The Sunday afternoon after the Junior Mathematics Tournament, I spent my time terrorizing people at the local mall.

Well, if you want to get technical, it was Amelia doing the terrorizing while Louisa and I hung around her (but not too close). If you want to get even more technical, Amelia was doing it as part of research for her English presentation. She had to stop every interracial couple in sight and ask them a few questions about their…well, their interracial-ness.

Louisa and I grabbed two frappes from a Starbucks booth and decided to get out of the way and sit in the benches by a water fountain. It seemed Louisa was conducting an experiment of her own, too. I think she called it How Far I Can Bother Nancy Before I Get Myself Mauled.

“You should really get a body piercing,” Louisa nagged me for the umpteenth time that day. “I think it would look cute on you. You’d look like a rebellious nerd.”

“Nerdy nerd suits me just fine, thanks.”

“You’re such a prude, Nancy,” Louisa sighed.

“What did your parents say about the piercing, anyway?”

“My parents?” Louisa’s eyebrows arched and her eyes flickered away moodily, toward the cascade of water coming down the fountain behind where we were sitting. “They didn’t say anything. I don’t think they even noticed.”

“They didn’t notice that you have a giant, ugly hole in the middle of your face?” I said incredulously.

Louisa shot me a dirty look. “It’s not giant or ugly.”

“Not to the person who doesn’t have to stare at it all day. Look, can we just go home now or what? I have a ton of homework to get through.”

Louisa rolled her eyes but her mouth crept into a grin. “No, you have to stay. You won’t believe which two people are going to show up right by the water fountain in about…oh…three minutes,” she said excitedly.

I sipped my drink in disinterest. “Uh…Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson?”

“Nancy. No. Think slightly more believable.”

“I’m terrible with guessing games. Just spit it out already.”

“You’re no fun,” she pouted.

“Not true. I play a mean hand on Bingo night.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response,” Louisa said flatly. Then her face changed as she peered into the shimmering wall of water behind us. “Is that…Alexander Lin?”

I choked on the mouthful of latte I’d just sipped. “What?”

“Hey, it is! What’s he doing over there?”

Wiping the back of my hand over my mouth, I followed Louisa’s gaze to find her staring directly at a blurry but familiar-looking back. It was, unmistakably, Alexander Lin. I’d seen him every single day of the week now.

“Is this kid stalking me or something?” I blurted out.

“Stalking you?” Louisa huffed. “Getting a little ahead of ourselves, are we? I thought you said you two didn’t even like each other.”

“We don’t. At least, I don’t like him. I think. It’s confusing. I actually have no clue what I’m even saying right n—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Louisa hissed, shooting me a look that made me clam right up. That girl carried death itself within her pupils. Her eyes went wide. “My whole English project might get blown if that idiot doesn’t clear the area right now!”

“English project? What—?”

Louisa started to rise out of her seat, but then her expression changed to panic and she slid right down the cushioning again.

“What’s going on? Why do you look so terrified?” I demanded.

Louisa just covered her hand with her mouth. “Oh, this is going to get ugly,” she said, more to herself than to me. Then she unnerved me even further by turning her grimace of horror into a grin of glee. It made my legs turn to jelly; the only times I’d ever seen that kind of expression on Louisa, I’d ended up with a fractured ankle, a legless Barbie, and several sleepless nights.

“Why are you smiling like that?” I said fearfully.

“Nancy, how do you think a fifty-year-old woman would react to a love confession from a seventeen-year-old boy?”

“How do I…what?”

I could officially say that that was the strangest question I’d ever been asked. The answer, I imagined, could only be stranger.

As Louisa and I looked on with a transfixed sort of horror, Alexander, who was standing there staring at his cell phone, was approached by a woman. I squinted and was just able to make out the outline of my English teacher.

“What the heck is going on?”

“You’ll see! C’mon, let’s get closer,” Louisa urged. Before I could process what was going on, she dragged me off the seat and crept closer toward where Alexander and Mrs. Reed were standing together. When I pressed my ear around the corner of the stone, I was just able to make out a rush of noise—and their conversation.

“…found this interesting item on my desk,” I heard Mrs. Reed say. She pulled something out of her purse and showed it to Alexander.

“What’s that?” I whispered.

Louisa cackled. “A love note.”

“A what?”

Alexander’s voice traveled faintly to my ears. “Sorry, I think you have the wrong guy. That note wasn’t written by m—”

“It’s fine to be embarrassed by these things, Alexander. Love is quite an embarrassing emotion. Most would say it’s the most embarrassing feeling of them all.”

