Passing Notes by D. G. Driver Page A

office chair. The chair was the
old-fashioned kind, really wide and heavy with castor wheels under
the legs. I dragged a folding chair back there and sat beside the
monstrosity. Up close, I could tell the base of the tower was some
kind of old cabinet or desk made of dark wood. It was turned
backward to the room, so all the drawers were inaccessible. The
thing was badly scratched and worn out, like it had been at the
school since the place was built and was just too heavy for anyone
to ever bother moving it. Considering that Central High had been
around long enough that my grandparents had been students there at
one time, the concept of that desk being from the fifties wasn’t
farfetched.
    So much stuff cluttered the top of the desk
that there wasn’t enough room to lay a piece of paper flat on the
surface. I really hoped Mrs. Hollstein wouldn’t hold that against
me when grading my penmanship. Not really wanting to use my lap all
semester, I seriously hoped that some junior would get bumped out
of the class and free up a real desk for me. I stuck my backpack
down by my feet against the wall and corner of the desk and pulled
out a pencil.
    Mrs. Hollstein finally started up class after
taking roll, making a seating chart and handing out her syllabus.
As she droned on about how many points everything was worth, I
started poking around the desktop with my pencil, allowing the tip
to find old scratches in the wood and then imagining what had
caused them. My pencil bumped into a groove along the very back
corner of the desktop, almost hidden by the window ledge that
jutted out over it by an inch or so, and stuck. Carved into the
wood was something written in cursive with a heart around it.
    I couldn’t make out the word. I learned
cursive in third grade and forgot it in fourth. I’ve never written
or read a word of it since.
    I pressed my pencil tip into the carving and
traced the heart and cursive letters. Some dust came up when I
pulled my pencil out. Whoever had done this had carved it pretty
deep, probably with a knife not a pencil. I wondered how long ago
that could have been because kids got expelled these days for
having plastic butter knives in their lunch boxes. We’re supposed
to spread mayonnaise with our fingers, I guess. Anyway, I decided
the kid with the pocketknife had to have carved this valentine at
least a decade ago, if not two.
    The name was really elegant the way it was
written, too, like something you’d see on a Hallmark card. I
imagined this girl with a high pony tail and wearing a poodle skirt
working hard to carve it just right one day when she was really
bored in class. Maybe Mrs. Hollstein was her teacher, too. She
certainly looked old enough, and she sure was boring enough.
    Mrs. Hollstein rambled on about something I’d
probably need to know later and got a couple volunteers to help
pass out textbooks. While that happened, I pulled out a piece of
notebook paper and put one corner of it over the heart. Using the
side of my lead, I colored the paper until an etching of the heart
showed up. I could see the name more clearly now, but it was still
this mess of loops. Below the etching I tried to copy it on my
own.
    My first few tries were hideous looking,
jerky and full of stops and starts. I would never be a professional
forger—that was sure.
    On my sixth try, my penmanship improved. By
my eighth try it was a passable copy. I’d run out of room on the
paper, though, so I pulled a black permanent marker out of my
backpack and tried one more time on the back of my left hand. This
time, I got it just right. It was so perfect in my eyes that it
seemed to actually glow and sparkle for a second.
    “That looks pretty,” said Jill Pietenpol over
my shoulder. She was passing out textbooks and handed one to me.
Actually, she dropped it in my lap because she was staring at the
heart on my paper. “What kind of marker are you using to make it
glow like that? I’d like to get one for my art project...”