Names and Roses

It took Hod a few days to get used to the new system. Computers were not normally designed for blind people, and their was a lot of content that made little sense to him. Youtube seemed particularly inane. He joined a few chatrooms for literature appreciation. Their was an association with other districts, so that high school kids could ask each other for help and advice from different schools. Within a few weeks, Hod was deeply embroiled in the Shakespeare discussion boards, and within two months he was in charge of a weekly challenge and prize: whoever wrote the best sonnet won 10 dollars and a spot in the University newspaper where Hod's stepfather worked. On the school discussion boards usernames had to be literary references; Hod went by Williamthebard. She went by Elizabethfair

Elizabethfair kept winning. She didn't win every week, maybe only once every five challenges, but she won more than any other student on the boards. Hod first thought she was cheating, but when he checked her lines in Google he couldn't find anything she would have copied. She was just that good.

Hod wanted to start a conversation with her. He wanted badly to get to know her, know what she was like as a person, and not just as an amazing poet. He wanted to perhaps hear her read the lines herself. Maybe if she-

And Hod couldn't ask for help. David was his best friend, and David definitely had a way with girls, but David was well... David. That kind of stuff came easy to him. People didn't react to Hod the same way, and that was alright, but it also meant that whatever kind of advice David could offer Hod probably wouldn't be very helpful. And Hod wanted to keep Elizabethfair a secret.

Hod tried borrowing the words at first: "What is your substance, whereof are you made, That millions of strange shadows on you tend?"

Elizabethfair: The Bard might use the words that he hath penned, and yet those words reputed sound unmended, broken, like a line out of tune.

And Hod was Williamthebard: Shadows favor me, not lines. I feel them cool like shapes, and the substance they create loosens the heat of day.

Elizabethfair: ...

Williamthebard: What is your favorite line?

Elizabethfair: Sonnet 52

Williamthebard: Blessed are you whose worthiness gives scope/ Being had to triumph, being lacked, to hope

Elizabethfair: yeah

Williamthebard: Interesting choice.

Elizabethfair: It's sort of a personal motto

Williamthebard: Why's that?

Elizabethfair: because I want to show people what I'm capable of. So many people think that I'm not more than a pretty face.

Williamthebard: I wouldn't know, lol.

Elizabethfair: So you're not a teacher then? Their's a rumor that the Bard is actually a teacher just being creepy by pretending to be a student.

Williamthebard: What do you think?

Elizabethfair: I think you're a student. Otherwise someone would have caught you already.

Williamthebard: let's pretend we're from different schools. We might have met in real life, but we are shadows to each other here. We don't exist except for the words on the screen.

Elizabethfair: Why?

Williamthebard: Because sometimes not seeing a face is the kindest judgement. Because sometimes names can hide the truth as much as reveal it. Names and roses, you know. "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and Oh! how much more doth beauty beauteous seem By that sweet ornament which truth doth give! The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem for that sweet odour which doth in it live.

Elizabethfair: So you want to sniff me?

Williamthebard: No, I'm just saying I want to get to know you better. If I know your name, then I think I know you, and I don't. Your name just tells me what everybody knows: height, weight, color, family, car. Without your name, I can ask you why you wrote that the sky was like threads of gold.

Elizabethfair: You really don't know who I am?

Williamthebard: Is that so surprising? Nobody knows who I am. They probably think I'm Mr. Turkley.

Elizabethfair: I always kind of assumed, you know, that even though they say we're not supposed to share any personal information, people would do it anyway.

Williamthebard: Sometimes the greatest treasures are the ones we keep to ourselves.

Elizabeth: You are weird and kind of creepy, lol.

Williamthebard: Sorry.

Elizabethfair: No, I'm okay with it.

That was how it started. The first awkward conversation blossomed into hours on the screen, messaging, waiting impatiently for the response. Hod wrote reams of poetry to her, and burned them all before sending a single one. Instead, he relied on the words of Shakespeare, of Lord Byron and Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Dickinson. E E Cummings, Sylvia Plath, Pablo Neruda, Langston Hughes- they all lent their words. He couldn't seem to give her his own. His own poetry was never good enough, somehow.

Every day dragged by that he couldn't write to her. Every night his brain burned in exultation to listen as her words were read dryly by his computer. He used headphones, kept his conversations private. She was his secret, a treasure he shared with nobody, not even David.

And then she had to ruin it all, when she started asking who he was.