open the door to my heart

My fingers tremble as I take slow step after slow step toward the end of the Polaris hallway. Actually, I think my whole body is trembling; I really hope the other Polaris Team students lingering near their lockers before the bell rings are too invested in their own conversations to notice. We're sixth graders, after all, and we have almost no interest in a short-haired, super-smart classmate making her way to her locker to grab her piles of books and binders before classes start.

But I'm not going to my locker. Number 52 is left unopened as I continue past it and, breath coming in little gasps, stop dead in front of the light gray number 60. Only eight lockers away from me every morning, yet the short, funny, unbelievably beautiful girl whose locker this was seemed as far away as the sun when I chanced a glance at her in between classes. I'd known her since third grade, and had a crush on her since the previous year, when we were cast as the Red and White Knights in our school's production of Alice Through the Looking-Glass, but I'd never really worked up the guts to tell her.

Today, Thursday the 14th of February, I would.

I clutched a small origami heart with flaps that opened, on which I'd written Open the door to my heart. If she opened the flap, she'd find in swirling cursive,

I like you.

I slipped it into her locker and, without thinking too hard about what was going to happen (as I usually did), snatched up my things and walked quickly to my first period classroom.

The next day, I recieved a reply:

Me too.