It all started in science class. It really wasn’t a very interesting class to begin with—Mr. Hall was currently stressing the subject of photosynthesis, which she loathed—but science was never her favorite class anyway. It wasn’t helpful that it was her very last period of the day, her energy was drained, Mr. Hall ridiculously sounded a lot like Ben Stein, or that she kept falling asleep in class, and so, of course, Mr. Hall hated her.
This, in her righteous opinion, was a completely misguided hatred. It wasn’t as though she was a bad student—in fact, that assumption would be an entirely wrong one, as she had been on the honor roll since sixth grade. She just wasn’t good at (or particularly interested by) science.
“And when the male organ of the plant decides to pollinate, can anyone tell me what happens? Anyone? Anyone? No?” Cue sigh, “Alright. The female organ…” Blah, blah, blah, she thought dryly.
Groaning lowly, she laid her head down at her desk, only for a flash of silver light to catch her eye on the desk. She glanced down, squinting as she made out the chicken-scratch writing scrawled into the desk.
He’ll end the class with a pollination joke. Watch out, it read. She had no idea what that was supposed to mean, but sure enough, just as the clock was about to strike three, Mr. Hall raised his voice slightly, clearing his throat. “What did the bee say to the flower?” A few students raised their heads with interest, but for the most part, they all just blinked blankly at him.
A little less enthusiastically, he finished, “What time do you open?” Ew, she thought, inappropriate. A snicker or two sounded from the back of the room, but for the most part, the joke wasn’t very well received. Mr. Hall sighed heavily, defeated, waving the class away just as the clock hit three. She gathered her things, dismissing the note written on her desk.
And she didn’t give it another thought until the next day, when she sat down in her chair to find the words, Halfway through the period, he will throw a pop quiz. Start studying.
She paused for a moment, almost confused by the words; though she was sure she was reading it clearly. Just as she was about to disregard it, she realized she didn’t have anything to lose by cracking open her binder. Mr. Hall already had lost the class’s interest, and no doubt she would follow in suit, so she opened her notebook, looking over her carefully printed notes—while she hated the class, power-points and book work saved her grade.
And sure enough, about half an hour later, Mr. Hall announced the class to clear their desks for a pop quiz. The class emitted a group groan, but she sat up straight, happy to pull out a pencil, her mind fresh with information.
She was the first to finish her test.
As the bell struck three, and as she was putting her books away, the words caught her eye again. Without thinking, or really sure as to what to write, she picked up her pencil. She wasn’t one for defacing school property, but this desk was already “vandalized” and she technically hadn’t been the first to do it, and she believed a thanks was in order. She printed Thank you in her block, type-writer style writing below the warning.
The next day at class, the words Ah, so you’re a girl were scrawled across the desk. She frowned down at the words, and then glanced up at Mr. Hall, who was drawling something about yesterday’s pop quiz.
What makes you think that? She wrote back, feeling a little uncomfortable about writing notes to a complete stranger on a desk. They probably had this class a period before she did, because before sixth period, Mr. Hall taught Chemistry, which had nothing to do with pollination or photosynthesis.
She spent the rest of the period staring down at the words she had written in counter, and at the loopy writing, whose owner had guessed her gender simply by her handwriting. Should she be freaked out? Yes, she probably should, and yet she didn’t. Still, when the bell rung three, she hadn’t erased her reply.
The next day, she found herself actually looking forward to science, but only, she reminded herself, because her curiosity was killing her. She’d sat through lunch in a daze, barely listening as her best friend and class president, babbled on about the Winter Ball and not having enough money for proper decorations.
Come seventh period, she slipped into her seat, eyes immediately sliding down to desk. In response, all that it said was: Your handwriting. It’s too neat to be any guy’s.
She found herself frowning again. Without a second thought, she picked up her pencil and wrote back: By that logic, I have to assume you’re male.
She found herself highly annoyed at the fact that she couldn’t immediately read his—she was sure it was a male—reply. She had to respond right away, but he wouldn’t see it until sixth period, and she would have to wait until seventh, and then waiting it out until the very next day.
You’d be right then, she read the next day. And I have to assume you’re very smart, since you not only write fancy, you talk fancy too.
She first considered whether to take that as an insult or a compliment, deciding to take it as the latter. I can’t be very smart if I’m defacing school property like this, she wrote, a little quicker than before.
That’s true. Oh hey, Mr. Hall has a cold today. He sneezes every other minute, so be prepared to duck out of his line of fire, he noted on the desk. A minute later, Mr. Hall developed a fit of sneezing.
For two weeks, this continued. She found herself being more and more excited for science every day, a class she once hated with every fiber in her body. The Winter Ball was drawing closer and closer, her best friend already pestering her about a date. She’d been asked already, by some brainless jock (not that she liked to stereotype) that couldn’t hold a conversation, but she’d turned him down. He wasn’t really that good looking, and I could do better, she’d explained to her friends.
