One Month One World One Year Challenge (Selena Lilly)
So, I started this off in the hopes that I could keep up with it, and immediately couldn't. I've decided to instead do it in this thread, but please check out the main thread with all its wonderful st...
Cyrus had mentioned that there were some good books in the library that could help with her project, and so Selena had ended up there after school. She'd wanted to meet up with Kita and Candice for some hot chocolate, but she couldn't afford to let her grades start falling, and this project was a big one. Luckily, both of them had understood.
She didn't recognise the woman who was behind the desk when she came in, but was immediately flagged down by her with a wide smile.
"Selena, right? Cyrus mentioned his friend would be along for a school project today. I've got some books over in the back room picked out for you. Oh, I'm Claudia, by the way. I volunteer here." She smiled brightly again. "Gotta say, love what you picked! Most kids go for the historical feud or the ancestral roots."
"I'm...not from around here, actually." Selena felt a little awkward. "I don't have any roots."
"Really? Huh, weird." Claudia frowned. "We used to have a Lilly family living around here. Same spelling and everything, so I didn't think it was a coincidence. Cool, right?"
"I suppose so." Selena felt a little awkward, but luckily or unluckily, Claudia didn't stop rambling.
"We actually function as the school's archive, too, so I ended up pulling the old yearbooks with the Lilly family, in case you were a relation. It's still worth a look, though, because they're so old. Moonwood's always been kind of a small school, I guess, but it's so fun to look back on all the fashions of that era. Makes you grateful for what we have now, huh?" She laughed, and then turned to the next person walking in behind Selena, gesturing towards the back room.
Selena raised her eyebrows, but walked into the back room anyway, where books had been piled inside one of the little study cabinets. A yearbook was on the table, with matching ones above, and was dated some sixty or so years ago. She idly picked it up, flipping through the students until she hit 'L'.
She stopped dead, looking at the photo. A young version of her grandmother, the original Selena Lilly, smiled back at her kindly. She'd seen photos of her grandmother when she was young, and there was no mistaking it - this was her, albeit a good sixty years younger.
Her grandmother had never mentioned Moonwood Mill, or having lived there. Selena had asked her glamorous grandmother many questions about her life when growing up, and it had always been such a fairytale - her grandfather had met her at a dance, asked her to marry him at Winterfest under the big tree in San Myshuno, and whisked her up to the skyscrapers. She'd lived the social life, and blazed such a trail that her aura had settled like pixie dust on her descendants, giving them the ability to fly as high as they wanted.
But she was Lena Michaels, the well-known socialite, and though Selena was named after her, and had taken her grandmother's maiden name when she moved out, it was a very different Selena Lilly within the pages. Here, she was smiling timidly next to another girl, who appeared in most pictures with her. Singing together at a talent show, with Selena's grandmother playing the piano. Clustered together in a group photo. The caption named the girl as 'Lily', which Selena thought must be a mistake until she flipped back through the photos and found the girl, one Lily Zhu.
How had her grandmother never mentioned this? Selena picked the other books up slowly, checking through for what she actually needed until she found the most helpful one, shoving the yearbook back. It seemed almost wrong, a secret she wasn't meant to find. She carried the book she did need out with her, trying not to think about her grandmother's young, laughing face in black and white.
Once she'd checked the book out, she began wandering towards the direction of home, but something caught her eye. By the tunnels, someone was stepping out. She crept closer, clutching her book, and hid behind a barrel that was standing upright nearby, to watch Lou brush himself off before reaching inside and locking the gates from the inside. He looked annoyed, and his jacket had a large tear in the arm, and she crouched down even further when he began stomping through the snow towards the steps.
"Idiots, the lot of them," he muttered, loud enough for her to hear.
She held her breath, waiting until he was well and truly gone to let herself exhale. Why was Lou of all people creeping around in the tunnels? How had he gotten his jacket ripped like that, and how did he have a key?
