FAITH & HOPE 20

HOPE

They spent the next seven days together, talking, laughing, exploring Willows. Hope was feeling high on life, knowing that she succeeded in breaking through that barrier and getting through To Faith.

The thing was, Hope may have already had many friends, but that didn’t mean she had a shortage of energy or happiness to provide to people. It was in her nature to always ensure that other people’s happiness and wellbeing came before her own. So when it came to Faith, she didn’t have to think twice. She did whatever she felt was necessary to cheer Faith up, make her smile, or even laugh. Hope always felt a sense of triumph when she managed to make Faith laugh, Albeit, Faith was always laughing at Hope.

It all came so naturally for the two of them and they quickly fell into a routine as if they had known each other forever. Things that Hope once hesitated to say in front of Faith, she found herself simply saying anyways. And she didn’t hold back. She could let Faith know if she was being rude or obnoxious, just as Faith would tell Hope when she was being too talkative. Despite all of their immersive conversations and lengthy discussions on life, sometimes they’d find themselves sitting there, simply doing nothing. They had reached a point in their friendship where they could sit there in a comfortable silence. Hope found that Faith often needed the silence, as if to recharge her spirit. Hope was used to talking for hours on end, but Faith wasn’t . Hope became aware of this and ensured that she allotted some quiet time for the both of them.

After that Friday night at Hope’s place, Faith became an open book. She felt that she could tell Hope anything without any fear or judgement whatsoever. And Hope found herself spilling her life as well, telling Faith everything there was to know about her. Where her ancestors were from, what she thought about before she fell asleep. The names she picked out for her future children, her favourite times of the day to go down to the lake.

There was so much depth within the both of them and you would have never known. Just by looking at them, you’d see two ordinary girls. One with a glowing aura that radiated throughout her entire body, and one with an indignant stare, accompanied by a silence that made you revaluate everything. And somehow, the two of them - complete opposites from different families and walks of life - managed to come together and become something new. Something different. Something that made people stop and question. They found a common ground. A place where they could convene and relate to one another. A place that was sacred and safe, sheltered from the outside world. When they were there, nothing else seemed to matter. Not school, not camp, not death, not the future. It was untouchable.

Hope wasn’t used to this kind of friendship. Sure, she had the girls, but it had always been the five of them, an uncanny, uneven number. FIVE. Shouldn’t it have been six? Did they need another member to the group? Or perhaps it was always meant to be four, and Hope simply didn’t belong.

But she had always felt like she belonged with them, For as long as she could remember it was always Hope, Laura - Lee, Coral, Peyton and Daisy. They never questioned their assemblage or group status. No one did. Just like everything else in Willows, it had simply become what was normal. Hope never questioned her motives behinds their friendship, or the interior workings of it all. They were friends. That was that. Simple.

But the more time that she spent with Faith, Hope began to realize that within her little entourage of girlfriends, something was missing. It wasn’t trust and it wasn’t comradery, because those they did not lack. Rather, it was a feeling of intimacy. The feeling of knowing somebody so well that it became second nature. Which sounded crazy because Hope and Faith barely knew each other. It had only been three weeks since their initial meeting and one week since everything CHANGED. Yet still, Hope couldn’t deny that there was something different about Faith. And there was definitely something different about their friendship.

Although she couldn’t describe it at the time, she would later come to a conclusion. A very difficult, confusing, life - altering conclusion that would perplex her beyond belief and make her question everything she had ever known about herself and the world around her. But alas, a conclusion was what she’d eventually find. And it would change everything…