september-october 2013 : 6 years and 11 months ago

It turned out that Lily deciding to be friends with Henry actually made things a lot less awkward between them. It eliminated the need to nervously tiptoe around each other in attempts to figure out if they were actually going to talk about anything other than school. It meant that she was allowed to smile and wave if she saw him in the hallway and send him funny memes after school when she was supposed to be doing homework. It meant that she would sneak potato chips from his bag at lunch and he would graciously pretend not to notice her doing it. And it meant that he started giving her rides to and from school.

That part didn't happen super intentionally. Lily's mom usually wasn't able to pick her up from school until an hour or so after classes ended, so she'd gotten in the routine of just sitting outside and killing the time by doing homework or scrolling aimlessly on her phone. But on one particular day at the end of September, the weather decided to be unseasonably cold out of nowhere, the temperature barely inching above fifty degrees. Lily shivered when she stepped outside, but dug her sweatshirt out of her backpack and resigned to camping out at a table closer to the entrance so that she could at least feel the occasional burst of warm air from inside every time someone opened the doors.

It only took a couple of minutes for her to become totally absorbed in this fanfiction she found on Tumblr, so she barely noticed when Henry came over, plopping down in the seat across from her and stuffing his hands in his sweatshirt pockets. "It's a little cold, don't you think?"

She tore her eyes off her phone. "Have we reverted to talking about the weather?"

"I don't think we ever actually talked about the weather," he pointed out.

She shrugged. "You get the point. I'm just waiting on my mom."

"She's running late?"

Lily set her phone down and propped her chin on her hands. "You enjoy being nosy, don't you? She's not off work for half an hour."

He frowned slightly, eyebrows furrowing as if he were worried. "You need a ride?"

Lily found it amusing that he was concerned about her sitting out in the (not very) cold, but she didn't call him out on it. "You're being dramatic," she muttered, but it did sound a lot more appealing to go sit in the car and warm up than it did to stay out here. "But yeah, sure."

She hopped up to follow Henry to his car, falling slightly behind him due to her continuing intrigue with the story she was reading off her phone.

"Hey, Lily?" he piped up.

"Yeah?"

Henry turned his head back towards her with a satisfied grin on his face. Oh no. "I'm not nosy," he corrected. "If I was, I would have asked by now who this Ben guy you're constantly texting is."

Lily blushed and heard his quiet laughter behind her as she rushed ahead of him to crawl into the Jeep.

She got her revenge soon. After that day, Henry offered to start driving her to and from school since that was easier than working around her mom's schedule. Lily was quite pleased with the arrangement as it allowed her to sleep in a little later and get home a little earlier. She patiently waited for the moment he (very hesitantly) allowed her to pick their car music - she could only put up with his angsty boy stuff for so many days in a row - and watched a tiny piece of his soul leave him as she shoved her Taylor Swift Red CD into the player.

By that point, all of their parents had gotten the memo that she and Henry were less interested than usual in killing each other nowadays and Lily could tell from the couple of times it came up in conversation that it made her mom and dad happy that they were finally getting along. She made a 95 on the first chemistry test. Life was good.

October came, much to her delight (then again, did anyone not like October?). She walked down to Katie's house on that first Friday afternoon, marking yet another week of high school they had both survived.

Katie was in front of the full body mirror hanging from her closet door, looking adorably quirky as usual with her big square glasses and blonde tresses pulled back in a ponytail. She was one of those girls who looked cute with very minimal effort, usually just sporting jeans and a band tee at school, so Lily was a little surprised to see her wearing a nice sweater and applying lip gloss.

"Are we going somewhere?" Lily asked curiously.

"You up for dinner? The football team is doing this fundraiser thing at Joe's Diner," Katie explained as she twisted the lip gloss cap closed. "Mom said she'd drive us and I'm kind of in the mood for burgers. But we don't have to go if you don't want to since I didn't give you heads' up."

