TIME TO PUT MY DETECTIVE hat on.

If I was going to find the author of the hate note, I needed all the information I could find. Unfortunately, there were no tracks or fingerprints available to me. I had only the hate note itself, which I mined for as many clues as possible.

In homeroom class, I pulled my Algebra textbook in front of me and pressed the hate note onto the page, so it'd look like I was studying. Everyone shot weird glances my way because I usually fought tooth and nail before willingly cracking open a textbook. But thankfully they all kept to their own discussions, while I pored over the handwritten lines on the page, extracting what information I could.

Jake Tanner:

Does he have to be so loud all the time? Is he overcompensating for something?

Based on that, there was about a sixty per cent chance that the person was in my grade. I mean, they had to have been around me to gauge that I was loud, right? But then again, they could be in the football team, or they might have run into me at a house party — during which I was notoriously raucous.

Treats his twin like a child even though he's only minutes older. Stop being so condescending.

Stop being so condescending. That's something a snobby person would say.

Show off.

Meh. Can't argue.

Fuckboy. Fuckboy. Fuckboy.

See, that line made me reconsider the prospect of it being a football teammate or even a dude. Not to generalise, but few guys in Bishop would frame being a fuckboy as a negative. More women? Great. More sex? Greater. More sex with more women? Greatest.

Dumb. So dumb to choose football because concussions. Then concussions make him dumber, which makes him make more dangerous decisions. Cyclical.

Yeah, my secret detractor was definitely not on the football team. They might even be anti-football, and I flicked through my database of Bishop High School students. The only person who I knew was apathetic towards football was Sophie, but my cousin would just tell me to my face that she hated me if she felt like it.

Caveman sense of humour.

Ouch. This one hurt the most because I personally thought I was hilarious. I actually had this weird habit of searching up new words and weaving them into jokes to make myself sound witty but aloof. I knew this was majorly uncool and tryhard of me, but as I said, my confident charm wasn't always how I felt on the inside. Sometimes it took careful curation to be carelessly funny.

Can he even drive?

Unless the writer of the hate note had a serious case of compartmentalisation and was a raging hypocrite, I could safely assume they drove. Which was pretty much every junior and senior. At least that narrowed down the age bracket, slightly.

Doesn't take studying seriously.

Per the above rationale about compartmentalising, I guessed I was looking for someone who did take studying seriously.

Views all girls as potential flings. Flings. Pretty much number four, but.

Again, looking for a girl.

Mercurial hair.

Pfft. I didn't even know where number ten came from. My hair was as mercurial as every other teenager's. It had good days and it had bad days.

By the end of homeroom, I had a fairly clear picture of what my detractor looked like.

I was looking for a girl, in the junior or senior year. Maybe sophomore year, if they were already learning to drive. I was looking for someone who took their studies seriously. More than that, going by words like cyclical and mercurial and overcompensating I was looking for someone articulate, who might have a personal disdain for football players.

Once I had those criteria, I ran through all the smart girls I knew who might dislike me, and a very clear face popped up.

Lacey Hosseini.

I knew her schedule from the first couple weeks of this year back when we'd been dating. When the bell for the first period rang, I folded up my Algebra textbook and dashed to my destination. I arrived before she did and took up my guard, leaning casually on the locker next to hers.

"Hey, Lacey." She didn't seem surprised to see me leaning against her locker when she approached.

"Hey, Jake," she greeted, opening her locker and swinging her backpack into it. Lacey was a cheerleader, but she was also a Model U.N. kid and total teacher's pet.

Plus, she had taken our breakup surprisingly calmly; heck, she initiated it. But maybe she was mad that I didn't fight hard enough for her, or try to stop her leaving me, or something.

If that didn't fit the bill of girl-with-a-secret-grudge, I didn't know what did.

Now just to dig the truth out of her.

Lacey swung her eyes towards me curiously. "How're things with Ursula?"

"They're just peachy, thanks," I smiled warmly. "I, um, I want to apologise for the way we left things."

