It started with a pen. Not just any pen, but a copper-toned quill she'd found in a tiny antique shop tucked between two crumbling storefronts in the heart of the city. Her name was Lila Santos, sixteen, and if the city had a rhythm, she always felt like she was tapping a beat just slightly off.
School corridors smelled of burnt coffee and ambition, and hallways echoed with laughter that didn't always reach everyone. Lila moved through it like a ghost, unnoticed but observing. Her notebook, a battered leather journal, was her only companion—her confessor, her battlefield, her escape.
That morning, perched on the graffiti-laced steps outside her high school, Lila opened the quill's ink pot. The scent of iron and age made her chest tighten. She had something to say, but not to anyone. Instead, she wrote letters addressed to nobody—letters that carried all the things she couldn't speak: longing, frustration, secret crushes, and dreams too wild to share.
"Dear Nobody," she wrote, letting the words spill like a song no one else could hear. Maybe one day, somebody will read this. Maybe not. But right now… it's enough that I'm brave enough to write it.
Across the street, the city hummed with life: vendors calling out prices, skateboard wheels skimming the pavement, neon signs flickering as if trying to wink at her. Somewhere in that chaos, Lila's eyes caught Sasha, laughing with her friends, her hair dyed violet at the tips. Lila's hand paused mid-sentence, the pen hovering. Every heartbeat felt like a drum in her chest.
She had never spoken to Sasha beyond a few awkward smiles in the hallway. But the letters—oh, the letters—they could carry what words never dared. Maybe, just maybe, somebody could finally understand the parts of her she hid so carefully.
Lila dipped the quill back in the ink, a determined spark in her eyes. If I'm writing to nobody, then I'm free. Free to say it all. Free to feel it all. Free to begin.
And with that, the first letter flowed, tracing the edge of teenage longing, city secrets, and the kind of love that doesn't always wait to be found.