"Hey Lilly!" Donald lifted a small Polaroid picture from the box lying on her bed and was grinning at it. It was two weeks before spring break, and Lilly was sorting through the boxes under her bed and in her wardrobe, boxes full of random stuff she had never bothered to actually unpack since the beginning of the year. Donald himself was bored, as there were no Treble rehearsals for three days due to Koli and Greg both being ill, and he had decided to take advantage of Lilly's roommate being absent.
"What?" Lilly murmured as she emerged from the bathroom and her eyes fell on what was in Donald's hand. "That better not be..."
"It's adorable!" Donald grinned as he turned the picture around so she could see. Seven-year-old Lilly dressed up as a poisonous caterpillar, complete with face paint and everything, really was adorable.
"It's embarrassing!" Lilly bounded over and snatched it from him.
"Since when did you get embarrassed about stuff like that?" Donald raised his eyebrows.
"I went to school like that." Lilly just looked at him.
"I'm impressed." Donald grinned, pulling the box closer and sifting through a few more things.
"I used to keep a colony of caterpillars in a box." Lilly stared at the photograph, then saw the one that Donald had just pulled out. "No! Not that one!" Donald leapt up from the bed before she could snatch it away.
"But it's cute!" he protested.
"It's me with my hair covered in bees, Donny!"
"Don't call me Donny!"
"Donny, then give the picture back!"
Sighing in defeat, Donald slowly handed the picture to Lilly, his smirk still decorating his face.
"We should have looked through this box earlier in the year, Lils." He grinned, moving back as Lilly pulled out some old CDs and sorted through them.
"I was doing fine without you." Lilly grumbled in a voice that would be inaudible to anyone else.
"But you're doing even better with me!" Donald grinned.
"Liar."
"You know it's true."
"I will burn your hair gel."
Donald hastily shut up, silenced by that threat, but when Lilly glanced up she could see he was biting back a grin. Rolling her eyes, she picked up another pile of Polaroid pictures and sorted through them. Pausing at one of them, a smile flittered across her face. "If you're so interested, Donny, come and look at this one."
Donald raised his eyebrows at the despised nickname, but came over and looked over Lilly's shoulder.
"Don't tell me; that's you." He grinned, pointing to the girl hanging upside down from the tree branch while the other boy and girl smiled at the camera like little angels.
"How did you know?" Lilly giggled quietly.
"Cause I know you, Silly Lilly." Donald retorted. "Who're the others?"
"That's my brother, Billy." Lilly pointed to the boy. "And that's our cousin Layla. Our other cousin- Layla's sister- is the one taking the picture."
"Billy and Lilly. I like it." Donald chuckled and Lilly roled her eyes.
"Mom thought it would be funny." She shrugged. "He's William, but we've always called him Billy."
"Older than you?" Donald glanced at the two siblings in the picture, matching up the similar features between them.
"By one year, but he's a head taller than me. He used to pour syrup onto roses in the garden to help them grow."
Donald looked at her, trying to figure out if she was being serious, which was always hard to tell at the best of times.
"Maple or golden syrup?" he asked instead. Lilly paused for a moment or two.
"I think it was maple." She frowned, and sat down on her bed, leaning against the wall and reaching for her phone. "I'll text him to make sure."
Donald picked up the box of clutter and moved it onto the floor before reclining next to Lilly and flipping through the rest of the photos, chuckling from time to time at how Lilly's eccentric nature had certainly not been a recent thing. Suddenly, Lilly poked his cheek, and he glanced at her.
"Yeah?" he knew full well that that poke was her way of saying 'oi, look at me.'
"You never mention your family, Donny." She pondered.
"Well for a start, none of them call me that!" Donald groaned.
"How could they not?!" Lilly's wide eyes widened even more.
"Cause we all hate nicknames!" Donald chuckled. He pulled his own phone out of his pocket and flipped to the pictures. After scrolling through a few, he stopped, flipped the phone round and showed Lilly the selfie of four boys all with brown eyes and curly brown hair.
"He's wearing your Treblemaker jacket!" Lilly pointed to the youngest boy who was grinning next to Donald in the picture.
"He loves it!" Donald grinned. "That's my younger brother David, then the other two are Michael and Daniel."
"Older?" Lilly looked from one boy's face to the other, noting that they were twins, albeit non-identical.
"Older than me by three years; David is two years younger." Donald replied as Lilly took the phone and scrutinised his brothers' faces.
"You're the odd one out, like a cygnet in a duck's nest." She commented. She was right, not only was Donald the only one with glasses, but his relaxed and colourful style of clothes was also a pole apart from his smarter brothers.
"Hmmm that's an understatement." Donald shrugged "Michael works for the news, Daniel's a high school teacher, David wants to be a doctor, and then there's me." Lilly leant her head back as she thought.
"I want to use music in therapy, use music to help people." She murmured thoughtfully. Suddenly she sat up, a flush colouring her cheeks. She hadn't meant to say that out loud. She had never actually admitted her ambitions to anyone. But Donald just tilted his head and smiled.
"That's adorable."
Lilly didn't say anything, but gave him a weary glance from under her eyelashes.
"What's up?" Donald was confused at her sudden silence.
"You...don't think that that's...odd?"
"Why would I? You want to use music to help people; Lils, that's an amazing thing to do!" Donald was still bewildered. Lilly gave a half shrug.
"Well...my parents want me to go into medicine, and even Billy said it was weird." She admitted.
"He's wrong, you know. It's not weird at all. And the parents thing? Snap." Donald chuckled. Lilly looked at him properly and asked,
"What, your parents want you to study medicine as well?"
"They don't approve of what I want to do! They hold me up against my brothers and say I should follow their example, but I don't want to!" Donald had begun to pull on the corner of his jacket, a sign that Lilly knew meant he was bordering on angry.
"Following your brothers won't make you who you really are." Lilly watched his hands fidget. "What do you want to do, anyway?" Donald paused for a moment or two before springing to his feet with a frustrated sound and pacing back and forth as it came spilling out.
"Lilly, I want to make music!" he exclaimed "I want to go on beatboxing and rapping and sing and making music, but as well as that, I...I want to teach it! I want to go to- to elementary schools, maybe even kindergarten, and show kids how to love music; show them it's not just something that goes in one ear and out the other, but something to love and learn!" he broke off and looked back over at Lilly, his familiar grin replacing his sudden sincerness. "I sound like a complete nerd, don't I?" he laughed.
"I think you sound like the starving woodpecker in a rose bush." Lilly murmured.
"What does that mean?" Normally Donald didn't question her strange expressions, but this time he was curious.
"Amazingly and wonderfully honest." Lilly replied. Then she nearly smiled. "I think you'd be a good teacher, Donny."
"Lilly! Don't call me-"
Donald was interrupted as the door swung open and Maisie, Lilly's roommate, bustled in, finishing a call.
"Hey Lilly!" she beamed "I got take-aways if you want some!" she did a slight double take at seeing Donald, who shot her a charming smile before turnig back to Lilly.
"I'll see you sometime tomorrow." He grinned before vanishing out of the door.
"Um, Lilly..." Maisie was looking around "Why are there pictures all over the floor."
"Long story." Lilly giggled, but the other girl didn't hear her. Suddenly looking at her phone again, Lilly checked her messages and sent a quick text to Donald consisting of four words.
It was maple syrup.