David and Eleanor

I liked your poster because the colors are cool and you’re really good at drawing. - David

The post-it note was truly a wreck. The messy scrawl of David’s middle school-level penmanship combined with the blurry, smudged graphite made the writing barely legible. It didn’t matter, though. Eleanor still had the compliment committed to memory, even years later.

It had been a while since she’d gone through this specific box of old things. It was full of scraps of paper and post-it notes, all from when she was in seventh grade. Most of the notes were important to her for one reason: David Elliott Brown.

He had liked Eleanor, once upon a time. She’d liked him too, but at twelve, no one said that out loud. Their love story had tragically never culminated in anything more than accidental eye contact during classes and sheepish “Sorry, my friend sent that,” texts. Despite this fact, Eleanor still spent more time thinking about her old crush than she would ever admit aloud. They’d ended up going to the same high school, so every now and then, when Eleanor saw him just one too many times in the hallway, she’d find this box and reread every slip of paper inside.

Many of the scraps were exactly just that: scraps. Little notes asking her for a spare pencil, or comments their teachers had asked them to stick on each others’ work. She’d kept them all anyway, sentimental as she was.

One of the papers was different from the others. Similar to the rest, it was a note, meant to be passed through many pairs of seventh grade hands, to embark on a journey from the front of the classroom to the back. This one, however, was never meant to fall into Eleanor’s hands. The note was only ever meant to be seen by two people; David’s best friend, and David himself. Way back when she’d first read it, part of her had felt bad for violating his privacy. Another, smaller, part of her had felt like maybe it had wanted her to find it. Maybe he’d wanted her to find it.

It was about her, after all. It was a short note, missing the context of the conversation, but it had still been enough to make twelve-year-old Eleanor’s little heart jump. Yeah, obviously, it read, I like Eleanor. And so she’d kept the note. She’d reread it from time to time, letting it whisk her away into fantasies of the two of them walking into school one day, hand in hand. Boyfriend and girlfriend.

He’d never asked her, though. And it had never occurred to her that she could ask him until years too late. Now, in Sophomore year of high school, he no longer liked her. His friends no longer whispered to hers about them being a cute couple. No one tried to mush their names together into something she could write over and over in her diary, and certainly no one tried to pass her a note about him staring during English class. These days, Eleanor would let boys ask her to school dances, and text her on the weekends. She’d let them like the pictures she posted online, and kiss her in the corner at parties. She’d go out with them for a few months, and convince herself she was in love with them. Then they’d break up, and David would still be there, sitting three seats behind her in Chemistry class.

Sometimes, Eleanor could even pretend David still liked her. It wasn’t like she still liked him or anything, but thinking about him felt like being twelve again, getting ice cream with her friends after school and trying to deny the fact that his eyes had met hers during an activity in their math class. Every now and then she’d pass him between classes and she’d have to look straight ahead and pretend she hadn’t noticed him. She’d put her headphones on and let her face look bored, but she remembered the time they’d spent laughing together when they sat next to each other in middle school. He was pretending, too. She knew he was. There was no way he’d truly forgotten the nervous smiles they used to share when their friends pushed them closer together in the lunch line. It didn’t matter anymore, though. Pretending or not, they didn’t make eye contact anymore. Neither of them looked at the other during class, and neither of them dallied while packing up their binder to try and walk out the door at the same time.

And yet Eleanor still had David’s number saved in her phone. She still hoped his name would be called after hers when her Chemistry class moved seats. On nights like these, when she’d just finished reading their entire shared history in the form of notes and mementos, she’d contemplate texting him. Tonight, she stared up at the stars decorating her ceiling and wondered if he’d pick up if she called. She wondered what she’d say.

It was getting pathetic, how long she’d been thinking about him. Finally, she sat up in bed, itching to make a decision. She needed something to change. She pushed papers around to clear a space on her desk and sat down. It had been a while since she’d done this. She only sat at her desk when she was writing something important. Specifically, when she was writing an important letter.

She wrote for what felt like a century. The words didn’t come easily, but the feelings did. In the end, the letter felt too short. It didn’t truly capture everything she had to say to him, but she supposed nothing ever would. Standing, she folded the paper into quarters and tucked it into an envelope she’d decorated herself. It had taken her ages to carve an intricate floral design into an old eraser and stamp it onto the corners of the envelope. She tried not to look at the upper left one, which she’d smudged before the ink had dried. She dipped her fingers in the weeks-old cup of water beneath her bed and sealed the letter. She wrote her address on the envelope first, then his, after looking it up in their message history. Then she grabbed her phone and her house keys, and walked off towards the nearest mailbox to her house.

Eleanor was across the street from the mailbox when she turned around. She nearly ran back home to the safety of her room, where she curled up in a ball on her bed and tore the envelope open. Her smudged upper left corner ripped as she unfolded the paper and reread what she’d written. The letter read:

Dear David Elliott Brown,

Do you remember the day I first learned your middle name? You’d been calling me “Eleanor Madison” for a week, but you refused to tell me every time I asked what yours was. But then I just showed up to school one day and I knew. I always joked I was just psychic, but I think it’s time I come clean. I convinced a friend of yours to tell me after school at the park. He nearly didn’t tell me because he was too hung up on asking why I wanted to know so badly. I told him it was just because we were friends and I thought it would be funny, but I think we both knew I was lying.

I liked you then, David Elliott Brown. I’d liked you for a long time before that day, and I liked you for a long time after. For a while after we stopped talking, I considered ours a very tragic love story. I wished I’d had the guts to say something to you before it was too late. These days, I admit I don’t think of you much, but when I do I always remember you fondly. I hope you feel the same about your memories of me.

Yours,

Eleanor Madison Williams

Eleanor tucked the letter back into the ripped envelope. She nestled it amongst the notes in her little box of memories and shut the lid tight, sealing her feelings for David away until the next time they passed each other on the bus ride home.