A Note A Day

13 | on the floor in front of her locker

| 13 |

❝ One look at you leaves me breathless ❞

HIS BIG BLUE eyes were tracing her every move, her every shuffle. He looked worried, running a hand through his onyx hair. His voice came out like a rushing river. "Are you okay, Charlotte?"

Charlotte... Charlotte... The way that name rolled off his tongue made her take a deep breath. "I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" he inquired, taking a couple steps closer to her. She gulped.

"Yeah, I- I just got a little stressed."

"Why?" He looked her in the eye, the look on his face as if he were concerned, his eyebrow curving. Charlie felt herself walk towards him as if he were a magnet.

"I- I don't-"

"Because I'm not the one who writes you the notes?" he grinned, his pearly white teeth giving her a headache.

Her jaw nearly dropped. Incoherent thoughts buzzed through her mind. "How do y-"

"This is a dream, Charlotte," his voice was hushed, soothing.

Charlie's head spun and the room, which she suddenly realized was her bedroom - why would Theodore be in her bedroom, she was such an idiot -and she squeezed her eyes shut. He wasn't even wearing his big, nerdy glasses. How did she not realize this was a dream? "We kissed."

"I suppose we did," he laughed, and she was shocked to realize how much Teddy's cheerful laugh affected her even in a dream.

He reminded her of a tempest. A storm. The way he kissed, the way he smiled, the way he was lodged in her mind. Theodore Orion Higgins was a storm.

The sleepover was just the calm before the storm. Then the hug, and... The kiss. The heart-wrenching, mind-numbing kiss that awakened the raging winds in her mind and summoned the massive amounts of thunder in her heart. Bum. Bum. Bum. Crash. The start of the storm.

To know Teddy wasn't her note writer, however... It utterly petrified Charlotte. The whole tempest collapsed, the winds howled, the thunder clapped, her mind blanked.

And she woke up.

Charlotte's eyes flew open, a gasp of breath escaping her lips. The first thing she saw was a white popcorn ceiling.

"What the hell, Charlotte?" A deep voice sounded through the room. She whipped her head to the side and saw Shane sitting on a plastic chair to her right.

"What happened?" Malcolm's voice made an appearance.

It was then when she realized she was in the nurse's office at school. The room was filled with cheesy posters and drab walls and such. Malcolm and Shane were looking at her with frightful, concerned faces.

Charlie gulped. "I..."

Their faces looked at her, waiting for an answer. Charlotte gulped down the truth and violently shook her head.

"Are you sure you don't know why you fainted?" Malcolm whispered with a hush, leaning in closer to her with a caring expression on his cute face.

Should she tell him they kissed? How Theodore, his cousin, and her kissed? And she'd have to explain the whole note deal. That would take forever.

"I- I don't," she hastily spewed a lie. "I don't know why I fainted."

•|•|•

It was a week later.

She had been thoroughly avoiding-dash-ignoring Theodore [who had been coming to school again] with a brain full of fuzz and nonsense. The notes just didn't add up.