Dear Theodore,

You might not remember me all that well, but I watch you all the time—

Alicia Cameron ripped the sheet off her writing pad and mercilessly scrunched it up.

"What was that?" she whispered furiously to herself. "You're making yourself sound like a complete stalker, Alicia. He'll run before he even finishes reading the first line. This isn't a diary. Start over."

Dear Theodore,

I'm kind of in love with you—

That was too heavy. She had to start off light and ease him into it. She crumpled that sheet and tossed it on the floor, too.

"Start casual," she reminded herself.

Hey,

I'm Alicia from your chemistry class. You might not remember me, but I just wanted to let you know that I think you're pretty cute. They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I think you're the best-looking guy in the grade—

"Alicia!"

She jumped in her seat when her bedroom door slammed open. Her headphones fell off her head as she whirled around to identify the intruder.

In the doorway stood her older brother, Angel, who looked extremely annoyed.

She gaped at him. "Did you just knock down my door? You'd better hope you didn't break the lock!"

"I wouldn't have had to if you had just answered me," he snapped, crossing his arms. "I thought something had happened to you! What's wrong with your ears? Couldn't you hear me yelling for you to come down to dinner?"

"I was busy," she said, quickly moving her arm to cover the letter she was writing.

Angel stormed towards her and snatched up the paper from her table before she could stop him.

"Hey! Give that back!" she shouted immediately, leaping up from her chair.

His eyes roved over the paper, and then he started laughing. "Is this a love letter? Who writes love letters nowadays?!"

"Says the basketball nut," she snapped, struggling to snatch her letter back. "You know nothing about romance!"

He was still holding it out of her reach.

"That's not true," he said, looking mildly offended. "The manga I read has romance in it."

"Yeah, but all you read are sports manga, and the romance in it probably takes up about 0.5 percent of the whole storyline!" She tackled him with all her strength. "Now give it back!"

Angel fell and winced at the pain of the impact as his back met her floor. "No wonder you don't have a boyfriend and have to write pathetic little love letters. You're so violent you'd scare away any guy in the vicinity."

She ignored him and plucked her letter out of his hand. With a little huff, she folded it in half and slotted it in between the pages of her writing pad. She would have to continue it later.

Alicia eyed Angel with some scorn in her eyes. "And the reason you don't have a girlfriend is because your eyes are so stuck on your stupid sport!"

"Stupid—" he said, looking struck by her attack on his beloved basketball. "Basketball isn't stupid! You are stupid!"

"So mature," she said, sneering as she spun on her heel to leave the room.

"Hey! Where are you going?" he shouted behind her. "We're not done here!"

"Down to dinner, genius!" she hollered over her shoulder as she ran helter-skelter down the stairs.

Unsurprisingly, he caught up to her before she could make it all the way down and raced her to the dining table. He got yelled at by their mother for almost knocking over her vase. Although he was almost two years older than her, he never acted like he was above conversing or interacting with his younger sister.

Alicia kind of loved her sports-obsessed brother when she wasn't busy being annoyed at him.

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"Are you sure you want to put that in his locker? What if someone else gets their hands on it?"

"Who's going around rifling through other people's lockers?" Alicia rolled my eyes at her best friend's needless worry. "Relax."

"I just think you should try to get to know him as friends first before asking him out," Juliet Marsh insisted, biting off another square of chocolate. "I'm not saying he'll reject you, because you're cute and he might just accept your confession, but you have to think about it from his point of view. You guys haven't really interacted much since fifth grade."

"I just don't think I can wait any longer while hiding my feelings," Alicia said, trying not to crumple up the envelope in my hands. "I've been in like with him for five years, Juliet. The only reason I didn't confess sooner is because I kept chickening out."

"And before you knew it, five years had passed?" she said skeptically.

Alicia glared at her. "Can you be a bit more supportive for like five seconds? I'm about to slot my very first love letter into Theodore's locker and you're making me chicken out again."

Juliet threw her hands into the air. "Okay, fine! Excuse me for trying to help. Go ahead and send out that letter, but don't say I didn't warn you."

"Yes, do that. And then we can go out and celebrate your bravery over cakes at Ray and Parker," a voice said behind them.

They both jumped at the sight of Romeo Key who had suddenly appeared.

"I could do with an iced latte," Alicia admitted. "I might just faint after putting the letter into his locker."

"Great," he said, carding his fingers through his pale-blond hair. "You get your coffee and I'll get my cake. Let's get this over with."

"That's not even real encouragement," Juliet said, folding the silver foil over the rest of the chocolate bar and tossing it into her book bag. "You just want to stuff your face with confectionary."

"Yes, I do. You know me so well," he said, slipping the headphones that were hanging around his neck back over his ears. "Go, Alicia! You can do this!"

When he gave her a little nudge in the back, she rolled her eyes but straightened up and marched towards Theodore Gregory's locker.

She could do this.

She was not going to let her nerves get the better of her.

Alicia forced herself not to look on either side of her in case someone noticed her twitchy behavior. Being deemed sketchy would quickly draw attention to her, and the last thing she wanted was for anyone to spot her dropping a love letter into her crush's locker.

Granted, she had signed off with from Alicia on her letter, but that didn't mean that she wanted the whole world to know she had written a love letter to one of the more popular boys in the tenth grade.

She knew that Theodore would be too kind to ever show that letter to anyone else, even if he ended up rejecting her. That was one of the reasons she liked him so much. Theodore was nothing like most of those insensitive boys in her grade.

Her hand shook as she pulled out the sealed envelope from her bag. It trembled so much that she actually had trouble slotting it into Theodore's locker, but after a couple seconds of fumbling, she managed to get it in.

"Hey, Cameron," someone with a deep voice next to her said. "What's that?"

