Part 4

Stars Come Out



On Wednesday, I ate a small book of Isabella Crawford that I'd got out of the library, but I was still hungry.



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Message to: *Emilia

Well, you did ask for brutal honesty...

...did you just look up "poetry" in a dictionary? There's way more to a poem than just making some of the words rhyme.

I'm not trying to be rude. I mean, I really admire your bravery! I write poetry sometimes but I can't imagine ever showing it to anyone.
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I worried for a moment before pressing send, but then I got called for dinner, and that made my mind up.



After dinner I was back at it. I was well up with my assignments, so why not? And I found that message waiting for me. It made me smile, and in a different way to how I smiled when someone cracked a joke in a public discussion.

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Message to: *Emilia

I'm glad that there's going to be a next attempt. You don't get good at something by trying once and giving up!

I mean, I can't even remember my first picture, that's how long I've been drawing. Of course I wasn't any good at first, but it was fun even though the pictures got funny...and then I got better.

Well, I *think* I've got better, anyway. I can't be sure...I don't really have anyone I can ask, so I just don't know.

I'm rambling now. Sorry.
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I sent the message, and then looked at the time. Wow. Did I really spend that long thinking about an e-mail to someone? I knew what it was like to be caught up in a picture, or a game, so that the passage of time just receded into the background...but about just writing words on a screen?



On Thursday, I ate an old dog-eared copy of Shakespeare's sonnets that Grandmama Maxine had given me one Christmas (and which had been lying at the back of my closet ever since), but I was still hungry.



I took out my sketchbook and doodled for a while; tiny little pencil pin-prick points, then connecting them and connecting them and adding more and more points, and clusters, and connections, and points, and connections...

After a while, I took a deep breath, and faced up to the butterflies that'd been jumping in my stomach since I'd connected to LCL an hour before.



I toyed with just shutting Amy down for the night and going to watch TV instead.

I didn't.



The relief was streaming off me. I never understood what people meant by that until then; it really did feel like waves of relief were cascading down my back like water from the shower head.

I read that message over and over until bedtime. "I really do feel the same way, all the time."