Loving in the Margins
It started with trespassing.
Well perhaps trespassing is a tad excessive, but it was trespassing nonetheless.
Everyone, at some point in their education, has had messages left on their desks. Sometimes, they are life’s daily messes left behind. Broken pencils, passed notes, old homework. Other times they are carved into the tabletop, a heart with “M+L” and an arrow shot through it. Generic geometric patterns. Discreet expletives and crude drawings.
It’s just not very often that this vandalism leads to romance.
It was innocuous at first. Just a silly game. Clara Genteel knew this. She also knew that as a school monitor, she was obligated to report it. Reports were her least favorite job. After classes, she was responsible for going through all the classrooms, lifting the lids of the desks, and checking for any such acts of mistreatment to the work space and reporting them to Mr. Arnold.
Mr. Arnold, the janitor, was a most unpleasant individual who smelled strongly of gasoline. He lived in the musty basement of the Waldorf School. At the end of each day, Clara was obligated to leave her sunny dorm in the South Tower, and go down to “The Dungeon” as the students referred to it, and report any sort of classroom abuse. It seemed medieval to some of the students to write handwritten reports in the modern day instead of using an app like most schools did, but that was just the way Waldorf ran. Waldorf was the type of old, well-established boarding school that only taught old, well-established families. It didn’t matter that it was 2023 and most of the students owned computers. Waldorf still encouraged their students to hand write essays in cursive.
As she said, it all started very innocently. One day, several weeks ago, as Clara was doing her daily checks, she noticed a folded piece of lined paper in her desk. She opened it to find nothing but a small tic-tac-toe board on the side. One pink, curly x was in the middle square. Instead of reporting it, she had decided to play along. Soon, she and this mystery student had filled the margins of the page with tic-tac-toe boards, her o’s in midnight blue, their x’s in pink. Today, however, as she went to draw the final o in a draw round, she noticed, for the first time, a note.
“Dear C,” she read,
“I hope you’ve been enjoying our games as much as I have. Perhaps one day we can play a round in person. Have you figured out who I am yet?
Xoxo,
Your secret admirer
Clara was immediately suspicious. One of her friends had done this to spite her, she was sure of it, they did this sort of thing all the time. She took out her phone and took a photo of the letter.
“Alright, which one of you practical jokers did it this time,” she texted. “Fess up and I might not report you. If I’m feeling nice.”
Elizabeth Lopez, Benson Bean and Henry Coon had been her best friends since their first year at Waldorf. Last year, their group expanded when Erin Anagh transferred in the spring. Since then, the five of them had been inseparable. When she and Benson had taken on the role of school monitors the year before, their friends had taken it upon themselves to cause as much mischief as they could manage. Not enough to get in any serious trouble, but enough to harass their favorite monitors.
As Clara finished her rounds of the classroom, her phone buzzed in her pocket. She scrolled intently through the notifications.
Henry: It’s not me. I can’t even afford a monitor report after what happened last time. I swear, I’m going to be a saint for the rest of the semester.
Henry was referring to a Halloween prank several weeks prior involving a broom closet, several cans of aerosol hairspray and one very angry raccoon. His subsequent punishment- temporary suspension from the school’s baseball team- was more than enough to keep him toeing the line for the rest of the semester. It seemed unlikely that he would dare risk getting a report while the wound was still fresh.
The next message was from Elizabeth: I didn’t do it, girl! We don’t have any classes together this semester! How am I supposed to know which desk you sit at?
This, Clara reasoned, was a valid argument. She and Elizabeth hardly ever had classes together because Elizabeth was constantly up to her ears in pre-law work. Clara, on the other hand, was interested in international study. It was exciting if they saw each other once during the week.
Benson had simply responded to her text with an emoji face rolling its eyes. As a fellow monitor, he could be ruled out of Clara’s list of suspects. He liked reporting just as much as she did.
That left Erin. Erin was a bit of an enigma to Clara, as well as the rest of the school. Her arrival at Waldorf had been like a gust of fresh air. She seemed to bring a new life to the dusty walls of the Victorian style castle. Erin enthralled everyone, not only because of her vivacious and exuberant personality, but because no one at Waldorf had ever met anyone like her before. She hadn’t been raised in a boarding school, surrounded by the same faces all her life. Her knowledge of the world was far broader than the narrow scope of the Waldorf students sheltered existence. Erin fascinated them all, and Clara was no exception.
When Erin arrived, Clara had desperately wanted to be friends with this alluring girl from the outside, but she was sure she’d never have the courage to speak to her. Fortunately, she had talkative friends like Elizabeth and Henry, to balance out her and Benson’s more introverted dispositions, and had who claimed Erin as one of their own. To Clara’s great surprise, and joy, Erin had taken a liking to their small band, and had settled into her place in the group as though it had been tailor made for her.
