Since You Asked...

by Maurene Goo

  “Yeah, let me get some things from my locker first.” I opened my locker so that David’s face was hidden behind it and mouthed, “Don’t say anything,” to Carrie before I shut it. I looked at the Post-it again and felt a weird somersault in my belly.

  * * *

  The sun reflected off the tiny mosaic tiles on our table at the Burrito Shack, and I brushed some crumbs off of it while thinking about the note. Who in the world would do such a thing? First, as a joke it was so not funny. Second, if it was serious, how dare they embarrass me and place it on the OUTSIDE of my locker for everyone to see? Also, nice freaking use of cheesy similes. Cherry blossoms? Was that some sort of reference to the Orient?

  David let out a loud burp and both Carrie and Liz glared at him from across the table.

  “GOD, David. So disgusting,” Liz said, practically gagging.

  “I’m going to barf up my burrito,” Carrie said, staring at her bean and cheese sullenly. David cackled and shoved more tortilla chips into his mouth.

  I looked sideways and squinted at him. If I found out it was him, I’d kick him in the face.

  Carrie caught me looking at him and raised her eyebrows. I pursed my lips and glared at her. She rolled her eyes.

  Liz sighed and pushed her enormous sunglasses up on top of her head, strands of her wavy hair tucked behind her ears. “So. Valentine’s Day is coming up.”

  Carrie choked on her horchata. I ignored her and said, “Yeah, so?”

  Liz propped her elbows on the table and stared out at the ocean morosely. “So, I don’t have a Valentine, as usual. It’s so depressing.”

  David pretended to snore and Liz shot him a dirty look. “It is! I’m probably going to end up hanging out with like, you guys that night. No offense.”

  “None taken!” Carrie said cheerfully, picking at a stain on her vintage camp sweatshirt. “Anyway, it’s your own fault you don’t have a Valentine. Every year like fifty guys ask you out and you reject them.”

  “Yeah! Steve literally, literally asks me about you every day. ‘She’s still not seeing anyone, right?’” David said with a sad shake of his moppy head. Steve was David’s closest thing to a bro best friend. He also happened to be 5’2” and allergic to everything on Planet Earth. Guy never had a chance.

  “Can’t you just tell him I have a boyfriend?” Liz asked with exasperation.

  David leaned back and stretched out his long legs. “Uh, no. I’m not doing any dirty work for you. And plus, you don’t have a boyfriend? So that would be LYING.”

  “Give me a break. That would be better than dangling the poor guy around forever,” I said.

  “Who’s dangling?!” Liz cried. “I never let him think he had an iota of a chance with me! Excuse me for having a heart and not saying, ‘Sorry, Shrimptown, but never in your wildest dreams would I date you.’”

  “That’s true. But now all your niceness has Steve’s hopes up,” Carrie said.

  “Ugh! Why don’t any AWESOME guys ever like me?” Liz moaned.

  I looked at her. “Are you seriously complaining about too many guys liking you right now?”

  “Oh, please. Like you’d date the string of eligible bachelors that I have to deal with?” she asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Do you know me? I don’t ‘date.’”

  David laughed. “You still think boys have cooties.”

  Carrie tried to make meaningful eye contact with me again. “I do NOT. I just think that dating in high school is overrated. As if any of these relationships are going to last?” I asked with my eyebrows raised.

  “Okay, I’m not looking for the love of my life or future husband, I just like the idea of having someone special on Valentine’s Day.”

  I made a face. “Liz, seriously, who cares? You know Valentine’s Day isn’t even a real holiday, it’s just something —”

  “Yeah, yeah, ‘made up by Hallmark to profit off the emotions of poor suckers who buy into it.’ Well, whatever, I’m totally one of those suckers and I don’t care. Why is finding a decent guy at BHS so impossible?!” Liz said, slamming her fist onto the table. Okaaay. Just a tad dramatic?

  Carrie sighed. “I have the opposite problem. There are so many guys — and too little interest in me. So sad.”

  David got up. “All right, too much girl talk. I’m headed home. Catch ya later.” He hopped onto his skateboard and sped off.

