Untitled Part 1

Exclamation mark

He watched as she put a heart under the exclamation point.
Once this was done, she looked at him.
"Why is the sea salty?"
"I don't know."
"Oh..." She paused again, this time flipping the page to the one of questions she had.
'Why is the sea salty?'
She put a heart under her question mark too.
This time she hums as she turns the page again.
"Do you like me?"
Taken aback by the sudden question, the boy who was not raised on lies nodded.
She turned the page and crossed out a question.
"Do I like you back?"
"I don't know, Elise, you have to decide that yourself."
"Oh..."
She flipped the page again
'Do I like him too?'
She put a heart under the question mark, as if the question was simple.
"How is it that you're so smart, but so ignorant?"
"I don't know, that's difficult."
"If you're so smart, answer what you just wrote down." His eyes were full of tears, his voice nearly desperate now.
"The question is simple, but the answer is complicated."
She took out the pink pen and wrote another
'Why does my heart beat faster when I think about him?"

-1 year later-

She sat on the same bench, looking out at the sea.
She'd crossed off her two questions from all that time ago.
They'd once been a them. And then there was...her.
She was better, kinder, prettier, stronger than her.
It wasn't fair.
She'd known the boy her whole life, but this girl? A mere year. She'd countlessly said "I love you."
She wrote down in her book even,
'Will we last forever?' With the intent of being able to cross it out on her last living day, with a 'yes.'
A tear spilled down her cheek as she looked at another unanswered question.
'Why does he love her more than me?'
Footsteps sounded behind her.
No doubt they were his.
He took the seat next to her, without asking, like he always had.
"Did you find out why the sea is salty, then?"
And with these words, she stood up, clutching the notebook-
("No! Don't")-and hurled the notebook out to sea, the pages fluttering, then hitting the high tide waves.
She watched them for a few minutes, before turning to him.
"No," she said, calmly.
And then she walked away, like nothing happened at all.