Clara read the text message she received from Erin: I know we’re all here to defend our innocence, but can we actually talk about this letter? The “xoxo” sign off? Our wallflower has got herself a secret admirer! It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out who it is. They’ve called themselves out by defying the Pink Rule.
The Pink Rule that Erin was referring to was one of those peculiar rules that could only be found in a private boarding school. Any and all handwritten assignments had to be done in pen. Not just any pen, these were Waldorf issued pens, engraved school’s emblem and used an ink that had been made expressly for the school. It was a specific shade of midnight blue that verged on black and couldn’t be found anywhere else. So why call it the Pink Rule? Students were not even allowed to be in possession of a pen of a lurid color such as pink. The school would do occasional bag checks to make sure students didn’t have any sort of contraband. Any student found using a different color pen would have to handwrite an essay that typically centered on the Waldorf School’s illustrious history. In pen, of course.
All of Erin’s points could not be overlooked. A secret admirer might be interesting. Even if it was someone trying to pull her leg, she could keep the letter as evidence. As Erin has said, it shouldn’t be too difficult to find someone with a pink pen considering the searches.
That’s a good point, Clara responded. Right now, I’ll just respond to the tic-tac-toe game and maybe the person will eventually reveal themself. Waldorf is pretty good at sniffing out trouble makers.
She sent that message, then took out her Waldorf issued pen and put an o in the top right corner of the tic-tac-toe board, ending the game. Before she set out to meet her friends for dinner, she sent one more text.
And Erin, a secret admirer? Do you really think someone has a crush on the very person that is responsible for getting them in trouble? That’s very bold. I don’t do well with very bold.
Or secret admirers, she thought to herself as she walked down the staircase. Clara would never admit this, but ever since they had returned to school in the fall, she had become more and more nervous around Erin. She couldn’t explain it. The butterflies in her stomach whenever Erin was nearby. The way her face got hot whenever Erin leaned across her at the dinner table, or brushed against her as she was walking to class. The way that her day, no matter how awful, was always improved by Erin smiling at her, or talking to her, or laughing with her in their dorm late at night.
But there was no way someone as popular and attractive as Erin would ever like someone like her. She was, as Erin had so correctly phrased it, a wallflower. She wasn’t particularly popular or outspoken, whereas Erin was the life of the party and everyone liked her. And if she ever thought she saw smudges of pink ink on Erins hand, she put it out of her mind. There was no point in fantasizing the impossible.
Clara sat down at the dinner table next to Benson. Erin was nowhere to be found. She was usually late to dinner owing to her lacrosse practices. When she finally squeezed in next to Clara at the end of the table, Clara tried her hardest to ignore Erin’s windswept hair tickling her shoulder or the way that Erin smelled wonderfully like the crisp fall air. She made it through dinner in total silence, not betraying a single thought whizzing through her brain. Or so she thought.
“Hey, C, are you alright,” Erin asked suddenly, “you’re always quiet, but you really haven’t said anything all evening. Are you upset about the letter?”
“I’m fine,” Clara responded briskly, “I’m just going to go on a walk. I need some fresh air.”
She grabbed her bag and sped out the door onto the grounds. The cool air whipped her face and the setting sun had turned all the trees and buildings a magnificent shade of gold. As she began to run down the stairs to the lawn, someone grabbed her hand. Erin stood at the top of the stairs, her whole body awash in the setting sun.
For a moment, the world halted on its axis. Nothing moved. Not a bird in the trees or a rustle of wind. Clara hardly dared to breathe. She looked down at hers and Erin’s intertwined fingers and focused on the thin, unmistakable streak of pink on Erin’s thumb.
“This whole time,” Clara whispered. “It was you?”
“Yes”
“Oh”
Epilogue
“I swear one of these days I’m going to report you for that pink pen,” Clara huffed as she sat down next to her girlfriend. It was spring. She and Erin had been together for several months, and had even spent their winter break together. She couldn’t believe how much time had flown by since that autumn day in the sunset.
“Don’t be a sore loser. I’m just a tic-tac-toe genius, what can I say,” Erin replied.
Clara and Erin continued their tic-tac-toe games long after they had started dating. It was their way of communicating with each other. With both of them busy with separate classes, sometimes they didn’t speak to each other as often as they would have wanted. Their games kept them connected. They saved every piece of paper they filled. But now it was more than just pink and blue games. They sent each other notes in the margins too. Little love notes, doodles, questions and answers.
“Fine, you’re right, I am a sore loser,” Clara said. “But you’ve bruised my ego!”
“Do you want me to kiss it better?” Erin responded, leaning over.
Clara laughed as Erin planted a kiss on her cheek. She smiled and looked Erin in the eyes.
“Good game.”
