I stuff the blouse in the box and chuck it in the closet.

-4-

3 Years

12 Weeks

4 Days

For approximately two weeks I debate the validity of ruining Jack Hunter’s life slash reputation slash all future prospects with women. Or men. Just love in general, really. Guys like him shouldn’t get to be happy. He ruins a girl’s happiness at least once per hour. On Wednesday, someone left him a love letter tucked between the wipers of his black sedan. He tore it off without a second glance and ripped it in two. A distant wail could be heard as a well-dressed, beautiful blonde girl from drama club had her heart shattered and smeared all over the pavement. She’d been watching for his reaction, and now she had to watch the pieces of her carefully-crafted letterfeelings whisk across the parking lot. I chased the pieces around, grabbing as many as I could, and comforted her for three hours in a stairwell while she cried on me. I pieced the letter back together. It was full of Shakespearian references and a particularly well thought out passage in which she drew comparisons between Jack and Romeo. I informed her she was right – Romeo’s manic mental illness and pigheaded refusal to acknowledge another person’s feelings are mirrored exactly in Jack. She thanked me for that keen assessment by calling me a bitch and storming off.

Dramaclub Wailer was just the first. In two weeks of stealthily following Jack around campus, I count four love confessions, each more creative than the last. The girl who runs the morning announcements says Jack’s won a prize from the announcement committee, and to come to the PA room after school to get it. She does this every. Single. Day. And yet every day Jack never goes near the PA room – he doesn’t even walk in the same hall as it. He takes a route that leads him around it and makes him almost late for fourth period. I sneak a peek at the PA room after school for a few days; sure enough, announcement girl waits in that room for thirty minutes every day before finally locking up and going home with a defeated look on her face. A girl in art club is working on a marble statue of him (it’s definitely him, everyone knows that) complete with resplendent Greek posture and a perfectly replicated face. She’s left the crotch area blank and goes red if anyone asks her about it, but she’s diligently chipped away at it since Freshmen year, and she’s now a Senior. Another girl writes poetry and leaves it in his locker, and another girl in culinary class is drawing up plans to make him a three-tier cake for his birthday in January.

Through all this, Jack is impervious. He reportedly dropped out of art class so he wouldn’t have to see the statue in the studio. With an expression of utter boredom, he cleans out the dozens of new poem scraps that appear in his locker every day. It’s like he’s numb to whatever a girl does to get his attention. No one dares to call his name out loud in the hall. He doesn’t have any guy friends – he keeps to himself at lunch and during recess he’s in the library.

At first I stayed far away from Jack to quell the rumors, and to maybe-hopefully get Kayla to forget the fact he kissed me. But there are so many rumors now; it’s just one irritating slurry. ‘They’re going out’ is the usual one, the most out-there one is that he’s my pimp and I’m addicted to lean, and my favorite is the one where I’m his long-lost half-sister and we’re doing the incest and doing it hard. None of them are helping my relationship with Kayla, of course, but today she sat at my table and we ate together. In total silence. Which isn’t exactly a step in the right direction, but it’s a step nonetheless. She only started sitting with me after she returned Jack’s wallet to him, which I watched in on. It went much smoother than their first encounter – she handed it over and he actually nodded at her! A positive signal! I don’t see his lips form the words ‘I’m sorry’, though, so technically he still hasn’t swallowed his pride and technically I am not regrettably still at war with him.

Kayla’s smile lasted for hours after that exchange. It’s incredible how much control he has over her emotions, and how little he cares. Any guy in school would kill to make her smile like that. And his indifference towards her only makes me hate him more. No one should pour their entire heart onto another person without even an acknowledgement.

I open the door to the library. Frigid air mixed with the pulpy smell of old books greets me. The librarian eyes my purple streaks but doesn’t say anything. She’s seen worse. I meander down the aisles, looking up and down for him. Finally, I find him in the romance section, leafing through a book with a beefy guy on the cover. I feel my eyebrows shoot up.

“You could do the fair maidens of the school a favor and inform them you’re g*y,” I say.

“Didn’t you read the sign?” He asks coolly without looking up. “No harpies in the library.”

“If I was any fantasy animal I’d be a majestic unicorn, thank you, but I’ll forgive your transgressions. It takes keen eyesight to differentiate a harpy from a unicorn. Also, common sense.”

He looks up, blue eyes growing irritated. “I don’t have the patience for you right now.”

“Listen to yourself! ‘I don’t have the patience for you’,” I mock in a deep voice. “You sound like my freaking Mom! Like a parent! Like a really old, decrepit man. You’re what, seventeen? Start acting like it.”

“They’re spreading rumors about us. It’d be best for you to keep your distance.”

“Aha! I’ve already thought of that! But let’s be realistic – this is high school. No amount of space between us is gonna stop the rumors from breeding like rabbits.”

“Your Freudian choice of metaphor is getting ridiculous, now. If you want me, just come out and say it. Get it over with so I can shoot you down.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Nope. Not happening. You aren’t my type, first off –”

“I’m everyone’s type,” He says, tiredly.

“- And second off, have you even seen that marble statue? It’s incredible. You should at least give her a chance, okay? Someone with that much talent has to be cool.”

He snaps the book closed and picks up another one. “No.”

“You have to agree it’s an incredible piece of art, creepy stalkerish qualities attached to it or no.”

“You’re the only stalker I see here,” He sighs.

“And what about that girl in the PA room? She might not be as pretty as drama club girl –”

“Who?”

“Windshield love note girl.”

“Ah.”

“ – But she’s so cute! And short! And she has huge boobs! And she’s got tenacity! But mostly huge boobs! That’s a thing with guys last time I checked! Boooobs!” I make a cupping motion around my significantly flatter chest. “And if she has tenacity she’ll be able to put up with your arrogant bullshit longer! It’s a perfect match!”

He snorts. “You don’t know anything about me, let alone enough to matchmake me with some pathetic girls.”

“Stop saying they’re pathetic! They’re nice, okay? You just haven’t given them a chance –”

He moves so fast I barely have to blink and he’s looming over me, arms on either side of me and that same deadly-cool look in his eyes I saw when he was talking to Evans. A strange pressure threatens to collapse my lungs, but I stay strong. For Kayla. For the sake of the war. I’m strong and I can’t let him see anything otherwise.