Charming Lily

Lily Sparke noticed the new transfer student the day he walked into her senior year classroom. He had the kind of face that looked drawn rather than born, and he kept a distance from everyone around him that nobody in their elite school seemed able to close. She assumed he was there on the same terms she was, a special admit like herself, and that assumption made her bold enough to talk to him. Over the following months she watched him without saying much about it. She noted where he sat, what he read, how he answered teachers. The attraction grew on its own, planted early and left alone, the way something takes root before anyone decides to plant it. She wrote him a letter and bought him a gift, and she kept both put away, waiting for the right day. Before the college entrance exam that spring, a Rolls-Royce pulled up outside the school gates. A man in a suit got out, opened the rear door, and addressed the boy as Young Master. Lily Sparke stood at a distance and watched the car pull away. She put the letter and the gift back in her bag, wiped her eyes, and walked home without telling anyone what she had seen. She kept what she'd felt at seventeen to herself for three years afterward, filed away like something she'd decided not to reach for again.