Charity Elizabeth Connors; read the name plate on Charity’s deep cheery wood jewelry box. Running her hand over the inscription she opened the box and placed the gold butterfly bracelet inside the she closed the box and headed over to her bed with her can of diet coke in one hand and a newly received letter in the other.

Sitting on the bed Charity opened the letter carefully and unfolded the tri fold and got comfortable before starting to read it.

Hey Eli,

Sorry I haven’t written in a while but things have been busy recently, I have to run away and hide to find time to write you nowadays. Although it's been crazy, things have been going great. Me and my brothers are going to get to go across the world soon. It should be amazing. How's your father doing? How's Emilee? How's the new school working out for her? And how's Benjamin doing with the new math tutor? I have a brother his age, and he would hate that. By the way, you wrote in your last letter that you had a big test in your psychology class, how did it go? Did you pass it? Of course, I already know the answer to that. You are after all the smartest girl i know, well sort of, I guess you can say your the smartest girl that I write to because we've technically never meet before, but that's not the point.

Wow, only a paragraph into my letter and I am already rambling, it must be a new record. Anyways, to answer you question from your last letter. No, I don't think I will be starting college anytime soon. My career is just now taking off and I don’t think it would be wise for me to stop my career to start school up. After all, not all of us can be like you and take four or five classes every semester.

Anyway, Nick is calling me, he wants me to show me something on the guitar. I hope you're well, say hello to Ben and Em for me!

Yours, Paul

Charity smiled down at the paper in front of her. It wasn't the first time that she had gotten a letter from Paul in fact it was probably the two hundredth letter or so. Charity and Paul had been writing back and forth since Charity was in third grade and her teacher made her, along with the rest of the class choose a pen pal from a different state. Charity; being from California, choose to write to someone who lived in New Jersey, and that someone ended up being Paul. Now nearly eleven years later they were still writing letters back and forth. Though Charity now lived with her father in London, England and Paul was constantly moving around the USA they kept a close relationship with at least one letter a week.

Even though they had been writing for a while, Charity and Paul still had a lot to talk about. He called her 'Eli' because she had never told him her real name. It was because she didn’t want him to like her only because she was famous. Or rather, her MOTHER was famous. See, Charity’s mom was a famous actress, who had died. It was a robbery gone bad. She didn’t like to talk about it,

She just told Paul that her mom had passed.

Though it had been nearly five years since her mom had died, it still hurt to talk about her. Something about the way she died made it so hard to cope with. Not to mention the fact that she had to deal with seeing her mother everyday, not only in her own face in the mirror but in her little sisters and little brothers faces as well.

So when she wrote to Paul it was her escape, the escape she searched for trying to get away from herself.

That's what she loved about him. If she was ever upset, mad, or anything, he was there for her. By letter, of course.

In fact, Paul had been there when her mom died. It was when they were both in 5th grade.

She was crying when she wrote the letter, but after reading his response, it seemed so much better.

And that is what most of Charity's life was like. When she got to the point when she just couldn't handle it anymore she would pour her heart out on paper just like a diary but instead of letting it just sit on the paper, there would be a supportive and thoughtful response that would always help Charity feel better no matter what the situation.

Walking over to her computer she moved the mouse and checked the time on the clock. It was four thirty that meant she had time to write back to Paul before her evening class at six.

So picking up her favorite heart printed stationary Charity sat down and began to write.