Dear, Mason.

This book is dedicated to all of the people out there who have found their voice, and to those who are still finding it.

'Dear, Nobody.

It’s been a while.

There’s a reason I haven’t been writing, a pretty good reason actually. I haven’t been writing to you because...well because I met a girl.′

The boy pauses and looks up, wanting to roll her name out on his tongue. He almost does. But instead, the dull ache that he is all too familiar with now climbs across his chest. He snatches the pen back up, almost in defiance. He would not let anything get the better of him now. He’d been living that lie for too long.

’Her name was Harlow. I suppose you will want to know all of the little details about her. What colour her eyes are. How long her hair is. What her favourite food is. I could tell you every mundane and menial thing there is to know about Harlow but it wouldn’t mean a thing.

I bet you won’t ask me about how her eyes catch in the light, and how when she drew the purest smile would blossom over her face, the sweetest humming falling from her lips in concentration. Maybe you only notice these things when you’re in love. Maybe we should make the effort to notice these things in everyone.

I look at the world differently now.′

Mason grasps at a deep breath. The bitter air nips at him, a reminder that winter had arrived.

‘It was her favourite time of year.’

His hand is numb, making it hard to write, but the words still flow effortlessly. Because on paper, he can say anything. It had always been this way.

’It feels like I’m back at square one again, writing letters to no-one. This letter will never get to her, but you never know, maybe I’m due a miracle. Except I think I used those up. The one big miracle my life deserved had been and gone. And that miracle was her.

She was a girl with her heart on her sleeve and the world on the tip of her tongue. Through her eyes, the world was a broken masterpiece just waiting to be fixed. She thought she could take those pieces, and one by one put them back together again.

She was the bravest girl I’ve ever known.

She spoke like she was reading poetry. Every sentence, every word had meaning.

One night we were sat here, right here where I’m writing this letter now. We were sat on this bench under the glare of the stars and she looked up all of a sudden, eyes bright with something electric.

“Mason, look at society,” she was almost shouting, and I imagined that if I was to paint her voice I would paint it in the boldest of colours. ”Think about society. It’s corrupt. Torn. Poisoned.

Look at the way society treats you, just because you don’t fit in. People have abandoned you your whole life simply because you can’t speak. It makes me angry. So angry that sometimes I want to turn on the world, spit at it, scream and tear everything apart. But I have to stop. Because I’ll drive myself crazy. Because I can’t change it. So instead, I look at it like I would look at art. Society is an unfinished picture. All of the wrong colours have been used and it’s been painted by careless hands. But I can steady that hand. By being the best version of me. And I can start with you.”

She pointed at me as if I was the solution to every problem she’d ever faced.

I did think once that maybe she was using me for her own gain. Like a project. Like a moral boost on all of the wrong things she’d done in life. But I’d never had a friend, so I didn’t know any different.

She steadied the hands of the mindless. She understood that not everyone has a true eye for beauty, but she was determined to help them see things under a new light.

People always say that they look worse in the light, but she shone brighter than any light, any star, any moon that I’d ever seen yet she remained beautiful.

She was never stood face to face with a problem too big or a task too treacherous. She had faith in me when no one else did. That was her tendency of believing in the impossible, her need to conquer the impossible. Her motto was: If you weren’t meant to fight then there wouldn’t be a battle to win in the first place. And so, she fought.′

Mason closes his eyes and tilts his head back, listening to the mumble of cars on the distant highway. A screech echoes through the night and he flinches, images of Harlow flashing through his mind. He has to remind himself of what people say. “Time heals.” He really hopes people are right.

’Now that I’ve told you what makes this girl who she is, I suppose I will tell you what she looks like. Except know that if you’re reading this you are glancing into a snapshot of my mind that I usually like to keep to myself. Because she was the kind of perfect that you wanted to open your eyes to in the morning. She was the sort of stunning you’d want to be the last thing you see before you go to sleep.

I can see her now.

Long, blonde hair; cascading down her back like a waterfall of gold and sunshine yellow, jutting off just as it reached her slender waist. My fingers always got tangled in her hair, when my lips connected with hers.

Crisp, icy grey eyes with ocean blue in their irises. They floated, gently, like a ship in the sea. But her emotions crashed like waves against the shore — and often she found herself in waters too deep — sometimes finding herself struggling to stay afloat, silently drowning.

Her eyes had only wandered the earth for seventeen years, but it just so happened that one day they landed upon someone who was in desperate need of fixing. And that someone just happened to be me.

She had one rule when helping someone find themselves. Never let emotions get in the way. "Because you have to remember,’ she said, ‘if you ever want to leap into the arms of a stranger, you have to prepare to become one yourself."

I wonder if I’m the reason she became a stranger? She was so focused on finding me, that she lost herself.

We lived out our story. A story about a boy who found his voice, and the story of a girl who never got hers out there.

I never told her I was falling in love. I only told her once it had happened. Once it was too late.'

A tear rolls down his cheek and splatters against the crumpled paper, hand trembling. He signs the bottom shakily.

' - From one nobody to another,

Mason.'

He folds the paper in two, tucking it at the back of the bench. It would remain there until the wind blew it away or the rain made the ink run. But the memories would be forever.

It all started with a letter. And it ended with one too...