  As soon as he was out of earshot, Carrie said, “Thank God! Holly — please can I tell Liz? Please please please?”

  Liz looked at both of us blankly. “Tell me what?”

  I groaned and waved my hand weakly in surrender. “Fine, whatever. I just don’t want David to know — in case he’s actually not trying to play some sick joke on me.”

  Carrie told Liz about the note excitedly and Liz squealed. “You have a secret admirer?!”

  I shushed the two hyenas that I called my best friends. “No, I don’t! I mean, it’s totally a joke.” I took the Post-it out of my pocket, uncrinkled it, and gave it to Liz. She held it close to her face and scrutinized it. Liz has a high threshold for cheesiness — she always cries during the “declarations of love” scenes in Julia Roberts movies (I may own My Best Friend’s Wedding, but I do not cry!) — but even she started giggling when she read it.

  “Cherry blossoms?!” she exclaimed.

  “I know, right? Do you think that’s some sort of crack about me being Asian? Like, comparing me to a delicate lotus blossom or something twisted like that?”

  Liz threw me a weary look. “For God’s sake, Holly, no. I just think he’s trying to be poetic.”

  Carrie got a contemplative look on her face. “Do you really think it could be David?”

  Liz’s mouth dropped open. “Oh my God, you think David likes Holly?”

  “Well … or he’s playing a joke,” Carrie replied thoughtfully.

  The thought of David loving me made me feel ill. It was like my brother being in love with me. So wrong.

  “Well, I don’t think this is a joke. I think someone really likes Holly,” Liz said resolutely. What a surprise from Liz, the Valentine’s Day sucker.

  “That would be so awesome,” Carrie said.

  “Ew! No it would not. And if this person knew me at all, they’d know this kind of crap is not the way to my heart,” I said grumpily, looking down at the offensive Post-it. It couldn’t be for real, right?

  I stared at the computer screen, trying to think of another word for “stupid.”

  I was starting a new column, sitting in the journalism room with my brain at a total standstill. The March issue was coming up, and I was trying to consider what would be more worthwhile to complain about: popular kids with racist tendencies? Or something lighter, like people who post too many photos of their uncute dogs on Facebook?

  Amir sat next to me and typed away. He had his headphones on and was rocking his head to the beat — undoubtedly some bad rap song about how awesome the rapper is at getting laid. He caught me staring at him and smiled widely before going back to his article.

  A smile! What the heck was that? Was Amir, the über macho P90X fanatic, my secret admirer?

  All day long, in each of my classes, I had been looking at every male classmate suspiciously. If they talked to me, they were immediately on my list of suspects because, quite frankly, few boys ever bothered speaking to me. I even looked at some of the girls apprehensively. Lesbians were also fair culprits — I’m sure some of them would find my assertive ways irresistible.

  “Hey, Holly?” I looked away from Amir to see Isabel standing there with a funny look on her face.

  “Yeah?”

  She held out her hands and cradled gingerly in them was something very red, very heart-shaped, and very lacy. Oh, dear God.

  “Um, this is for you,” Isabel said with a big smile.

  I grabbed it from her, feeling my face turn red. “Uh, thanks.”

  She waited for me to read it. I laughed nervously and asked, “Where did this come from?�
�

  “It was really strange. I was sitting by the door, and I saw someone toss this into the class just now. He ran off and when I looked outside, he was gone,” she said.

  “He? Did you see who he was?!” I yelped.

  “No, he ran off too fast. I don’t even remember what he was wearing. Now that I think about it, I can’t even be sure that it was a guy….”

  Yeah. Really helpful. What in the world? I was trying to digest this information when I noticed that Isabel was still standing there. I guess she wanted me to explain the heart.

  “Okay, thanks!” I shoved the glaring-red obstruction into my backpack and turned back to the computer screen purposefully. She stood there for a few more seconds before walking off. For the rest of the hour, I caught her looking at me out of the corner of her eye every so often. I feigned obliviousness.

  As soon as the bell rang for lunch, I hit “save,” grabbed my backpack, and ran to the nearest girls’ bathroom. I rushed into a stall and slammed the door shut, making sure to lock it about ten times. My heart beat fast as I held the valentine in my hands.

