Note To M

Of all the things Millard had learned in his lifetime, this, by far, was the most alarming of all. Girls? he thought. Like me? No way! Most 15 year old boys would have found this to be a blessing. Not Millard. No, he was a boy who loved his life just the way it was. Hanging out with friends over the weekend, fixing cars at his dad’s garage, baking cookies with his mom and sister; yeah, that was how he liked it. Well, except for the sister part.
Millard shook his head slowly, laughing incredulously, and closed his locker with a slam. As the door of his locker closed, he pulled his hand out of the way, but not fast enough to keep his thumb from getting caught in the slamming door. “Ow!” he cried out as pulled his thumb back to see the extent of damage. He sucked on his thumb to help numb the pain while those in the surrounding laughed at him. Millard gave the group a sour look before pulling his thumb from his mouth and moved away from his locker.
               It’s probably just a joke, he thought. One of the guys probably thought it’d be funny to put me on edge before the scrimmage tonight. I swear people just get stranger and stranger all the time. He sighed, making his way towards his next class – Physical Science with Mr. Jenkins. The old man was a little frail, slow at best and a raving lunatic at worst. Most kids avoided his class if they could, but some of the lazier students took it because Mr. Jenkins was known to give very little homework.
When Millard got to the stadium styled classroom, his friends Marty and Allen were already there and had grabbed the boys’ favorite seats in the classroom. From their vantage point high in the back of the room, they could see everything that was happening and be assured that Mr. Jenkins would never call on them to answer any questions. As he was sitting down, Millard reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled up piece of notebook paper and handed it off to Allen.
“I found it in my locker this morning,” he said. “You two sure do have a strange sense of humor.” Millard chuckled under his breath and pulled his book, folder, and pencil out of his backpack, placing them on the fold-out desktop attached to the chair. His folder slipped out of his grasp as he went to put it down, causing it to hit the back of the head of the girl sitting in front of him before falling to the floor. “Sorry!” Millard said as he picked up the folder. The girl gave him a cold look before returning her focus to the front of the room.
“You mean our locker,” Marty corrected him in an off-hand manner.
“Yeah, our locker,” Millard chuckled the reply. “I’m surprised you didn’t get there before me like you normally do Marty.”
Marty shrugged nonchalantly. “Guess I was just a little busy this morning.”
During the exchange, Allen looked over the note before passing it to Marty. The boys looked at each other for a moment before shaking their heads. “Sorry to tell you, but this is one hundred percent authentic,” said Allen. “You know we wouldn’t be that mean to you.” Marty nodded in agreement as he dug through his backpack for his notebook. As he sat up, he tossed the note back to Millard and then opened his notebook. Millard was a bit suspicious about his comment, but let it go.
“Oh, come on, man!” Marty said in a voice slightly louder than the noises of the room as he threw his hands in the air. “It’s not like we’d purposely bring up such a touchy subject! Besides, I know that this is Sally’s handwriting.”
“Really? How’s that?” Millard asked curiously.
“Well, because Sally wr-” Marty stopped suddenly as he noticed Mr. Jenkins staring in his direction. He blushed profusely, a nervous grin on his face, and nodded for Mr. Jenkins to begin. Mr. Jenkins nodded stonily at Marty then turned his attention to the rest of the class. “I’ll tell you later,” Marty whispered. Millard shrugged and turned his attention to writing the notes Mr. Jenkins had put up on the projection screen.
Although he did his best to keep his mind from wandering away from the tasks set before him by Mr. Jenkins, Millard found it hard to concentrate. His pencil kept slipping out of his sweaty hands the class was taking notes and he had to chase it down several levels of chairs once to get it back. He kept thinking back to the note. It had practically fallen out of his locker when he had opened it that morning, almost as if it had been stuffed through one of the small slots above the locker only moments before Millard had opened it. Why would someone give that to me? he thought, reaching for his pocket. He pulled the piece of paper out and unwrinkled it to read over it again.
“M –
I’ve been meaning to tell you for a while now, but I really like the time we spend together. Do you think sometime we would be able to go out on a real date? Slip a note into my locker later with an answer.
