Smile sweetly when his bag whacks you on the head as he makes his way to the back of the bus. Whisper ‘no problem’ even though he hasn’t apologised. Find out his name from a friend whose brother sits next to him in A level chemistry. Write it in your notebook and encircle it with red biro hearts. Write your first name, followed by his last one. Add a ‘Mrs’. Draw more hearts. Watch him spit out his chewing gum in the playground. Pick it up when no-one is watching, wrap it in a tissue and carry it carefully home. Start a secret shrine to him in your wardrobe and worship there regularly. Add the crumbs from his Cornish pasty, an empty crisp packet, a crunched-up coke can. Cut the photograph of him with his rugby team out of the local paper. Cover it in sticky-backed plastic. Keep it under your pillow and kiss it every night. Stay on the bus until he gets off. Follow him home. Spend hours staring up at what you hope is his bedroom window. Stop eating. Lose interest in your normal activities. Cry for a week when he gets expelled for spiking a girl’s drink with vodka at the sixth form disco. Convince yourself of his innocence. Steadfastly ignore all gossip. Continue to kiss the photo under your pillow, worship at the wardrobe shrine, stare up at what may or may not be his bedroom window. Know, eventually, he’ll never be yours. Invent reasons why not – a car crash, a terminal illness, a call to the priesthood. Take a strange sort of pleasure in how sad you feel. Get over him. Dismantle your shrine. Throw away the chewing gum, the Cornish pasty crumbs, the crisp packet, the crunched-up coke can. Keep the photograph, for reasons you can’t explain. Learn absolutely nothing from the experience. Smile sweetly at a boy who bumps into you in the corridor. Whisper ‘no problem’ even though he hasn’t apologised.
Alison Wassell is a writer of short and very short fiction from Merseyside, United Kingdom. Her work has been published by Fictive Dream, Bath Flash Fiction Award, FlashFlood Journal, Roi Faineant, The Disappointed Housewife, The Phare and elsewhere. She has no plans whatsoever to write a novel.
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