...puts her hair in pigtails and takes it down again. She hates Wednesdays, except for the fifty-cent coffee she spilled down your chest once. You were always rushing. Pity, she sighed, or maybe it was, pretty, like those scars on her arms that she claims are for fashion. She wears rings and ribbons and the shreds of her reputation. You wonder if she's holding it all together or tearing herself apart.

You've sat behind her for seven months and the back of her neck is exquisite. Four days out of five you write her anonymous postcards in your illegible handwriting. You think she gets the message anyway. Her locker is covered in magnetic poetry and the teachers call it a cry for attention, watch the jumble of double entendres for suicide notes and subliminal meaning. They don't understand she's not that kind of girl.

You do. But you really ought to realize, she loved you so much better when she didn't know

you love her too.