But her notes with the mysterious boy in the period before her always seemed to be on her mind, with his warnings of pop quizzes and bad jokes, and his good-natured attitude toward just about everything. She realized the students in the Chemistry class who shared their desk must be completely confused (or amused) out of their minds.
One day, she decided to write: Going to the Winter Ball?
He didn’t reply the next day, or the day after. At first, she assumed him sick, but as another day ticked by, she grew nervous. He was either quite sick or ditching a lot, or he purposefully wasn’t responding.
On the third day, she was just angry. Angry at herself for being so upset, for he very well might just be ill, but more so, she was angry at him. She checked the desk everyday, a smile tugging at her lips every now and then when she stumbled across a joke he’d made, or read over a sentence that could be completely misinterpreted—but still there was no reply.
Was she obsessing? Yes, she was. She definitely was, but she couldn’t stop.
Halfway through the period that third day, she (and the rest of the class) glanced up from their notes to the classroom door swinging open. Standing in it was a very cute boy, looking vaguely confused as his eyes scanned the classroom. Then they, finally, and very surely, landed on her.
Well, first her desk, then her. A smile lit up on his face, and she began to realize who this was.
She first noticed he looked somewhat familiar, but it was something she couldn't quite place. It something in his good-natured smile, the boyish emerald eyes, and the slight swish in his flame red hair that had dawned recognition.
He was the boy in her seat the period before.
She wouldn’t be able to explain why she knew, but she didn’t doubt her guess.
“Mr. Bookman!” A voice shouted from behind him; he was still smiling at her, to which she found herself smiling back. She noticed the principal; dressed primly as always, appear behind him. “I’m so sorry Mr. Bookman interrupted your lesson, Mr. Hall; he was supposed to be following me to the office,” the principal said, her voice harsh as she sent her smoldering gazes in his direction.
“It’s no problem at all,” Mr. Hall replied briskly.
“Good. Now, Mr. Bookman, if it’s not too much of a burden, will you come with me this time?”
“Yes ma’am, I will. If you'll just allow me to get my binder; I left it here last period,” he replied cheerily, his voice sounding exactly how she’d pictured it. Confirming her suspicions, he sauntered over to her desk, the entire class’s eyes on him, and crouched down to grab the binder that lay next to her feet. As he did so, he met her auburn eyes, sharing a secret smile.
Extravagantly, he placed a hand on the desk, using the other to wipe his brow as if the previous action had completely exerted him. He sent her one last smile, lifted his hand off the desk, and followed the principal out the room without looking back.
That was odd, she thought, though she still felt giddy. She knew who he was! Well, she knew his last name. All she’d need now was last year’s yearbook…
This was the moment when she noticed he’d left something on the desk, a white slip of paper, folded several times. Making sure Mr. Hall had returned to the lecture, she unfolded the paper.
Hi, sorry it took me so long. I was just figuring out how I should reply to your question, actually, and before I knew it, three days had flown by. My name is something I feel I should tell you in person, though after this, I guess you’ll already know my last name. Knowing you though, you’ll want to run home and scan the yearbooks. Well, don’t. I transferred here this year, so that’d be pointless. You’d probably end up looking at what you thought was me, but is actually that creepy guy in the back of the class who secretly plots world domination. Wouldn’t want that.
Anyway, sorry if I embarrassed you any, but I really couldn’t take it anymore. I had to see what you looked like. I don’t know right now, but I’m sure you’re gorgeous. I hope you haven’t got a date to the Winter Ball yet, because I was sort of hoping to reply to your question now:
Only if you’ll go with me.
(Meet me after school today in the parking lot? I’ll be the idiot standing on his truck, waving his hands frantically. There should only be one. Btw, I'm not really a trouble maker. I'll explain the whole principal thing later, hopefully.)
See you later?:)
And that was it. No first name, nothing revealing about him except that he liked to do things in style, owned a truck, and had asked her to the Winter Ball. It didn't matter, though. That was really all she’d needed.
He was there.
He was there! Relief shook her body as she took a thankful breath.
Music was blasting from his truck so loudly it could be heard from inside the building. Ironically, the song was one of her guilty pleasures; Rising Sun by DBSK, whose overplay on the radio surprisingly hadn’t made her sick of it. And, just like he promised, his hands were waving wildly in an oddly agreeable rhythm to the song.
A few students had stopped to stare, others to laugh. Walking next to her, her best friend wrinkled her nose as she followed her gaze. “What is that kid doing?” She exclaimed, incredulous. “What a weirdo.”