“Uh, but Mrs. Reed, you don’t understand what I’m—”

She handed the note back to Alexander, ignoring the fact that he looked utterly shell-shocked. “I’m flattered you think I am beautiful. Really, I am. However, I expected better of our student council president. To have such a romantic relationship between a student teacher—especially considering our age gap— would be preposterously inappropriate!”

Next to me, Louisa let out a shriek of mirth.

“Louisa, get a hold of yourself!”

“Pre…preposterous,” she managed to choke, and then rolled around the floor in a fresh round of laughter.

“A romantic…what?” Alexander spluttered, looking thoroughly horrified by the idea.

“It’s simply a dreadful idea from all sides,” Mrs. Reed continued lecturing. “I can’t even fathom how you came up with it. Oh, I can only imagine how poorly this would reflect upon us both as people and as potential college and job applicants.”

“Hang on,” I said as it slowly dawned on me. “Does Reed think that Alexander is confessing…?”

Louisa nodded, her face turning bright red as she held in a laugh. “Just wait, I think it’s going to get even better,” she managed to say before doubling over in hysterics.

I turned around just in time to see the arrival of a third figure on the scene. He wore a nicely pressed dress shirt and black pants. He looked like he was on his way to a semi-formal dinner party.

“Er,” said my calculus teacher.  “Hello?”

You can imagine how it went down next.

Mrs. Reed drew herself to her full height and nodded toward a still shell-shocked Alexander. “Oh, you won’t believe this, Hector. I’ve just received the most well-written—I mean, inappropriate—love confession from a student!”

Mr. Betts’ looked between the two of them in confusion. “That doesn’t seem right,” he said slowly.

“That’s what I said! I couldn’t believe it when—”

“No, it’s just that I received a love note telling me to meet up at the fountain at this time as well.” Mr. Betts reached into his pocket and pulled out a slip of paper that I could just barely see.

Mrs. Reed snatched it out of his hand and scanned the note silently for a few moments. Then she rolled it up and threw it back at the math teacher. “You have some explaining to do, Mr. Lin,” she said dangerously.

“Sorry, but I have absolutely no clue what has happened for the past ten minutes of my life,” Alexander replied.

I looked over to find Louisa silently shaking with laughter, drawing the attention of several bystanders who were throwing her concerned looks.

“I’ll tell you what’s happened,” Mrs. Reed growled. She pointed at Mr. Betts and glared at her student. “Alexander Lin. You gave both of us identical love letters as part of some elaborate practical joke, didn’t you?”

“I honestly have no idea what—”

“That is a vilely inappropriate thing to do!” Mr. Betts interrupted. “Especially since you pretended to be a girl as well. I even dressed for the occasion.” He patted his shirt and gave Alexander a disgruntled look.

“You better be glad he wasn’t a real girl, then,” I heard Louisa choke out between giggles. “Nobody under the age of sixty would be impressed by that getup.”

“Hector, I think you and I need to go for a walk and cool our heads for a bit,” Mrs. Reed said, throwing Alexander a look full of daggers.

“Exactly what I was going to say, Diana.”

“While we’re gone, I hope you can reflect upon your actions, Mr. Lin.”

“Oh, he’ll have more than enough time for that during after-school detention every day for the next three months,” threatened the math teacher.

“I don’t understand anything,” Alexander said, but no one paid him any mind.

The two teachers left for the food court without another word to Alexander. He just stood there and stared for a while. This gave Louisa and me plenty of time to duck behind the water fountain and burst out laughing.

“What…what was that?” I gasped, tears practically streaming down my cheeks. “Alexander wrote two love notes to those teachers and expected…what to happen, exactly?”

“Not…him…” Louisa wheezed in between laughter. “I wrote…them.”

“You did?”

“For my…English…project.” She finally straightened herself up, her cheeks flush and eyes alight with humor. “Do you remember how I said I’d make it my goal to get our English and math teachers together?”

I vaguely recalled that. “Yeah?”

“Well, I gave them secret love notes and was planning to have them meet here so they’d think they had been confessing to one another.” Louisa paused and smirked again. “Alexander Lin was the unplanned part.”

“Holy crap,” I said, dropping my weight against the back of the seat cushion as I absorbed all the new information in. “So…they both thought Alexander was the one who’d written the notes, then?”

“Exactly,” Louisa snorted.

“Wow,” I said. “I think I’m going to have to let that one sink in for a while.”

“I think I’m going to need to write this down and turn it into an award-winning screenplay.”

Louisa and I both enjoyed another giggle over that idea. Unfortunately, our euphoric moment wasn’t mean to last.

“Ah,” said Alexander Lin from right behind me. “I suppose I no longer have to ask who was behind all this.” 

*****

A/N - Comment! Vote! Starting now, this story is going to pick up considerably. It's going to be fun :O