Love Letters

“What are you doing on Halloween?” Dalton asked, leaning against the lockers while I grabbed my first period binder from mine. I shrugged.

“I'm not sure. Why?”

“Well I’m throwing a party,” he said. “Not like a school-wide event or anything but just a few friends and stuff. Do you maybe want to go?”

I was sure that a month ago, I would hardly be able to reply to him because I would be too shocked. Now that I was tutoring him, he would talk to me in the halls, start conversation in class more often, and even call me over when he was talking with his friends. They may not have liked me but I didn’t really care because it was Dalton who was doing the introducing so that obviously meant he wanted his friends to meet me.

Now I could at least answer him without toppling over.

“Yeah, sure. That’d be great,” I replied. “You’re really asking in advance, though.”

He smiled. “Yeah, well I like to plan ahead. Oh, and hey.” He leaned down closer to me. “Josh told me not to tell you, but he really likes you.”

“Seriously?” I was surprised. Josh Arnold was one of Dalton’s friends and they had been since about the fourth grade. After that, they had been inseparable; pretty much just like him and Ruby.

I looked over my shoulder when Dalton nodded behind me and saw Josh talking to a few of their friends. He looked at us quickly, smiled at me, and then turned away again.

“He told you?” I asked Dalton.

He nodded. “He was also hoping you would go with him to my party but I told him that you’re probably going with someone else.”

“I am?”

“Well, I could have let him get his hopes up, if you would have preferred it that way,” he said. “Did you want me to tell him it’s a possibility?”

I laughed. “I don’t even really know him.”

“We all went to school together.”

“True, but it was considered ‘embarrassing’ to socialize with me, remember?” I said. “You avoided me like the plague.”

He grimaced. “It wasn’t intentional.”

I closed my locker. “I understand. Being popular is stressful.”

When I smiled at him, he knew I was just kidding around. “Uncool,” he said, shoving me to the side. I snickered and headed for my first period class, and Dalton followed me.

“So do you want me to tell Josh that you’ll go with him?” he asked. I looked back at him.

“You said that you told him I was going with someone else, right?”

“Is that a no?”

“Who did you say I was going with?”

He smiled. “Me.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Sounds to me like he has a crush on you,” Andy said, smirking and nudging me with her elbow at the lunch table. “Did you ask him about it?”

I shook my head and tore the saran wrap off of my sandwich. “Why would I do that? I’m not going to just go up to someone and say ‘hey, do you like me?’ Especially since I’ve only started being friends with him about a month ago. It takes time to become that comfortable with someone.”

“Well it never hurts to ask,” Pax said.

Andy sent him a glare. “Shush. I’m talking.”

He slumped back in his chair, frowning.

“Anyway,” she said, looking back at me. “I think he does like you and he just doesn’t want to say anything because you and Roxy are friends now and if he were to ask you out, then she would probably get angry at you and start some horrible rumor. You know what she’s like; she takes pleasure in other people’s pain.”

“Well she hasn’t done anything bad to me yet,” I said. “And come on, Andy. Let’s be realistic here. Roxy broke up with him so why would she care what happens with him and any other girl? She just doesn’t give a crap about him anymore and I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about her. And he doesn’t like me. He just didn’t want to give Josh false hope about him and I. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“You know, I think—”

“Shush!” Andy yelled at Pax when he began to talk. He put up his hands. I raised my eyebrows at her.

“Am I missing something here?” I asked.

“I’m PMSing and he made fun of my shirt,” she replied.

Pax rolled his eyes. “If you had given me a little forewarning—”

“Doesn’t matter!”

“Hey, look,” I said, kicking Pax under the table and nudging Andy. I nodded over to the doors, where Trey was walking in with Ruby. He had his arm around her, and she was smiling. I guess that he had finally talked to her. They looked like the dream couple; her with her long brown hair and sparkling blue eyes, and him with his shaggy black hair and deep green orbs. The height difference was obvious because Trey was a giant that looked down on everyone and she was super short, like me.

“He talked to her,” Pax said, drawing our attention back to him.

“How do you know?” Andy asked.

“Because he told me,” he replied. “We’re twin brothers. What do you expect? We tell each other everything.”

“What else have you guys talked about?”

He cleared his throat. “You know, just . . . stuff,” he said hesitantly, looking over at me. I tilted my head, confused. Was he implying that they talked about me, or that I knew what kind of things they talked about and Andy was the only one who wasn’t meant to know?

He stood up. “I’ve got to go,” he said quickly and sped out of the cafeteria. I turned to Andy.

“What the hell was that?” I asked.

She shook her head slowly. “I have absolutely no idea.”