  It was a huge construction-paper heart that opened up into a card, with lace glued all around the edges and “Holly” printed in a script font on the cover. It was all very elaborate.

  I opened up the card, and sequined metallic hearts fell out. Geez. This is what was inside:

  My cheeks started to burn intensely, and I got a funny feeling in my stomach. I probably sat on the toilet seat for about an hour staring at that card. It was so cheesy, but … it was kind of well written. And kind of, well, nice.

  Gah! What was I thinking? I was not taking this secret admirer seriously, was I?

  I walked out into the Quad to meet everyone for lunch — the valentine burning a hole in my backpack. I was so out of it that I bumped right into Matthew. Matthew F-ing Reynolds.

  “Heeey, Holly K.,” he said with a quick flash of his ridiculous heartthrob smile.

  I smiled instinctively. “Hi! Hi, Matthew! What’s up?!” Okay, did those words just come out of my mouth in that high-pitched voice? Kill me! This day was just getting worse and worse.

  He nodded slowly and said, “Nothin’ much. What are you up to these days?”

  Before I could answer some guy ran into him in a fake tackle. They both started cracking up, leaving me to stand there awkwardly. I mean, was I supposed to answer him? Or was it just like, a courtesy “How are you?” I seriously stood there contemplating this until I realized that both of them had already run off laughing.

  Sigh.

  Having this teeny tiny crush on Matthew was turning me into a loser out of a bad teen movie from the ’90s.

  Just then I had a flash of hope. Could Matthew be … ?

  Don’t worry. I only thought that for another two seconds before the normal Holly pointed to sad-sap Holly and laughed. “Are you insane?!” I quickly dashed those thoughts away and ran off to find my friends.

  * * *

  Liz arrived at my house around four o’clock, breathless and looking about as disheveled as she could ever look. Two strands of hair were out of place.

  “Well?! Show it to me!” she demanded after running up the stairs and into my bedroom. I shushed her, scrambling to usher her in and shut the door. She kicked off her suede ankle boots and plopped onto my bed.

  “Shh! I don’t want Ann snooping around — she’d ruin my life. Here it is!” I shoved the valentine into her hands. While Liz sat on my gray-and-white striped bedspread and ravenously read the poem, I bit the inside of my cheeks, waiting for her reaction. I had decided to show Liz, not Carrie, this particular valentine. I don’t know, I just didn’t feel like having Carrie make fun of it. For some reason I now felt weirdly protective of my “secret admirer.” Not that I liked it/him or anything.

  Liz looked up at me with this bizarre gaping expression on her face.

  “What?” I asked defensively.

  She dramatically fell backward onto my bed and held the valentine up to her heart. “This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever read.”

  I felt my face get hot again, and I paced around my room, fiddling with various objects to avoid looking at her. “Liz! Don’t be crazy. I just need to find out who it is,” I said while tinkering with a metal robot toy that David had won for me at a carnival last year.

  “Well, whoever he is, he has to be … sensitive. And hopefully really hot,” Liz added. She sat in a puddle of her pale-pink pleated skirt, a dreamy expression on her face.

  “Yeah. I’m sure a really hot guy feels that way about me. If anything, it’s probably one of the geeks who hang out by my locker.”

  And then, I had a revelation.

  I always made fun of these four guys who hung out by my locker. You know the type: They spend their nights playing online first-person shooter games, devote their lunches to quibbling about the merits of the old Star Wars films versus the new ones, and probably have never spoken to a girl in their lives. Geek-o-rama.

  And the reason they always hung out by my locker was because one of them, Daniel Milford, had a locker right next to mine. I had always suspected that he had a little crush on me because of an incident in third grade.

  We had been assigned a family tree project, and Daniel and I sat at the same table. There was a big pile of crayons spread out in the middle of the table and as I meticulously shaded in my variegated green leaves, I noticed that Daniel’s leaves were purple. His head was bent over his work, his tongue sticking out a little in concentration.

  I also noticed that Cindy Masters was watching him and giggling. I stared at Daniel’s leaves for a second. “Why are you coloring your tree purple? Trees aren’t purple.”

