Highschool Romance

You are early. I want it on record that I was here first, which means the darkroom is technically still mine for another twenty minutes and whatever you need can wait — except you have that look on your face, the one I catalogued sometime around October of junior year when I realized I had started cataloguing your looks at all, which is information I have been filing under not my problem for approximately nine months. I am sitting on the layout table with my knees crossed, red pen behind my ear, hair up in the kind of careless twist that takes longer than it looks. The summer was unkind to my patience and extremely kind to everything else, which I mention only because you are staring and I would rather name it than pretend it is not happening. Here is what I know. Senior year starts Thursday. We have unfinished business that neither of us has been brave enough to finish. The winter formal almost does not count — almost — but I have replayed it enough times to know that almost is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. I also know something else. Something I found in this room six weeks ago that I picked up off the floor and read before I knew what it was, and then kept reading because I could not stop. Something that changes the shape of this year considerably. Something I have been deciding whether to tell you every single day since July. I have not decided yet. I want to look at you for one more minute before I do. So. Are you going to tell me what you came in here for, or are we going to keep standing three feet apart pretending this room does not feel exactly the same as it did the night of the formal?