway turned back towards her, giving a curt nod. She internally winced. "Or we can just pretend this didn't happen," she mumbled.

That apparently caught his attention. An indistinguishable look washed over his face. Was that...Sympathy? Regret? No, it couldn't be.

Henry shoved whatever it was down before she could think about it more, but she truly didn't expect what he said next.

He glanced down at the ground. "We don't have to pretend it didn't happen."

With that, he walked off. Lily stared after him open-mouthed.

She wasn't sure exactly what had changed, or why, or if tomorrow it would all go away and everything would revert back to how it used to be. But at that moment, she began to entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, the impossible was starting to happen.

Maybe they could become friends. 

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i hope you guys signed up for a cute enemies to friends subplot because that's what you're getting <3

hopefully you enjoyed this chapter! starting to write teenage henry immediately after finishing the last book was such a weird transition but it's been a lot of fun to figure out a different side of him. his and lily's relationship will be super important throughout the whole story and we'll get to learn some stuff about him that there wasn't time to get into in the last book. I hope you're looking forward to seeing him in a bit of a different light because i definitely have some surprises up my sleeve for him. ;)