If I Could Say a Single Thing to Any Person of My Choosing, What Would It Be?
by Clementine Darcy

This is a difficult one, Ms H!

There are all the obvious ones:

To Sam: Stop texting me. Stop putting notes in my locker. You’re creepy, and I don’t want to go out with you. And you know what? I have decided it is odd that all your friends and your girlfriend are Grade 9s. Is it because the Grade 10s know you’re a plonker? Or because you like having a tribe of little minions to boss around? Well, you’re not the boss of me, so . . . shoo.

To Chelsea-Grace and Cleo: It wasn’t my fault. I wish you’d believe me.

To Fergus: I’m sorry I made you sad. Come back to us.

To Sophie: You know, you don’t need to be perfect all the time. Let your hair down sometime.

Every moment of every hour of every day, there is something that is the most important thing to me right now. And often that something is one of the items on my list above.

But I think that in this exact moment, the thing I most want to say to one person of my choosing is: What do those words mean? The ones you just this very minute wrote down in your notebook? The ones that make my stomach scrunch, because I’m not sure I like what I think they mean?

I want to say it to Fred. But I shouldn’t have spied, from my desk, on his private writings. So I want to say it, but I can’t.