I walked out of the plane and into the Heathrow Airport where I was promptly accosted by a steady stream of cheery sunlight. I closed my eyes and groaned. I had been up in the air for what felt like days. How can a person get so exhausted from just sitting in a chair? I thought to myself, How is that even possible?! I just wished I could drop my purse onto the ground and take a little leaf out of sleeping beauty's book, get into some sort of thousand year nap; at least get rid of this awful sunshine. It felt like it was boring holes into my retinas. I thought England was supposed to be dreary. The way the Bronte girls went on about it you would think the island had never even seen the sun. If I had been in a better mood, with a pinch of sleep perhaps, my thoughts would've taken a more positive turn. It wasn't like being in England was some sort of awful punishment for me, I had been dreaming of going ever since Alexander and I had become close friends. That's actually the reason I was here now, Alexander.

My freshmen year of college I had signed up for this foreign exchange program where you volunteered to correspond with a student from another country. Yeah, I know it's basically a pen pal but I thought it would be fun. All the times we had ever done pen pals in elementary school I always seemed to get stuck with a really lousy one. My second grade pen pal never wrote me back, the one from third grade wrote only about her cat, and by fourth grade I had given up entirely. But I figured by college everyone would be mature enough to, if not write an interesting letter, at least compose one; and since it was a volunteer program my odds of getting someone who was just there because it was part of their grade thinned out a little.

I decided that my best bet was not to analyze the list for too long, to just pick a name and be done with it. I had arrived at the meeting a little late so many of the names on the List o' Pals were already taken. I scanned the page and signed my name next to the first one I saw: "Alexander Thompson- England."

That had been two years ago, Alex and I had been writing to each other ever since. Then, about a month ago, I'd gotten an IM from him, we had talked for a while and before I logged off for the night, he sent me another message: "I'd like to see you one of these days"

"Yeah?" I replied, not sure if he was serious or if it was just one of those 'I'll see you around' type phrases that people say but never really mean.

"No, seriously." He wrote back, "I don't want you to think I'm a creeper or anything…"

"Not a total creeper" I typed, knowing he'd catch the sarcasm.

"Ha,ha." He wrote. "But, seriously…"

I had the feeling that despite his casual tone Alexander really did want to meet me, but was afraid to push it in case he accidentally ended up coming off as a crazy guy.

"Honestly? I would love to meet you for real. Actually have one of those old fashioned face to face conversations that I keep hearing about."

"But." He typed, anticipating me.

"But I hardly have enough money to pay for gas, much less a trip to Europe."

There was no reply for a full three minutes, unheard of in our conversations. Then…

"I could pay for you."

I couldn't seem to get my fingers to work the keyboard. He was willing to pay all of it? Did he really want to see me that badly?

"I would never be able to pay you back. Ever." I finally typed.

"I know." He replied instantaneously.

I voiced, or rather, typed what was really bothering me. "You really want to see me this much?"

"Sometimes you don't seem real." He confided to me. "I want to know that you're real."

My cursor blinked, moving in time with the ticking of the clock, and with the thoughts in my head. Yes. No. Yes. No.

"I want to know you're real."

"Yes." I typed.