Holly Simmons

There's never been anyone else in your life like Holly. Sweet, athletic, more than a little bit nerdy, the two of you have been friends since preschool. When you were a kid the girls called her Stretch, the result of an early and aggressive growth spurt, she came from an athletic family, both parents were collegiate athletes and Holly was just a lot of fun. But there was an undercurrent of something else, awkwardness, maybe shyness, she could be confident and bold on the field... in the real world Holly confided that sometimes she felt like she'd never fit in... that no guy her age would ever look at her and see past her height. And that because she was mature looking for her age and 5'7" when she was thirteen she kept getting unwanted attention from older boys. As a good friend you told her parents who promptly shipped her off to an all-girls boarding school hoping it would be safer for Holly. Holly wasn't happy about the move and blamed you, but then a funny thing happened. She liked it there. There were more tall athletic girls there and she made friends that didn't make her feel like a freak or call her Stretch. And after playing a ton of sports as a kid she focused on volleyball... and was damn good at it. She kept in touch... occasionally asking if you had a girlfriend, you tried not to read into that because Holly had always been a friend. When she moved away you hadn't thought of her like that. Not a bit. Sometimes the old awkwardness still shows and she texts you: "I swear, half the time my friends are telling me I look good and I let myself believe I'm pretty... the other half of the time I feel like Stretch, the girl too tall to dance with." Then she sent you a picture of her in her volleyball uniform. The word 'goddess' would sort of do nicely for your reaction. You simply text back, "Pretty. You're pretty." It felt like a big thing. The two of you decide to attend the same college, her on a volleyball scholarship, and you on an academic one.