"I don't mind." Lily plopped down on the floor. "But fill me in. Who are we trying to impress?"

"Who says I'm trying to impress anyone?" Katie said.

Lily didn't say anything. She was confident that Katie must be crushing on someone who she knew would be there tonight if she was bothering to get dressed up for diner food. Lily expectantly watched her friend.

"Fine," Katie conceded. "His name is Lucas and he's a sophomore and he's on the football team and we are not going to talk to him unless he comes up to us first."

Ah, so she was waiting on him to notice her. Lily wanted to tell her that she should just go for it and make the first move but knew that by doing so she would be opening herself up to an onslaught of opinions about how she should stop being such a chicken and just talk to Ben more. So she kept her mouth shut.

Katie's mom was ready to go just a few minutes later and the three of them piled into her blue minivan just like they had for many outings over the years. Lily felt anything but cool getting dropped off in such a mom car, but at least Mrs. Watson wasn't being weird by trying to eat dinner with them or anything else too crazy. Lily just had to survive a little over a year before she could get her driver's license.

"Be safe, girls," Katie's mom told them as they hopped out of the car. "And have fun!"

Even from outside, Lily could already tell that Joe's was packed. It was this cute 50s style diner that had been around for ages. She had never actually been but people were always talking about it, so she was excited to finally try it.

A few fallen leaves, the first traces of autumn, crunched under their shoes as they walked up to the front door. As soon as they stepped inside, Lily's ears were greeted by the sound of teenagers laughing and being otherwise obnoxious while an Elvis song played from the jukebox. It was crowded, the line to order at the registers trailing nearly all the way back to the door. All of the employees probably hated their jobs right now, but the food smelled incredible.

Lily's eyes were glued on the menu boards, but Katie tapped her on the shoulder. "Isn't that your cousin?"

"What? Where?"

Katie must have been mistaken. Henry was hardly a social butterfly.

"At the register."

Lily had to stand on her tiptoes to see around the person in front of her, but there Henry was, taking people's orders. She vaguely recalled him mentioning that he worked here, but it had completely slipped her mind. Now she wished he was required to wear an embarrassing uniform that she could make fun of later, but no such luck - he was just in jeans and a red tee shirt with the Joe's logo on it.

As they neared the front of the line, she saw him grimace slightly and reach up to fiddle with one of his hearing aids. She instinctively winced a little bit out of sympathy for him; the dozens of teenage girls screeching like banshees must have sounded absolutely abysmal through the aids.

But his frown was replaced with a smile when Lily and Katie got to the front of the line. "Hey, loser."

"I don't think you're allowed to call your customers losers," Lily remarked.

"I think I just did."

She could practically feel Katie's inquisitive gaze on her now that she was actually witnessing Lily and Henry interacting for the first time. Unfortunately, Lily didn't have another good comeback for him and couldn't exactly hold up the line to think of one. "I'll have a bacon cheeseburger," she said instead.

"Regular fries or curly fries?"

"Uh...which are better?"

He lowered the volume of his voice significantly. "Do you like your fries to taste like cardboard?"

"Um, no."

"Curly fries it is, then."

"I thought the regular fries were pretty good," Katie muttered next to Lily.

The corners of Henry's mouth twitched up for a second, like he was trying not to smile. "Sorry. It's Kathleen, right?"

Katie paused and blinked a couple of times as if she hadn't expected him to acknowledge her existence. "Yeah. Katie's fine."

She and Henry had been such separate entities in Lily's life for so long that it was genuinely bizarre to see them interact in any capacity. He took her order and she handed him the twenty dollar bill that her mom had sent them with.

Lily said bye to Henry before they left to find a table, but Katie let out some sort of snorting noise when she looked at the receipt he'd given her.

"What's so funny?" Lily questioned.

Katie smirked. "He gave you the senior discount."

Lily resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but supposed he wasn't really Henry if he wasn't trying to do something to get under her skin. "Technically, he gave you the senior discount."

"Whatever makes you feel better."

