I scanned the hallway for Bethany. I didn’t know her new schedule for the semester, but I remembered her telling me she was going to have a pretty full load of AP classes. If she was headed for Physics or Calculus, she’d be on the other side of campus. I didn’t have any math or science classes left that I had to take to graduate and had no intention of entering those halls again. Too many bad memories, and those teachers were not my friends.
I took heavy steps through the hallway to American Government class, the silence from her weighing me down. Why was she ignoring me? Had I done something wrong?
I sat down at an empty desk for second period and plopped my backpack at my feet. Five minutes later I had a new textbook to cram in there with the other one. When I unzipped my bag, I caught a glimpse of a piece of yellowed note paper before it slipped down into the depths of my pack. Certain I’d put the note in my pocket, I gave it a pat to hear the familiar crunch of folded paper. So, what was that in my bag? Had there been a second page, and I missed it?
I yanked out the Government book and my English textbook, plopping them both on my desk. Then I dug around at the bottom of my backpack for the note. I regretted now not taking the time over Winter Break to clean the bag out like my mom had told me to. So many candy wrappers, crumpled up worksheets, broken pencils and inkless pens lined the bottom of my black backpack that it would be amazing if I found it at all. I thought that because the note was yellow, it might stand out, but a lot of Starburst wrappers are yellow too, and I have a thing for that candy. I picked through the mess as best as possible, but I never saw the elusive paper. I opened my English textbook on my desk and rifled through the pages, and that forced the yellow note to puff out at me from the pages where it had lodged itself.
“Mr. Dowd,” my government teacher, Mr. Antenore, barked at me. “This is not English class, nor is it time to organize your belongings. Kindly put your things away and open your book to the pages written on the board.”
“Yes sir,” I said, quickly palming the note and shoving everything else in the basket under my seat. Before I got called out again, I opened my text book. We were supposed to be looking at the Table of Contents page as a class, but personally I was studying another letter written on the same yellow paper in the same pretty cursive as the first one. I pinned the note to my book page with my right thumb and pinned the code key I’d created to the book with my left thumb. Glancing back and forth, I slowly made sense of it.
Choose your compliments carefully. Some words aren’t for love letters. They come across crude and terse. Some words are only for private moments when you are together. A love letter needs lovely words.
What on Earth? What did it mean? And what the heck did “crude” and “terse” mean? Who used words like that?
“Choose your words better, man,” I muttered, “so I can understand you.”
“What was that, Mr. Dowd?”
“Nothing, sir,” I said, turning the page with the letter inside and hiding my secret.
“I should hope not.”
I tried really hard to concentrate on class. It felt like the note was trying to burn through the pages of the textbook and get in front of my eyes again. I’m sure it was my imagination, but when I put my hand on the left side of the book, it felt hot instead of the way cool, glossy textbook pages are supposed to feel.
Mostly I found myself wondering what the notes were about. The guy was trying to give romantic advice to someone, but who? I kind of wished I could see the other half of this conversation. Or maybe, since I found them in English class, they were just jotted notes about something they were reading. Was that possible? I didn’t know much about literature. Was there a book about someone learning to write romantic notes? I needed to stop obsessing about it and focus on school. When class was over, I flipped back to the Table of Contents page to look at the note one more time. My cursive cheat sheet was there, but the note was gone. I reached into my back pocket. The other note was gone too.
I scrambled through my backpack again while all my classmates got up and left the room. The notes had completely disappeared. Mr. Antenore finally came up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. “You’ll be late for 3rd period if you don’t get a move on.”
I apologized, tucked my textbook against my chest, threw my backpack over my shoulder, and got out of there before I did anything else to get on my teacher’s nerves. I practically ran down the hall to Advanced Spanish class. I didn’t find another note in this class, and I thought that was funny. I half expected to find one telling me that French was a more romantic language than Spanish, since all the other notes had a weird way of correlating to my actions. Pleased to not have a scribbled note implying that I was doing something wrong, I was able to relax a little bit. I had fun going over all the words and phrases we learned in Beginning Spanish to see what we remembered. I’m actually pretty good at Spanish, compared to my other academics, and soon I was able to get the notes off my mind.