Sally”
He read over the sentences again and again until the bell signaling the end of class rang. Even then he was hardly paying attention to what was going on around him. With the help of Allen and Marty, Millard was able to get through the rest of the school day without causing too much trouble and with minimal bodily harm. He ran into the English room door while the other boys were talking with friends and had hit his head on the underside of a desk while reaching down and picking his eraser up off the floor during Algebra.
“Are you all right Millard?” Mr. Willson, the school’s oldest teacher, asked. “You can go to the nurse if you’d like. She’ll send you home so you can rest your head a bit. At the very least she’ll let you sit in her office for the rest of the day.”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” Millard said as he rubbed the sore spot on the back of his head. “But thanks for the offer just the same. If I start to feel dizzy or anything, I’ll go to the nurse’s office right away.” He smiled widely and nodded for Mr. Willson to continue with the lesson. His head did hurt more than he wanted to admit, but it wasn’t nearly as bad as the time in fifth grade when he’d fallen off his bike and hit the pavement head first.
After the last bell of the school day sounded, Millard made his way over to the gym locker rooms to change for the day’s soccer practice. Because he was so distracted, it took him several tries to get his shoes on the correct feet. He sighed deeply as he finally got his shoes onto the right feet and ran out to the soccer field. His coach and teammates were already assembled on the field when he finally made it to the field and were upset to find that he was late.
“Millard!” Mr. Saunders, the soccer coach, yelled. “Three laps around the field for tardiness! No excuses!” As if to further this point, Mr. Saunders grabbed his whistle and blew it to signal the beginning of practice. Millard sighed and began his laps around the field as the practice began without him.
As he was running around the field, his mind kept going over all that had happened during the day. First with his sister yelling at him for making them two minutes later to school than they normally were, then finding the note in his locker, and then all of the bumps and bruises he received after finding out that it was genuine. He thought back to his sister. It was all her fault for this. If she had just been nicer to him throughout his life, there would be no reason for him to be afraid of a note from a girl. A frown crept across his face as he thought about it.
It really was his sister’s fault. When it came to girls, it always was. She was the older sister that every parent wanted to have – smart, pretty, and planning on going to go a good out of state college. At least, that’s what his parents saw in her. Millard always saw the side of his sister Lilly that no adult ever saw. When the two of them were alone, Lilly would always berate Millard about his lack of interest in country music, his less than enviable soccer skills, and his general laziness about life. It was because of this that Millard was always afraid or confused by the advances of his female classmates – he always assumed they would end up being just like Lilly.
Because he was so deep in thought while running around the field, Millard didn’t even realize that he was starting his fifth lap when Mr. Saunders called out to him. “Hey Millard! Care to join us?” All of the other players on the team laughed at their coach’s mocking tone of voice as Millard stopped his last lap and made his way to the center of the field to be with the others.
The next morning Millard went straight to the locker he shared with Marty after arriving at school, to see if he could catch Sally before she went to her first class. Much to his surprise, Sally seemed to be waiting by his locker as he made his way down the hallway. He began to walk a bit faster.
“Sally!” he called. She looked up as he called to her and he rushed up to her to make sure she didn’t get away. He pushed his way through the crowds, being careful not to stomp on any toes or to shove any people out of the way. “I need to talk to you,” he said breathlessly.
“What do you need to talk to me about?” Sally asked with a laugh.
“About the note you put in my locker yesterday,” he said. “I need to know why you put it in there and what you mean by ‘all the time we’ve spent together lately.’ Since when have we spent time together outside of classes?” He laughed a bit at the thought and started to open his locker to put some of his school things away. He noticed that he had beaten Marty to their locker again.
Sally seemed surprised, a bit lost even. “What in the world are you talking about Millard?”
Millard rolled his eyes and dug the note out of this pocket. “This!” he shouted above the hallway noise. He handed the note off to Sally and watched as she read it over. Her face, calm and collected at first, began to turn a rosy pink as she read the letter through yet again. She clutched it tightly and stuck it into her pocket.
“Oh. Sorry,” she said, looking at the floor between her feet, “you weren’t supposed to see that. I just assumed Marty always got to your locker first.”