Second Person

This is an exercise we did in 2nd person for my creative writing class. It's incomplete. If I finish it, I'll post the rest later.

You are twelve, and someone has left a love letter in your desk at school. With trembling white hands, soft and small, you withdraw it and read it and try to act like it's nothing. You feel like your class is watching, that they are reading the warm, stumbling sentences along with you. They're not. They are listening to Ms. Kent's lesson on Japanese internment.

Taking one last look at your engaged class, you nudge your best friend. She doesn't respond at first--she loves history. Three nudges later, she turns.

"I need to talk to you," you whisper.

Within minutes you have both inconspicuously asked to go to the bathroom and are standing shoulder to shoulder in a stall, cradling the hand-written note in your palms.

"Do you think it's a joke?" you ask, thinking of how stupid and mean some of the boys in your class are.

"I dunno," your friend says. "Mike told me that he thought maybe Brandon liked you."

You struggle a moment to distinguish Brandon from the other brown-haired, pale boys in your class.

"The one with the glasses?"

"No. He's the one who always wears the red baseball cap."

"Oh."

You feel a delicate wind pass through your chest like a ghost. It's like stepping into a warm shower after an hour in the pool. You clutch the note to your body, to your prepubescent chest.

"He has beautiful eyes," you say.

"I guess," says your friend.

To Be Continued...?