Perhaps there had been some shred of truth in Jamie's words yesterday. I was apathetic towards Lacey. She put all the effort into arranging the meetings and activities we would do. I thought it was because she liked being in control of the situation, but in hindsight, it was more accurate that if she didn't reach out, I wouldn't either.

"You mean when I left you?" she scoffed lightly. Her eyes shone with familiar teasing mirth, nothing cold and vengeful like I expected from my hater.

"Yeah..." I drawled uncertainly. Lacey pulled out a tube of lipgloss from her bag, casually humming the melody of a pop song. Was it not Lacey who wrote the note? Either way, I could still apologise to her. "If I made you feel like you had to leave me in any way, I'm sorry. I probably should have paid attention to you more, while we were seeing each other."

Lacey's eyes were firmly fixed in the mirror on the inside of the locker door, lips puckering as she applied a layer of gloss. Her tone was ironically absent when she said, "You paid plenty attention."

"Oh. Um— so, why did you break up with me?"

"Girl code," she replied robotically, smacking her lips twice. She didn't even look at me.

"Uh-huh. So no hard feelings?" I probed meaningfully.

"Nope." After Lacey was satisfied with the shine to her lips, she replaced the gloss and started pulling select books from her backpack.

I tried again from another angle, "What do you think of my hair?"

At the mention of hair, Lacey finally turned to face me. Her analytical gaze sharpened on the top of my head, taking the question very seriously. "Looks good," she decided.

"Mercurial?" I hinted forcefully.

Lacey blinked. "Bless you," she said politely, pulling out a tissue from her locker and pressing it into my chest. Okay, totally not Lacey then. "Bye, Jake."

"Bye."

▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬

Considering the dearth of leads I had on potential haters, I decided to follow my relative's guidelines.

Jamie mentioned my treatment of Lacey while we'd been a fling, and Sophie recalled that incidence with Graeme Patel when I accidentally destroyed his project for the woodshop final.

At lunchtime, I found his table and slid into an empty seat. Gray was in the same social circles as Sophie and the band kids, but he was not one himself. No, Gray was an e-sports type of guy.

Today it was Nova, Declan Jung and Gray at the cafeteria table. I slid in with a friendly greeting, "Sup, Gray."

"Sup, Tanner," he said cautiously, looking behind him. His confusion was understandable. I'll admit, I had never approached Gray to talk outside of a class, but we were by no means on unfamiliar terms, especially since...

"I'm really sorry for smashing your birdbox in woodshop class. I was trying to impress Carmelia Ko, and Jamie dared me I could make a trick shot into the bin from across the room," I recalled. "I couldn't, as you remember."

Declan perked up across the table, hearing his girlfriend's name. Oh, yeah, he's dating Carmelia now. Good for him. But when Declan fully absorbed the nature of the conversation, given that the event happened in freshman year, he relaxed again.

"I do," Gray chuckled. "Thanks for the apology, but, uh... you really did me a solid. That birdbox was not up to the same standard as the rest of my work that year, so Mr. Renault probably wouldn't have given me an A if I'd actually turned it in. Scored me major pity points."

"Oh." Huh. Very likely not Gray. I couldn't imagine him screaming at me for being a fuckboy, considering he was no monk himself. "Great. No harm done."

"Any reason you're bringing it up now?"

I thought long and hard about Gray's question, diving into my subconscious. Well, as deep as my teenager brain could go. "I just... don't want anyone holding grudges against me."

"Okay. Well, I don't," Gray said good-naturedly. "Have a good one, man."

I slid out from the bench and took my tray with me. "Yeah. You, too."

At my usual table with the varsity football guys — the seniors, Jamie and Kay — I wolfed down my food. I was deep in thought today, giving the occasional amused grunt whenever anyone made a joke. I really couldn't imagine any other girls that I'd wronged badly enough to warrant a whole burn sheet.

