I was in my last year of high school and I was your typical teenage girl, complained about every little thing in the world, not that anyone cared. I didn’t have a great social life, I enjoyed my own company a little bit too much and it was getting slightly embarrassing. Don’t get me wrong, I had friends, a good group of them but we were all the same when we were on our own, we’d sit in our bedrooms blogging, listening to music or watching TV series… one of the three anyway so we never really got out much and most of my friends were in relationships so yeah, you could say I was happy for them or you could say I wanted to kill them because I was sick of being lonely and bored, there’s only so much ben and jerry’s and chocolate in the world, you know.
It was the first day of school after the summer holidays and everyone in my class had travelled all over the world but not me, I had been to Wales with my parents to stay in my grandparents’ caravan and I can tell you now, I can’t describe that as a holiday more of a trip to what I could imagine Hell being like. I enjoyed listening to everyone else’s holiday anecdotes though, mainly because it was a topic of conversation in class that wouldn’t matter if I was falling asleep or thinking about what I would have for tea that night. The first day back was always relatively relaxed though so I wasn’t really bothered about the fact that I had only slept for 2 hours the night before, everyone else looked just as dead as me, I think as the years go on in your education, you begin to make less and less of an effort to look presentable and I personally, was absolutely fine with this because I only spent about 5 minutes getting ready that morning, I don’t think I even brushed my hair.
I met with my friends at lunch but as per usual, they were comparing sex stories from the summer and I for one, wanted nothing to do with this conversation due to the fact that 1. It made me want to eat my own sick over and over again and 2. It wasn’t interesting to me in the slightest and I would never understand why they were all so bothered about each other. They all assumed I was jealous because I always went all funny when they spoke about their relationships, ok so maybe I was a bit jealous but it was more the fact that I was lonely and it is difficult having no other friends who are single. I feel so horrible saying this but I did feel a dash of happiness within me when they came to me for advice about arguments, the thought of at least one of the couples breaking up excited me, I just wanted at least one of my friends back.
The day was going so slowly and I was already excited to get back in bed and watch TV series all night long, I had tonnes of coursework that I should probably get on with first but every year I treated the first week of school as a warm up, I mean come on, the 7am wake ups are hard enough, let alone going into a building where you can’t walk past one person and sigh at how much you dislike them, maybe that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but I did hate most people in my school. I headed towards my locker to collect my things to go home, as I got to it I noticed a piece of paper peeping through the crack, my first assumption was that it was just my timetable slipping out but once I had opened my locker and taken the piece of paper out, I realised it was not my timetable but in fact, a small note. ‘Dear Rosie,’ I read.
‘I don’t really know how to approach this but I have been thinking about you all over the summer, I saw your smile and heard your laugh and fell in love with you in a heartbeat, you’re beautiful and I would love to get to know you more – Me’
As I read it, I kind of laughed inside my head like for starters, who can fall in love with someone they have never spoken to? Is that possible? I didn’t know and secondly, they signed it with ‘me’ really? How clichéd yet frustrating because now I wanted to know who it was from but then I thought, what if they did know me, what if it was a close friend, they knew my name… It could be anyone.
When I arrived home I didn’t do anything with the letter, I honestly didn’t think anything of it, it was most likely a practical joke that my friends were playing on me so I thought I’d give them the satisfaction and tell them nothing about it, even if I did tell them, it was inevitable that one of them would pipe up with ‘awwww I remember when my boyfriend did that for me’ and I would have to punch them in the face so… it was best left a secret between me and ‘me’.
The next day at school, I went to my locker to put my books in for the afternoon and again, there was a small piece of paper slipping out of my locker. I sighed and shook my head but read it.
‘Dear Rosie, your eyes are honestly incredible and I love what you’re doing with your hair now, it really suits you. I would really like to take you out some time soon, anywhere you want, it’s your choice, you deserve the very best and I would like to be the one to give you that. –Me’
As I read this one, I could feel my eyes widening and all I was thinking in my head was ‘what on earth…’ because this note was kind of creepy, it made me feel like the person writing them was watching me but I ignored this one too and continued with my day. I spent the lunch break with my friends and they weren’t acting different in any way which confused me because when they had played pranks before, they find it practically impossible to keep a straight face around their victim so this made me question whether it was them or not.
Just before walking home, I went back to my locker to fetch my books and saw the note again and shivered, I got home and put the two together, it was definitely the same person writing them, I thought that I could look at everyone’s work in class to match the handwriting but it could be anyone, it could even be someone in a lower year, I had no idea so I just kept thinking and thinking about it. I received these love notes in my locker once a day for the full year of school, I received this note on our last day with a rose attached to it.
‘Dear Rosie, I will miss you dearly when you leave school, the way you used to flutter your eyelashes, the way your cheeks blushed a rosy pink when you answered a question wrong, the way your hair was always so neat and perfect and the way you used to giggle at things that only you would find funny. I believe you are the perfect girl for me but I’m afraid I will never be good enough for you so all I have left to say is good luck, this is the last of my letters but I can say, I will see you around but you will not see me. -Me’
5 years have passed since my last year of school, I have 4 A levels and a degree in History but I still have absolutely no idea who wrote me these notes every day for a year.
Amy Lauren Turk 