This is my entry for nonfiction prompt #5: LETTER
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February 2004
My fourteen-year-old heart fluttered as if a restless mouse was inside it, wanting to escape. My hands were icy and trembling as I slowly opened the piece of paper my classmate, PJ, handed me during our algebra class.
“Jed wants you to have this,” he said, smiled, and went back to his seat beside Jed.
“An empty street, an empty house, a hole inside my heart. I’m alone. The rooms are getting smaller… And oh, my love, I’m holding on forever, reaching for the love that seems so far. So, I’d say a little prayer and hope my dreams would take me there, where the skies are blue to see you once again…Julie Ann.”
I gasped for air after reading what was written on the torn sheet of his notebook. My eyes were teary from shock, and I didn’t know how to react. I crumpled the sheet and shoved it in my skirt pocket before Merry, my seatmate and friend, could get the chance to read it.
Both Jed and PJ looked at me with a smile. Then, the latter walked to our seats for the second time and gave me another note. That time, Merry made sure to peek at the letter. She almost shrieked when she read:
“*Just married, Jed and Julie Ann. Forever.”
I panicked. I didn’t know what to do, so I did the same thing. Crumpled the letter.
“Why did you crumple it?” Merry asked, shocked at what I did.
“Are you not going to reply?”
“The class is ongoing. Let’s listen first.”
I tried to pay attention to the lecture, but my mind had a decision of its own—lose my focus. I could see Jed looking at me through my peripheral, and I could feel my cheeks burning.
He was my crush for two years! And I had kept my admiration for him during those years. Yet when he gave me the letter, my mind went blank and did the unexpected. I didn’t know if he saw me scrunch his letter. I didn’t really know what to do then.
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February 2005.
When we were in our third year, Jed and I were no longer classmates. I still kept his letter, and even though he confessed, we hadn’t had a relationship because I was the one who avoided him. I liked him a lot, but I needed to prioritize my studies.
For months of not being classmates, he had seemed to forget about me—and it hurt—because his friends, who were still my classmates, were already teasing Jed to someone else. Hearing them say the name of the girl to Jed tore my heart to pieces. I wanted to tell I liked him too, but I can’t because I didn’t have the courage to do so.
Until our Prom Night—the most painful part of my high school year—came.
My eyes wandered around the covered area where the program was held; I was looking for him, hoping that he would ask me to dance. But to my disappointment, I saw him dancing with the girl his friends were teasing him to.
Pain choked me. I gasped because I couldn’t breathe. My tears were about to flow when I decided to step out of the venue and went home, suppressing the tears and the poignant emotion ripping my heart apart. It literally felt like I was being stabbed in the heart multiple times.
When I got home, I took the letter he gave me and burnt it, wishing that as the paper turned to ashes, so as my feelings for him.