Submission #1: Tom
The last time I saw Lily Wilkes was the night of Homecoming, 2014. She was wearing a blue dress that had a small silver bow on it that kept on tilting to the side; she was adjusting it all night trying to get it to stay on straight. This was before it all happened, before she booked that job in Los Angeles and before her Instagram had more followers than there were people in our small town.
She went alone, but it was her choice to. Bryan Halpert asked her out two days before, I know. He got her roses. They weren’t the good ones from the florist downtown, though. They were from the dingy corner store across the street, where we used to park our bikes.
She said no.
But, she did it so nicely in her Lily way that Bryan hardly even noticed that she was rejecting him. Bryan found another girl in the end, no doubt. But it wasn’t Lily. And I don’t think he even minded that it wasn’t, actually. But that’s not what you want to hear, you want to know about Lily Wilkes. You’d like to know what restaurant she went to today, with who, and what shoes she was wearing. I can’t really tell you, because I don’t know. If I did, that’d be weird. It’s weird to think about what she’s doing now when we haven’t really seen each other. I mean, she hasn’t seen me. I see her on television a lot. And my sister also sent me a picture of her in that magazine cover she was in last month, just for kicks. “Look at her, Tom! Can you believe it? Can you believe that you went to Homecoming with her all those years ago? Must be kicking yourself now!”
I didn’t go to Homecoming with her, just to be clear. We were friends. But we did dance. The song playing was some old slow song from the 80’s, I forget most of the words, but it had a good beat. I remember one line; it went something like “you’re wonderin’ if I’m okay”. She was dancing with her girl friends, and gave this little wave for me to come over. She complimented my suit. Made a little joke about how I needed to stop growing taller if I wanted to fit through the doorway. She asked if I wanted to dance, so we did. There probably wasn’t much to it to her, but it meant a lot to me. Her kindness. Her effortless authenticity.
You probably won’t post this because I don’t think you care much about what she did 5 years ago. But I wanted to let you know, so you knew what kind of person she was to me. You don’t know Lily in the way that I do, in the same way that I know Lily, but not in the way that you do.
I hope she doesn’t mind.