She barely spared her best friend a glance. “Keeping a promise,” she murmured, already picking up her speed towards his truck. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Mr. Hall rolling his eyes from his classroom window.
Mr. Bookman—she felt weird calling him that, but he was less anonymous now that he had a last name, so she felt she had to cling to that sole piece of information—broke out into an infectious grin as he saw her approaching his truck.
He stopped his arm-flailing movements to reach out to pull her up to the truck with him. Her face flushed at the hand-to-hand contact. “Hi,” he greeted as his warm emerald eyes scanned her face.
“Hi back,” she breathed, biting her lip.
“Mr. Hall disapproves of my dancing,” he whispered conspiratorially, grin growing. Together, they glanced over at the frowning teacher still glaring through the window and both broke out into laughter.
“Just wait until he sees the desk,” she whispered back.
Abruptly, he looked down with a slight blush. Following his gaze, she realized they were still holding hands—and yet, neither moved.
“Ah, so I guess this is a ‘yes’ to my question?” He asked, grinning.
Resisting the urge to scream an obvious duh, she broke eye contact and looked up towards the sky with a shrug. “I don’t know,” she droned, relishing in how childish he made her feel. She was too used to being around uptight, rule-conscientious people; he had no idea what a breath of fresh air he was. “Maybe...”
He shook his boyish bang out of his eyes so she could see the quirked eyebrow. His tone was anything but doubtful. “Oh?”
She nodded, biting down on her laughter. “Well, on two conditions do I say yes and go to the dance with you.”
Amused, he rolled his eyes good-naturedly. “Name them.”
“Number one: what did you do to get on the principal’s bad side? Not like it’s very hard, but…” She trailed off, glancing at him skeptically.
He let out a bark of laughter and shook his hair out of his face again. She couldn’t believe how adorable she found that. He let out a loud exhale and shook out his feet, as if loosening himself up for a big speech.
“Bear with me,” he murmured quickly. “Okay, so seventh period I have Ms. Cloud; who is quite possibly as boring as Mr. Hall. Only she bores even herself, so she doesn’t bother with the bad jokes. Anyway, I sit a few rows behind Daisya Barry—the kid who always wears that same weird sweatshirt—and I happened to notice that today, his hood was down.
“Excuse my lack of compassion towards the environment, please, but I had a lot of unused paper in my binder and too much pent up anxiety about trying to figure out a really kick-ass way to get my letter to you—so I started playing basketball.”
He took a breath, preparing to continue, but she quickly cut him off. “Basketball?”
He grinned. “Like I said: bear with me. So, I’m rolling up pieces of paper and shooting those over some kids’ heads, into Daisya’s sweatshirt hood—see, playing basketball—when, lo-and-behold, in walks the principal. It was like a dozen light bulbs went off in my head.”
She found that her expression had shifted into something half-shocked, half in awe. “So she caught you?”
“Better,” he assured her. “I threw one at her head.”
Her jaw dropped. “On purpose?” She exclaimed, unable to fathom purposefully getting oneself into trouble. Over her, no less.
He laughed. “Yes, on purpose. So the old bat whips around with the angriest look I’ve ever seen. Some kids even had to look away; but Daisya—ah, good ol’ Daisy—pulls up his hood to hide his grin…or so I assume, because it was very funny. Anyway, that’s when he realized why all the kids had been snickering all period, because all of the paper balls come spilling out.
“Like a true gentleman, I turn myself in, hands behind my back.”
She laughed at the image he painted, performing a walk of shame with invisible hand-cuffs. “Then what?” She asked, unsuccessfully hiding the eagerness in her tone.
“Once we were towards the science hall, I made my getaway. I’ve got quite a few years on her, obviously, which gave me a great advantage; at least a good few minutes. Enough time to make an excuse to get my quote-unquote forgotten binder,” he finished, smirking.
She shook her head, almost unable to believe it. “You…but…getting into needless trouble for someone you’d never met? Really? What if I ended up being, well, totally gross-looking?”
“Well, for starts, you didn’t,” he said coolly, “and anyway, if I didn’t, I could have lost the opportunity and would have to spend the rest of my life muttering what if’s under my breath.”
He had a point. “Now, what was condition number two?”
She noticed the parking lot was almost empty now (even her best friend had split) and they were still standing on his truck with The DBSK album blasting on the stereo. With a fleeting glance towards her seventh period window, she saw Mr. Hall was out of sight.
She took a steadying breath. “What is your first name?”
He laughed as he realized that he still hadn’t told her—although to be fair, he didn’t know hers either. “My name is—”
Just as his lips were pursed to say it, Mr. Hall stormed out of the front entrance, angrily pointing at the two. “I know it was you!” He yelled. It was the first time either of them heard his voice be anything but stoic. “I’ll have you two suspended for this! I just got new desks, damnit!”
