Page 19 of Be Mine

It's homemade. Pink construction paper folded in half, buttons in various sizes glued to the paper make a heart, andunderneath in the same handwriting it says:You Have My Heart.

“Aww,” Tess coos beside me, her hands folded dramatically over her heart.

Flipping the card open, there’s a poem inside:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

Sugar is sweet,

And so are you.

Your Secret Admirer

Xo

My heart drops. No name.

“Oh my God. That’s so sweet.”

“Yeah, I wonder who sent it?” I open my locker and secure it inside, pulling my bag out Tess and I head to the lunchroom.

“Hey, Frankie, heard you got a secret admirer.” Connor hollers as soon as we sit down, and all eyes flick my way.

“Shut up, Connor.” I roll my eyes. I don’t get why Tess likes him. He’s loud and annoying, and if he wasn’t a jock, he wouldn’t be popular. Hockey players walk around here like they’re untouchable. I guess it doesn’t help everyone from the students to the teachers treat them as such.

I open my lunch bag and pull out my sandwich and juice box, but he crouches between Tess and I, slinging his arms around our shoulders. “What if I told you I know who wants to be your valentine?” He bites his cheek to hold back a laugh.

“I’d tell you to fuck off.”

“Give me a place and time.” He winks.

I shove him in the chest, nearly knocking him on his ass. “Seriously Connor, go back to your table with the rest of the half-brained jock straps.”

He rises and stretches for show, sauntering back to the table like the jerk he is, before turning and looking at me. “Suit yourself. Guess you don’t care it was James who sent you the card. Watched him sneak out of second period to tape it to your locker.” Him and his friends snicker as he sits down, fully satisfied with themselves.

The lunchroom breaks out in hysterics, some of the girl’s yell ‘eeewww’. My eyes instantly find James, tucked into the corner of the room at a table by himself. He doesn’t even look up at me or acknowledge he did it. He keeps his face buried in his book, as if he’s oblivious to all the commotion around him, but his face flushes a shade of pink that rivals the card he sent me.

My heart cinches. He doesn’t deserve to be treated this way. And a part of me wants to walk over to him, to sit down next to him and say hi, thank him for the card and all the time he put into it, but I’m a chicken shit.

I watch him for a while, hoping he will at least look up at me, so I can offer him a weak smile, one that says I’m sorry that everyone at this school is an asshole, but he sits there, motionless, eyes cast down, pretending to read. But I know he’s not, ‘cause for the entire duration of lunch, he doesn’t flip a page.

Oh my God. “This is so fucked up,” I whisper. Mostly to myself. I plop down on the couch and stare off, not really looking at anything as gears grind in my brain, trying to process everything. I want to cry for the boy he was, the boy who never did anything to anyone but suffered the wrath of many. That day Connor and his friends followed Noah home, they beat the shit out of him on his lawn. The next morning he walked into school with a fat lip and a limp in his step.

I always tried to be nice to him after that, without drawing too much attention to myself, of course. Hanging outwith losers was social suicide, and at the time, I was still trying to conform to the norm.

Is this what turned him into the monster he is today? I felt some kind of recognition yesterday when I was looking at him in the lunchroom, but this? I swallow and look up at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice low and cold, turning to ice again, as he walks back to the room to return the picture.

I rise from the couch and chase after him down the hall. “It matters, Noah. We’ve worked at the same place for years and not once was it mentioned.”

“What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, remember me? I’m the kid everyone used to beat the crap out of for fun?’”

“Yeah, something like that. Instead, you ignored me. I thought you hated me.”

He spins on the spot. “I’ve never hated you.” And he looks angry, like he’s coming undone. One thread pull away from completely unraveling.

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