  He looked up at me, then at Cindy, then at his tree. He slowly unclenched his fist around the purple crayon and placed it back in the pile. He stared at the crayons — fingers twitching over them, not sure of which one to pick up.

  “You are colorblind!” Cindy squealed with glee.

  Daniel turned bright red and flipped his paper over. I glared at Cindy and said, “Did you tell him that the purple crayon was green?”

  She rolled her eyes and gave me a bitchy little look. “So what? It’s funny. He can’t even tell the difference.”

  I don’t know what came over me at that moment, but looking at Daniel’s sad purple tree and still hands shot a surge of pure rage through me that at the tender age of eight, I had never felt before. I grabbed all the purple crayons from the pile, all six of them, and before Cindy knew what was happening I threw them — really hard — at her face.

  Ever since that day, Daniel Milford had been silently protective over me. I can’t explain it. It’s not a daily event, more like an every-once-in-a-while general feeling: like when I realized he picked out the nicest math book to hand to me on the first day of school, or let me cut in front of him in the lunch line.

  It was all so clear now. He was finally ready to make his true feelings known!

  I must’ve had a strange look on my face, because Liz shot up and demanded, “What? Do you think you know who it is?”

  “Yeah. I think it’s Daniel.”

  She tilted her head, puzzled. “Who’s that?”

  “You know. Daniel Milford — his locker is right next to mine.”

  “What — you mean that geek who dressed up as a ninja robot for Halloween?!”

  “Er … yeah. Him.”

  “What makes you think it’s him? Did you see him put something in your locker?”

  I fell back onto my bed next to her. “No. But I have my reasons.”

  Liz raised an immaculately plucked eyebrow. “Tell me!”

  “Well, one time in elementary school —”

  “ELEMENTARY SCHOOL?” Liz interrupted.

  “Just shut it and let me finish! One time when we were in third grade I kind of stood up for him against this bitchy hag named Cindy Masters, and I think he’s been like, carrying a torch for me all this time.”

  Liz stared at me in disbe
lief. “This is your hunch?”

  “Yes! I think I’m right, too.”

  “I don’t know…. I mean, what are the current signs? You can’t trace this valentine back to one day in the third grade for Pete’s sake.”

  I sat up abruptly. “Yes I can!”

  Liz stretched out on the bed. “I think you’d better be pretty sure it’s him. I still wonder about David, too.”

  Repulsed, I hit her arm. “Ew! This would be a joke way beyond even him!”

  “But I mean, these valentines really border on the cheesy. They could totally be a joke.” I blinked a couple times and Liz quickly followed up with, “Not that you having a secret admirer would be a joke, of course! I’m just saying that D can be a tricky one.”

  A little injured, I said, “He would never do anything like this. It’s too gross.”

  Liz looked at me skeptically. “Well, boys are known to be gross on occasion.”

  Now that I was hell-bent on Daniel being my secret admirer, all signs pointed glaringly, neon-brightly, obviously to him.

  The next morning at school, I casually hung around my locker a little longer than I needed to, pretending to rummage around for a book while I waited for Daniel to show up. When he did, I looked at him with new eyes. And it wasn’t a pretty picture.

  Daniel was one of those boys whose hair always looked dirty. Not cute-rock-boy dirty, but like, no-shower-because-I-am-yucky dirty. His hair was a little long and hung greasily in front of his eyes. It was also dyed black. (Daniel’s a natural redhead.) Tall and awkward, he always looked like he was in danger of falling over. And he wore T-shirts with dragons printed on them. In other words: pure hotness.

  He stopped in front of his locker and caught me staring at him. Uh-oh. Before I could react, he quickly averted his eyes and in the process dropped his backpack on the floor. This made him reach down quickly and knock into a girl on his left. She threw him a dirty look and said, “Watch it, dork.” He turned bright red, mumbled an apology, and kind of ran off down the hallway.

  Well.

  I just stood there feeling pretty proud of myself. Daniel was totally my secret admirer — why else would he be so flustered? Now, the question was, how would I let him down? Valentine’s Day was the next day and I had to stop things before he embarrassed himself. I mean, he’s a nice guy and all, but really, Daniel Milford and me? I don’t think so.