Hello, I Dislike You Intensely. Have a Nice Day.

My mother had a meeting to go to this morning, so she dropped me off at school an entire hour early. I don't know why I didn't just stay in bed and then take the bus to school. But I waited until the car left and walked back out the gates and four blocks down to the park, so if that doesn't say anything, I don't what does.

I should have just stayed in bed. Why didn't I just stay in bed? Why do I want to see him so much? I shouldn't want to see him this much. I'm going in circles. But I need to see him. Just see him, that's it. He never has to see me at all, never know I'm even here. He can go on with his life, hurt but intact - how could he be heartbroken, we never even had anything - with his pretty girlfriend, and forget all about me.

Maybe the best love can get for me is the kind inside my head. And I'm fine with that. I'd rather never have him at all than have somebody else.

I can't believe I just said that. My God, I'm a basket case.

Maybe he won't come here today.

And as soon as I wrote that, I saw him. Of course.

--

I think I've just had the most amazing day of my life.

When I saw Alex, I tried to duck out of the way behind some trees, but it was too late. He knew I was there. I don't know how the hell he knew that fast, but he knew, and he started walking toward me and I realized I was peeking out from behind a tree trunk looking like a total idiot, and there could no mistake because he was making eye contact with me and it was way too late to hide. I stepped out from behind the tree since I might as well look like I wanted to talk to him, and he smiled at me in this cautious way that nearly killed me.

"Did you come to give me a letter?" he asked.

I said, "No. I already did. It's in a tree." I hoped in vain he'd go away after that, looking for his letter, but he didn't.

"Well, this is convenient," he said, and started looking in the hollow knotholes of the trees around us. Maple trees. I suddenly realized that I'd chosen to hide in a stand of the same trees I'd left my letters for him in. Wonderful. And somehow, by some weird superpower, he'd already found my letter. The sad one, the one that had hurt me and would hurt him. I wanted to snatch it out of his hands and say, You don't really need to read this, and you sure as hell don't want to. Trust me on this.

He must have seen the expression on my face, because he said, "What's the matter? Do I want to read this?"

I said, "Oh God, I don't know. You probably should, since it would be the best for both of us. But honestly...I don't think you want to." I don't know how I ever brought myself to say those words.

He said decisively, "Then I won't. You've already given me an answer." I could tell he was trying as hard as he could to trim the hurt from his voice like you'd try to cut off the itchy label on a shirt, but a tiny bit of that label would still be there, caught in the threads, and you couldn't get it out unless you wanted a hole in your shirt.

"I'm sorry," I told him, and it seemed the worst possible thing to say at that moment. So terribly final, I almost thought I could hear its resonations in the air, like with the slam of a door or the punch of a gavel.

"It's okay. It was unrealistic to think you'd say something else."

"I'm sorry, Alex," I said again, helpless.

"Read me the letter," he said suddenly.

"What?"

"Read what you wrote me," he commanded. I didn't have to ask him if he was sure, his eyes said, I am so, so sure. So I read him what I wrote. And all the while, a part of me acknowledged his masochism and loved him all the more for it. I saw so much of myself in him sometimes.

"Not too bad," he said after I was done. "There's definitely been been harsher rejection letters in history."

"I'm sorry," I said for probably the fiftieth time in those five minutes (counting all the 'sorry's in the letter). I felt like a stupid doll, programmed to say only one mindless phrase forever, or at least until I broke and got replaced by a newer model.

"Don't be," he said. "You're just trying to do the right thing."

All of a sudden I was so sick of hearing that phrase I wanted to scream. The right thing? What the hell was 'the right thing' anymore? The right thing was a device used in Hallmark movies to give some sappy fuck their goddamn happy ending already. The right thing was a catchphrase, a slogan, moral propaganda to sucker us all into some huge brain-dead ideological movement. Big Brother is watching you. Big Brother is waiting for you to fuck up so he can practically wet himself laughing.

"Dani, calm down," Alex said, and I suddenly realized I'd said all that aloud. Fortunately we were tucked far enough inside the little grove of maples for anyone to hear.

"I don't want to!" I yelled, and discovered I liked the feeling of yelling. "I want - I want - " Suddenly a clap of thunder sounded in the sky, loud and close enough to mow small animals into the ground. I jumped. "Shit, that scared - " I started to say, when just as suddenly, a seething, white-hot thread of lightning streaked down from the sky and hit a tree not far from us. The tree immediately started to burn. "Oh my God! Oh, fuck!" I screamed, in a state of hysteria by now. Alex grabbed my hand. "Let's get out of here," he told me. We ran across the park, ducking low to the ground, not really toward anything - we just wanted to avoid getting fried for as long as possible.

