The note in Locker 214

The Truth tommy never wrote down

Never Wrote Down For two weeks after the dance, Ellie and Tommy fell into something that was not quite dating and not quite friendship, but sat somewhere warm in between. They ate lunch together sometimes, at Ellie's table in the back corner, which suddenly did not feel so lonely anymore. Tommy still blushed when she caught him staring, but he no longer looked away as fast as he used to. He never wrote her another anonymous note. Everything he wanted to say now, he said out loud, however clumsily, however slowly — and Ellie found she liked the clumsy, out-loud version of Tommy just as much as she had liked his careful, written words.Which was why it caught her completely off guard, on a rainy Thursday afternoon, when Tommy went quiet in the middle of a conversation and did not say anything for almost a full minute. "What's wrong?" Ellie asked. Tommy stared at his lunch tray like it held the answer to a difficult question. "I have to tell you something. And I should have told you this before any of the notes, if I'm honest. Before any of it." Ellie's stomach tightened. "Okay." "My family's been talking about moving," Tommy said. "For a while now. My dad got offered a job two states away, back in the spring.We almost left over the summer. It fell through at the last minute — a housing thing, nothing dramatic — but my parents brought it up again last week. It looks like it's actually happening this time. Probably by winter break." Ellie sat very still. "You're leaving?" "Maybe. Probably." Tommy finally looked up at her. "That's actually part of why I never told you the notes were mine, back when I first started writing them two years ago. I kept thinking, what's the point of telling her, if we're just going to move away anyway? It felt safer to just... love you quietly, from a distance, and not make things complicated by adding my name to it.It felt like less to lose, if it never really started." "But it did start," Ellie said quietly. "Two years of notes is not exactly nothing, Tommy." "I know that now," he said. "I think some part of me always knew that. I just didn't want to admit it, because admitting it meant admitting how much it would hurt to leave." Ellie sat with this for a long moment, rain tapping steadily against the cafeteria windows. "So what happens now?" she asked. "If you move?" "I don't know," Tommy admitted. "I keep thinking about it, and I don't have a good answer.Long distance is hard. We're sixteen. Nobody expects that to actually work out." He paused. "But I also know that pretending none of this is real, just because it might not last forever, feels like exactly the same mistake I already made once. I don't want to spend the next few months being scared and quiet again. Not with you. Not after everything it took to finally say things out loud." Ellie reached across the table and took his hand — not dramatically, not like a movie, just simply, the way you might reach for something steady when the ground felt uncertain."Then let's not waste whatever time we do have," she said. "Whatever happens after winter break, happens after winter break. But right now, you're still here. And I'd rather have a few real months with you than two more years of notes I didn't know were from you." Tommy let out a breath he did not realize he had been holding, something between relief and disbelief. "You're sure? Knowing all this?" "I've spent two years falling for a boy brave enough to notice everything about me and too scared to say his own name," Ellie said. "I think I can handle a few complicated months, Tommy.I'm tougher than I look." For the first time since the rain had started, Tommy smiled — the real kind, the kind that reached all the way to his eyes. "Okay," he said. "Then let's not waste it."