Prelude:

I must admit, I’m a little tentative about releasing these stories. They are ones that sits with me on a very intimate level. I am writing Looking After Lilies with a fondness only time an reflection seem to provide, touching on things that had lain dormant within me for a long time. Too much time, I sometimes think. This is based off of the events of my first three years in high school, which I like to consider my true self-defining time. The trials and relationships that tested me gave me a goal to strive for as I began to shape myself for womanhood. Of course what we set out to create is often not what is born, and I’ll say it is much the same for this story. It began with a few distant memories that surfaced in me the day I left that school.

I believe I would be quite embarrassed if those who the characters of Riley, Lonnie and Sarah were based off were to read this. If they do happen to stumble across it, I’ll say this: Though Looking after Lilies was built on my memories of that time and the sequence of events flows in the same direction as your own memories, I can not even begin to guess what emotion is carried with them. A large part of this is based off of the fiction my mind created. With so many secrets and how emotionally involved we all were then, I believe it would be impossible to find the bare truth of that time. Like any bit of history, and this is, of course, a major event in my personal history, it has been recorded from a certain point of view. So I have to beg you to not be offended or too troubled with thoughts such as “This is not how it happened.” Most likely it is not. I did try to arrange things and alter them enough so that I might tell a new story with a similar feeling. I seem to have left many details that were for some reason important to me intact, however.

So now I hand you off a tender piece of my soul, dear reader. Do with it as you will, but I hope you will treat it well.

-A.M.T.