Whoever wrote it clearly couldn't be that close to me, since they would know I was not really a fuckboy if they were. Okay, the whole drama among the cheerleaders made it seem like I had a magic, coveted dick or something, but that was not the case. I'd only ever kissed three girls. Only slept with one. In fact, once upon a time, I was completely inexperienced...

Wait.

Could it be her?

With fifteen minutes left in the lunch period, I bid goodbye to my football friends and darted to the library. I was sure she'd be in there studying — taking her studies seriously — because she was a senior doing all sorts of hellish AP classes.

Heloise Page, the first girl I'd ever kissed.

Lacey was the girl I'd lost my virginity to, but before that, I'd had one night of drunken embarrassment at a house party with Heloise Page, a willowy French girl who spoke like seven languages. Female. Clever. Definitely had a bad experience with me. Enough to turn her off football players entirely? Well, I was going to find out.

Thankfully, she was exactly where I expected her to be. In a well-ventilated corner of the library, studying with headphones plugged into her ears. Heloise never talked to me again after that embarrassing incident at the Fergussons' house party, but perhaps that night was what drove her to hatred and resentment.

But I could never bring myself to mention it in public. Neither did she. As far as I was concerned, for the last six months, Heloise and I had never even met each. We'd certainly never been pushed into a closet together during a weird amalgamated game of Spin the Bottle, Seven Minutes in Heaven and I Dare You. That night, Heloise had seen that I'd been near pissing myself in fright, so she had decided to take the lead.

I tapped her gently on the shoulder. "Heloise."

"What?" she startled, pulling out one earphone and looking at me quizzically.

"Do you hate me?" I blurted out immediately. From what I saw that one night months ago, Heloise did not mess around. Out of courtesy, neither should I.

"Oh, Jake," she murmured, her eyes softening with pity. "We talked about this. You'd been drinking, and it was your first kiss. I don't blame you for lasting ten seconds—"

"No!" I screeched, interrupting her with a panicked yell. I glanced around the library to see if anyone had heard the tail end of her sentence and heaved a sigh of relief when the room came up deserted. Composing myself, I clarified, "No. Um, that's not what I'm here to talk about."

"It isn't? Then what?"

I scratched behind my ear nervously. "Do you think my hair is mercurial?"

Heloise stiffened, then laughed disbelievingly. "What does that even mean?"

"Like, the hairstyle changes a lot," I explained weakly. Even to my ears, my description sounded completely insane. I decided to give some examples. "Sometimes it'll be poofy. Or really flat."

A long awkward silence followed.

Heloise's eyes flicked up to my hair, which was coiled messily today. I hadn't attempted to fix it after I rolled out of bed. "Um. I guess?"

I didn't know what I was thinking.

Bringing up a night I swore to forget — finishing in my pants like a teenager, which I was, comfortingly, from the sensation of a girl rubbing against me — but also disturbing poor Heloise, who was far too mature, detached and drowning in AP coursework to even think about holding grudges. I'd spoken to her once, for Christ's sake. Twice now, technically, but it definitely wasn't her who wrote the note.

"Okay. Thanks." As an egotistical aside that I couldn't resist, I told her, "Also, I've gotten better. Like, way better."

"So I've heard," she smirked. "You're a good-looking kid, Jake, but don't hurt yourself, okay? Keep safe."

"I will. Thanks, Heloise."

"No problem."

On my way out of the library, my cellphone buzzed. I answered the call with a determined fire blazing in me. This detective work was kind of exhilarating. I felt alive and stimulated like never before, completely absorbed by the goal in mind.

"Where the fuck were you?" Ursula's irritated voice pierced me through the line.

Oh, crap. I'd made plans to make out with Ursula behind the school cafeteria today. "Fuck, I'm sorry, Urs. I totally forgot."

"Evidently," she huffed.

"I don't have practice after school today," I supplied apologetically. "Why don't we meet up before you have to go to cheerleading practice?"

An extended silence, and then, "Fine."