She whirled to her left, gasping as her hand rose to her chest. The unwelcome busybody stood before her with crossed arms as he leaned his side against a locker door. Cocking a blond eyebrow at her, he grinned with all the self-satisfaction of someone who had figured out something he wasn't supposed to stumble upon.

Nicholas Stevenson was one of the boys in her grade that she couldn't stand. He thought he was so funny in class, constantly giving his unfortunate teachers cheek when all they wanted was to do their job. For some reason, he also thought that he was very handsome and flirted with any girl who ever laid eyes on him like he was gracing her with his presence. Realizing that the size of his ego was bigger than the entire planet Earth was enough for Alicia to deem him completely undesirable.

The fact that his best friend was Theodore made her wonder just what her crush saw in him. There was no accounting for tastes.

"Stevenson," she said stiffly.

"What were you doing?" he said, his dark eyes flicking to the locker.

Her mind drew a complete blank as she blinked rapidly, begging her brain to please come up with something, please.

Her brain laughed mercilessly at her pathetic attempt to save herself from doom.

"It's none of your business," was what she eventually settled on, wanting to hit herself for being unable to come up with a snappy retort.

She hadn't thought that his eyebrows could rise even higher, but then they did.

"None of my business? Really?" he said, stepping forward a little.

Gulping, she backed up against Theodore's locker. "Wh-what do you want? A little personal space here, please."

"I want," he said patiently, taking another step closer, "to get to my locker so I can open it and see what you just put in it. Now please move."

All sorts of alarms went off in her head. She inched back a little more.

"Excuse me?" she squeaked out. "Your locker? What do you mean, your locker? This is Theodore's locker."

Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Juliet and Romeo watching them. They were at least twenty feet away, and she doubted that they could hear the conversation she was having with Nicholas from that distance.

The smile he gave her was a perfect mix of condescension and confusion. "Why would this be Theo's locker? Seriously, what did you put it in it? Is this some kind of prank? Because I have to say, if it is a prank, I'm not above getting my revenge."

He sidled even nearer. His spicy cologne flooded her nostrils as he did, and she turned her head aside to gag. Nicholas clearly didn't know what moderation was. The close proximity made Alicia promptly throw in the towel—she stepped back and watched in horror as Nicholas started turning the combination knob like he actually knew what he was doing.

No way.

He had to be lying. There was no way that was actually Nicholas' locker.

Numerous flashbacks of Theodore opening this very locker flashed through her mind. This couldn't be possible. This locker had to be Theodore's—why else would she come across him opening it so many times? Why would he even open someone else's locker?

She couldn't have been wrong about it... could she?

Feeling faint, Alicia glanced back to see what her friends were doing while she was trying not to flip out. Juliet was frowning at her and making hand gestures that basically spelled out 'What's happening?' Romeo was bobbing his head to his music and watching them with mild interest.

"Come here," she mouthed at them, beckoning with her hand.

Romeo frowned at her clear signal. After exchanging a few words, her best friends started towards her.

She heaved a sigh of relief at the idea of getting backup. In all honesty, she had no idea what they would be able to do even if they came over, but at least she wouldn't have to face this horrifying scene all by herself.

The locker door swung open, and her attention immediately snapped back to Nicholas.

"An envelope?"

Her heartbeat went into overdrive.

"What's up?" Juliet whispered, putting a hand on Alicia's shoulder.

"He said it's his locker," she whispered back.

The appalled look on Juliet's face did not even begin to describe how Alicia felt right this moment.

Nicholas extracted the letter from his locker and slammed the door shut again with a casual flick of his wrist. Upon noticing Juliet and Romeo who were standing behind her like a pair of bodyguards, he did a double take.

"What's with the crowd?"

"Give that back!" Alicia lunged at the envelope, but Nicholas sidestepped her smoothly.

He stared at her before laughing.

"Excuse me? This is clearly for me. Why should I give it back?"

Alicia's stomach plummeted down to the tips of her toes as he reached for the seal on the envelope. She reached desperately for it again, and this time Juliet backed her up.

"Give it back, Nicholas! You heard her!"

"Hey, hand that back," Romeo said as he pulled off his headphones, apparently catching on to what was happening. "It's hers."

"Seriously, what's going on here? You literally just gave it to me."

Alicia couldn't even find it in her heart to blame him for looking so weirded out.

She was the one who had slotted it into his locker. If he hadn't showed up when he did, she would have happily gone off for coffee in blissful ignorance.

"I didn't give it to you!" she blurted out, and then realized how stupid that sounded. "I mean, it's not for you. It's mine."

"And that's why you put it in my locker," he said dryly, dodging a couple of attempts by both Juliet and Alicia to snatch it back. "Is someone wearing eau de salmon? Because it smells fishy in here. See you in class tomorrow, Cameron."

He turned and ran like a dog was snapping at his heels.

A heavy silence fell upon the three best friends. With a lurch of her stomach, Alicia finally noticed the attention that they had garnered during the mini confrontation. Several people who had been milling past the lockers had stopped to watch them argue over a plain envelope. When it became evident the show was over, they lost interest and continued on their way.

"Well..." Alicia said after a suitably long moment had passed, "I'm dead. Promise me you'll attend my funeral."

Juliet sighed. "I told you not to put it in his locker."

Romeo just snapped his gum.

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AN: Hi, thanks for checking this out! This is a sample of The Wrong Locker, my Patreon-exclusive novel. If you'd like to read more of it and support my writing, head on over to my bio to find my Patreon link! As a patron, you can find ALL the rest of the chapters of The Wrong Locker there. It's already complete ʕ •ᴥ•ʔゝ☆ Polar Bear Tier supporters will also get the compiled EPUB file once I finish tidying it up. Thank you for considering it (ﾉ'ヮ')ﾉ*: ·ﾟ𓇼