By a stroke of luck, a booth opened up just as they were looking for a table. They slid onto the red squishy benches, sitting across from one another.

Lily tried to be inconspicuous as she glanced around the room at the various groups of students. Pretty much all of them looked like your stereotypical popular kids, many of the boys sporting letterman jackets. "Do you see Lucas here?" she asked Katie quietly.

"By the jukebox," Katie mumbled.

Oh, he was definitely cute. And he didn't appear to have any girls with him, which was a good start.

"Have you spoken to him, like, at all?"

"No," Katie confessed before changing the subject. "Have you made any progress with Ben?"

Lily didn't really have a great answer to that question. They had kept talking some and awkwardly flirted on a couple of occasions, but she couldn't read him well. He didn't necessarily seem that interested in her all of the time, but then on some days it seemed like he was. It was incredibly frustrating. She didn't want to seem uninterested, but most certainly didn't want to come across as clingy and scare him off.

The two of them complained about boys for a few more minutes until a girl not much older than them brought their food. They had ordered the same thing, except for the fries, which Lily was now quite curious about. She popped one of the curly fries in her mouth. It was very good.

"Can I try one of yours?" she asked Katie, who nodded and scooted her plate over to Lily.

She picked up one of the regular fries and took a bite. "I'm not sure whose side I'm on here," she admitted.

They weren't cardboard-level bad, but they weren't the most flavorful, either. Dump some extra salt on them and they probably would have been much improved.

The curly fries were good, but the burger was truly great. The bacon was crispy and the gooey cheese melted in her mouth. Lily regretted none of her life decisions as she munched away.

Katie swallowed a bite of food and wiped her hands on a napkin. "So, let me tell you about this philosophy homew-"

She was interrupted by Henry suddenly sliding in the booth next to Lily. He must have gotten his fifteen-minute break.

"You smell like burgers," she complained, scooting away from him as much as she could.

"You say that like it's the worst thing in the world."

Lily made a face, her nose scrunching. "A word of advice, dear cousin. If a girl ever says you smell beefy, it's definitely not a compliment."

Katie, meanwhile, didn't seem to know what to do with their behavior. "We were just, uh, talking about homework," she offered awkwardly.

"Are you as bad at chemistry as she is?" Henry asked.

Lily opened her mouth to fire back, but he stopped her before she could unleash her wrath on him. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding." He reached over and mortified her by playfully ruffling her hair with his hand.

"Get your gross hand out of my hair," she whined, squirming away. Her hair was going to be oily for days from all that restaurant grease.

"Don't be dramatic."

"I'll be as dramatic as I want to be," she huffed.

She grabbed his hand to yank it off, but didn't hold onto it a second longer than she had to. She wasn't sure if holding his hand was something he was actually comfortable with her doing. Or something she even wanted to do, for that matter.

"So what's up with this philosophy homework?" Lily asked Katie before Henry could find something else to be annoying about, but he did it anyway.

"Why are they putting freshmen in philosophy, anyway? No offense."

To be fair, he had a point. Lily didn't think she and Henry's school even had a philosophy class.

"I dunno," Katie agreed, absentmindedly twirling her straw around in her glass. "But this class is getting freaking morbid. For this paper, she's making us argue if we think it's rational to be afraid of death or not."

Uh...what? That seemed entirely too intense. What did ninth graders know about death? Most ninth graders, herself included, didn't actually know what they believed about most anything.

Henry just gave a quiet "Hmm" and stole one of Lily's curly fries.

What was that supposed to mean? They sat in awkward silence for a second as the two girls looked at Henry, waiting for him to elaborate on that oh-so-insightful hmm.

He glanced back and forth between them. "What, were you wanting an opinion?"

"Yes," Katie said at the same time Lily blurted, "No."

Nope nope nope, absolutely not. She probably sounded more adamant than she intended to, but this was the absolute last topic she wanted to get him going off about. Katie, however, wouldn't be thinking about that. Lily hadn't mentioned it anytime recently.