~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~ * ~

“Okay, there he is,” Andy said, peaking around the corner of the school and pointing to Mr. Griffin, who was just heading towards his car. Dalton stood behind us, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, an amused smile glued onto his face while he shook his head. “Go get him,” Andy added, shoving me out from behind the bend.

I glared at her and approached Mr. Griffin nervously. He hadn’t said anything to me after or during math class about “Bert” so I assumed he had just forgotten about it or didn’t want to discuss it. Maybe he really did have too good of a time with Ms. Anderson to care that my “friend” didn’t show up.

“Mr. Griffin?”

He looked up and smiled. “Hello Karlee. How can I help you?”

“I just wanted to apologize about Saturday.” He tilted his head, confused. “You know, Bert? He was supposed to meet up with you and he didn’t?”

“Oh!” Realization flashed across his face and I smiled. He really had forgotten, so that meant he had a good time with Ms. Anderson. Was there love in the air? Possibly. “Well, that’s okay,” he said. “I didn’t wait for very long.”

I resisted the urge to laugh in his face. He didn’t wait at all because he was the one that came in late, looked around and then headed for the door maybe five seconds later. I wasn’t going to tell him I knew that, though. That would screw up everything.

“Well, he wanted to apologize,” I said. “And he wanted to know if you could reschedule.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I thought he was only down for the one weekend.”

“He decided to stay a little longer.”

He nodded. “Okay. Do you have a pen?” he asked, opening his briefcase and pulling out a small notepad. I fished through my backpack and finally found one, handing it to him. He wrote something down on a piece of paper and handed it back to me, along with my pen. “Just tell him to meet me at this place. I have coffee there every Sunday morning so it’ll work out perfectly. Does he know where it is?”

“I’m sure he can find it,” I said.

“Mr. Griffin!”

I turned around and saw Dalton jogging up to us. I raised an eyebrow at him and when Mr. Griffin took a quick moment to look down at his briefcase for him to close it, Dalton mouthed “Andy” at me and I understood that she had sent him to stall for whatever reason. It was unclear to me but she obviously had a strategy so I let him go with it.

“It’s Dalton, right?” Mr. Griffin asked. “What can I do for you?”

“I was just saying hi,” he said, folding his arms. I snickered.

Mr. Griffin looked baffled but just nodded anyway. “Okay then. Hello,” he said hesitantly, opening his car door and throwing his things onto the passenger seat.

“Oh!” Dalton yelled, and I jumped a little. “My friend’s little sister is going into grade ten next year and she really excels at math so she was wondering if there was some kind of math league that she could join.”

It was going to be a major disappointment for the supervisor of that club when they realized they weren’t gaining any students. Mr. Griffin crossed his arms. “How come your friend’s younger sister didn’t just come up to me and ask herself?”

“She’s . . . shy,” he said, shrugging.

Mr. Griffin nodded. “Okay. Well actually, there is a competitive math team but it’s open to grade nine’s too. Actually, Karlee, you should really consider coming out for it. They meet on Sunday morning at the school and you’re one of my top students so you really should join. You’d probably boost the team right up to nationals,” he said. “They’ve never gotten very far. To be honest, they’re a bunch of geeks.”

I laughed, and then stopped once I realized that when a teacher asks a student to come out for a club, it’s basically an order and they expect that person to show up. But if I went out for the math team, that would mean missing any spying done on Mr. Griffin and Ms. Anderson.

“Actually, uhm—”

Dalton suddenly covered my mouth with his hand, blocking out any possibility of me turning Mr. Griffin’s offer down. I looked up at him and glared.

“She’ll be there,” he said quickly, grinning down at me.

Mr. Griffin nodded. “Good,” he said. “See you kids tomorrow. Don’t get into too much trouble.” He sent us a smile and stepped into his car, gradually driving off. Dalton let go of me and I frowned.

“What the hell,” I deadpanned.

“You can’t let on in any way that you’re up to something else because after a while, he’ll suspect something,” he replied. “You want to get them together, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then just go with what he says for now,” he suggested. “Then after a while, you can make it a little more obvious that you’re setting him up but by that time, he’ll be split out of his mind in love with Ms. Anderson that he’ll be thanking you for it.”

I nodded. “Fair enough.”

Andy came running over. “Well?”

I handed the paper and she read it over, before whipping out a pen and leaning against my shoulder to write something else down on it. Then she held it back and nodded in satisfaction.

“What did you put?” Dalton asked.

“I added ‘be there, baby’,” she said. “I’m going to give it to Ms. Anderson.”

“Dude!” I yelled. “They’re going to know we’re up to something since he gave me that paper!”

She scoffed, doubtful. “Relax,” she said, too calmly for my taste. “They’ll never know.”