"God, what the hell?" I gasped. "A thunderstorm? Honestly? Since when was there going to be a fucking thunderstorm today?"

"I don't know," Alex answered, raising his voice over the wind. "Weather reporters are sadists. Whenever they say it's one thing, it's always the opposite. They must be seriously pissed off with all of us."

"Some days, I'd love being a weathergirl," I yelled over the rising winds. Hard pellets of rain shot down from the sky, leaving wet blotches the size of pennies on our clothes. "It's like saying, Fuck you, world, except classier and with a smile on your face all the while." While I was talking, I was briefly aware of us jumping over a low wall and crashing through a thorny hedge. The thorns stung like papercuts, they were so thin and sharp. I blinked and realized this was the private residence. Whoever owned it really must hate people to put up a hedge like that. Or have something to hide. What if they were some psycho serial killer? A child trafficker? What if they were building some crazy bomb? And even if they weren't, I was almost certain our every movement was being tracked on a security camera. I opened my mouth to say this, but another clap of thunder drowned out anything I might have said.

"Quick!" Alex yelled, and he pushed me into a small, low building. I blinked. A garden shed. Weird that it hadn't been locked. He closed the door, leaving us in total darkness while the storm raged around us. "Damn," I breathed. "Yeah," he said. He opened the door a crack, letting in rain and gray light, dimly illuminating the interior of the shed. "Are there any flashlights or something in here?" he asked. I looked around. A rusted wheelbarrow lay on its side at one end of the tiny building; against the opposite wall leaned an untidy clump of rusted garden tools. Between these was an ugly tangle of dusty hose like some smaller version of a sea monster they put in old poems just to be killed and prove the hero's worth.

"No," I said. "But there is a candelabra, several fine Swarovski crystal chandeliers, a wall sconce, and oh yeah, some freakin' awesome strobe lights."

"Oh, light some of those up, will you?" Alex said, unruffled by my sarcasm. "And see if you can find a disco ball while you're at it. Let's have a dance party. Here. Now. 'Cause we're so flippin' awesome."

"Oh, what am I, your maid? Find yourself a disco ball. I'm more worried about us getting roasted by lightning. This building isn't exactly a nuclear bomb shelter, in case you haven't noticed."

"But you know, if we're gonna go down, we might as well go down having the time of our lives. The Macarena. The Bunny Hop. The Electric Slide. The Hustle."

"Are those even disco dances?"

"I dunno. Whatever. It doesn't matter! Let's just dance."

"Okay, we're in a tiny, falling-apart building that probably couldn't be more flammable if we poured gasoline over it, that happens to be the only - the only erect thing for like miles around - "

At this point Alex was laughing so hysterically it was pointless to go on further. "God, you are a such a child!" I said, throwing my hands up. "What could I have said - sticking-up thing?"

Alex gasped for breath through his peals of laughter. "Oh...Oh wow," he said. "Ah, Dani."

"What?" I grumbled.

And he kissed me.

And the aggravation that had been buzzing in my veins like bluebottle flies suddenly melted. And suddenly, it didn't matter anymore if the building got struck by lightning. It didn't matter if we got vaporized, leaving behind nothing but microscopic fragments of bone and teeth. It didn't matter that Alex had a girlfriend, a pretty girlfriend that went way too perfectly with him. It didn't matter. It all fell to the wayside.

The kiss wasn't perfect, I admit. It was sloppy and I didn't really know what to do, he was the experienced one, not me, and my lips were chapped and it was dark and we could hardly see each other. But it happened. And slowly, the kiss changed from an is to a was. He is kissing me, he was kissing me, we are kissing, we kissed. And once it solidified into a was, there was nothing neither of us could to take it back.

"Damn," I whispered.

"Mm. Satisfactory? Unsatisfactory?"

"Damn," I said again. Shit, I was becoming a doll again.

"I'll assume the former, then," Alex said.

"I'm a kiss virgin," I said. "A fifteen-year-old kiss virgin."

"There's nothing wrong with that," he said. "Except now you're a former kiss virgin."

"Yes." Half of me was ecstatic and half of me was terrified at what had just happened. There was no going back now, I knew this.

"Sounds like the storm is starting to pass," Alex remarked.

"Sounds like it. We'd better get to school, I guess."

"You really want to go to school today? Really, Dani?"

"Mm. I dunno. Do I? I guess I don't. What do you propose we do instead?"

"Oh...maybe continue trespassing. Does that sound good to you?"

"That sounds beautiful to me."