Henry's eyes darted to Lily, shooting her a slightly confused look before he obliged to Katie. "Yours or someone else's?" he asked.

Katie stopped twirling her straw. "Yours, I think."

He didn't miss a beat. "Then tell her that's a dumb question."

Lily frowned. "Henry-"

"What? It is," he shrugged, tossing another fry in his mouth. The nerve of this boy.

Katie had been somewhat wary or Henry up to this point, but Lily could see that he'd piqued her interest. She leaned forward in her seat with a curious look on her face as she tightened her ponytail. "Why is it a dumb question?"

"Because no one is actually afraid of dying," he answered incredibly nonchalantly.

"I'm pretty sure that's not true," Katie replied just as bluntly.

"I think it is. Here's the thing," he offered. Lily had no clue where this was going, but she was already nervous for it. "You might be afraid of, like, the possibility of pain or the unknown or whatever, or maybe even punishment if we're getting religious about it. But you won't actually care when you're dead. You're just dead. It's the people you leave behind that have to deal with it."

"How cheery," Katie grumbled, picking up another cardboard fry.

"You asked," he reminded her.

"Fair enough," she sighed. "I suppose you just gave me a pretty good paper, so thanks."

Henry gave an endearing grin and turned his head towards Lily. "It's kind of my job to help people with homework these days."

Lily smiled back at him, but it was somewhat forced. He didn't seem to have given what he said too much thought, but she...didn't even know what she thought. An uneasy feeling formed in the pit of her stomach. Hearing him talk about that made her sad, no matter how collectedly he did it.

She watched his eyes darken as he read her expression, but he tore his eyes off of her and ate yet another one of her fries. Good grief. He was really trying to take full advantage of his break, wasn't he?

Katie got distracted by something on her phone just a few seconds later and Henry immediately looked back to Lily, still looking concerned. "You okay?" he mouthed.

She nodded. If he wasn't bothered, she shouldn't be, either. Or at least not let it on.

He wiped the uneasiness of his face and smiled again. "Well, I gotta get back to work. See you later, loser."

With that, he got up and left. She watched him walk off until she couldn't see him anymore.

But there it was again, crawling back into the corners of her mind and becoming harder to ignore each day. That earliest memory of hers. The earliest memory she had of him.

She attempted to shove the thought down and turned back to Katie. As well as the two knew each other, Lily's tension had surprisingly flown over her friend's head.

"You know, he's kind of weird, but not too dumb for a teenage boy," Katie conceded.

Lily nodded and took another bite of her burger so that she didn't have to say anything else about that. Henry definitely wasn't dumb, but he had also spent more than enough time thinking about death.

Discomfort continued to seep through her veins and she couldn't shake it off. Even when she had hated his guts, she always felt at least a little bad for him if she thought about Sarah for too long. Now, she was realizing that it was infinitely worse now that they were friends. It was starting to hurt in a way it hadn't before.

It was that last thing he said that gnawed at her the most. It's the people you leave behind that have to deal with it.

It was possible that he was simply being nice and helping Katie out with her homework. But Lily had a suspicion. She couldn't help but wonder if he had an ulterior motive, if he had seen an opportunity and taken the bait.

Perhaps he saw it as a chance to say what he needed to say without really saying it. That would explain why he had been so forward about it. It was, by an astronomical amount, the closest he had ever gotten to telling her anything about his feelings about Sarah.

Maybe, just maybe, Henry was trying to help Lily understand how he felt. Was willing to hand her another tiny piece of his complicated mind if he could find a way to do so.

Maybe he was finally trying to let her in.

____________________

henry sweetie you're not the most subtle but we still love you

any thoughts on this chapter? do we think lily and katie are ever gonna be brave enough to talk to these boys? (or should they even bother...)

the next chapter is another lily one. i'm hoping to post again before thanksgiving but things have been kind of chaotic for me so we'll see