Bethany, however, stayed ever present in my thoughts. The day dwindled on with no word from her. Finally, fourth period, one of my R.O.T.C. electives, let out for lunch. I went right to the spot where I’d seen Bethany eating lunch for three and half years, hoping I’d get to officially join her friends as her boyfriend. Only, she wasn’t there. Kat and Lissy shrugged at me and said they didn’t know where she was, but I had a feeling they were lying. They also neglected to invite me to sit down and wait for her.
I headed over to my old table with the guys who had been my buddies since grade school, almost tripping three times because I was looking around for her and not at where I was going. Finally, I saw her on the stairwell, leaving the cafeteria. For some reason she’d tied a sweatshirt around her waist, completely obscuring that delicious swish of her behind in those skinny jeans.
I stood up and called her name. Bethany turned and raised a finger at me as if to say, “Just a minute!” I texted her:
???
I watched her pull out her phone. Without looking back at me, she continued up the stairs and out of sight. Her reply:
Busy now. See you later.
She had a quality phone and didn’t use text shorthand.
But what was going on with that reply? See me when? I thought we’d planned on lunches together. We didn’t share any classes. She had debate team after school, and I had my job. Lunch was going to be our only time together. Without that, our relationship wasn’t going to be much more than texts and phone calls. That wasn’t what I wanted at all.
I sent her a half-hearted: Cant w8
After I hit send, I read back the texts of the day between her and me. What I’d texted to her did seem really lame now that I looked at it. I was as romantic as a stale fortune cookie. Maybe I shouldn’t have texted the thing about her being sexy in the jeans. It was true. She looks freakin’ amazing in those jeans. But maybe she took it the wrong way. Maybe I’d been too forward or insulted her.
I thought about that odd note I’d found during American Government. My text to Bethany had been “crude” and “terse”. The note had been telling me that.
Wait. No. Was that possible?
My heart began to race and painful chills rain down my arms and legs. Two things had me terrified:
I might lose Bethany—and—those notes weren’t coincidental. They were meant for me.
Whoever it was writing the notes had to be someone really stealthy to be able to slip them into strategic places for me to find and then return to make them disappear again. Also, it was someone with a keen interest in my love life and how I was conducting myself.
My friends at my table were busy with their phones or gaming devices; no one was really talking much except to say, “Look at this!” or the occasional cuss. I hadn’t even told any of them about Bethany yet. Even though I’m sure they would cheer me on, none of them had much experience with girls, certainly not enough to give me advice that would be of any value. None of them, as far as I knew, had ever written a love letter or even a poem (that wasn’t required for some English assignment). Plus, none of them were in my classes that morning. Who else would care about the quality of my texts to Bethany?
The whole thing had a stalker feel to it. That didn’t make a lick of sense to me, though. I’m not the kind of guy that a girl stalks. I shot up over the summer last year, so I’m not as short as I used to be. The five-year war I’d been fighting with pimples was finally coming to an end. Mom keeps saying that my shoulders are broad like my dad’s, but I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not. I’ve never thought of myself as one of the good-looking guys, and the fact that Bethany even gave me a chance seemed like a minor miracle. So, who on earth would be interested in me to the point of stalking?
Or was it one of those girls like Sadie Jones, who bought all the same clothes as Bethany and tried to imitate her all the time? Girls like her creeped me out. I could believe someone like her would send me weird notes like this to get in the middle of what was going on between Bethany and me.
I almost convinced myself of that and found myself scanning the cafeteria for Sadie to see where she was sitting when another thought hit me. Nether Sadie, nor anyone else for that matter, would have been able to read the texts I sent Bethany. I had been in the back of the room when I sent them, and odds were Bethany didn’t even have her phone out, let alone on, during class. No one could have known what I wrote, and therefore no one could tell me that I wrote the notes badly.
Everyone else in the cafeteria was busy talking, eating, and cutting up with their friends. No one was looking at me as far I could tell. But I felt like there were eyes on me. Right over my shoulder. The feeling actually made my shoulder tingle, like when someone is too close, and I shrugged uncomfortably.
I couldn’t eat. I threw my lunch away and headed to my next class where I barely concentrated on the P.E. soccer game. All I could think about were those creepy letters and my stupid cell phone, wondering if I get a new message from either of them. I checked everything when I got back to the locker room before I dressed. Not so much as an emoticon from Bethany and no new notes. No 6th period this final semester of school had seemed awesome when I made my schedule, but Bethany did have a full load, so I wouldn’t get to say “hey” or anything to her before heading out to the parking lot. All I could do was hope we’d talk on the phone later that night.