By the Playbook

By the Playbook (29)

                When I was thirteen, I fell in love. The object of my affections was everything that I thought I wanted – handsome, funny, smart... my pre-pubescent self was fascinated by the way he carried himself, like he owned the world and everyone who disagreed was simply irrelevant. Even his name, Anson, meant divine, and I thought there could never be a more perfect man than him in the world.

Anson was in the same level as Oliver had been to me at that time: loved from afar. He knew my name only because he sat behind me in Maths and, being thirteen and a general idiot, I would let him copy off of my work while pretending to inspect it for mistake. We weren't friends, and though I knew he only knew me as 'AJ from Maths', I was still thrilled to be part of his life in such a meaningless way. When the term flipped and we had new classes, I was ecstatic when a seating plan put me directly in between he and his best friend, even just so he could whisper in my ear what he wanted me to tell his friend. I thought it was my chance to make him see me as the love of his life, and so I made a general idiot of myself for a full semester.

That was until my fourteenth birthday. I'd barely even noticed Viktor Meminger as anything other than Anson's friend until he approached me in the hallway with a small, dark red box. He'd handed it to me, perfectly confident in himself even though I was a blushing mess, and then walked off as if nothing had happened. I'd analyzed every inch of the pale blue crystal carved into the shape of a bird for hours that night, conspiring with Emily about what it could mean – anything but the fact that he was the one who had an interest in me, not Anson. I forced myself to assume that the gift was from Anson, but he was just too shy to tell me about his crush on me.

Halloween came and went. My school didn't allow us to celebrate it – it was one of the newer holidays in Germany and the headmistress was about ninety years old and mean as a whip. I'd been in America once for Halloween when I was seven, and I'd mentioned my fairy princess costume a few weeks earlier to a girl named Liesel who sat in front of Viktor, Anson, and I. On the thirty-first, I opened my locker to find a small bag of orange and black jelly beans and a small doodle of a tiny blonde girl with massive blue eyes and an opened mouthed smile, prancing around with a jack-o-lantern in hand and a pair of glittery wings strapped to her back. They both joined my shrine to Anson in the back of my closet.

At Christmas, the last day before break, another box was left on the ground in front of my locker. The wrapping was royal purple, my favourite colour at the time, the white ribbon tied neatly into a bow. I'd been late that day, too busy doing last-minute wrapping for my friends, and scooped it up as I rushed to class. I'd held the box on my lap all the way through Literacy, noticing the way Viktor's eyes flickered to it while Anson remained oblivious. It confirmed what I already knew: all the gifts had been from Viktor, whether I could accept it or not.

When the lunch bell rang, I carried the box out to the front steps. It was snowing hard, a reason for most everyone else to eat lunch inside, so I was alone when I opened the box. Inside was a small silver bracelet with three charms – a bird, a crescent moon, and the sun – and a note. Two words were written in messy handwriting: Fröhliche Weihnachten. Merry Christmas.

I knew it was him before he sat down next to me, resting his elbows on his knees, hands clasped against the cold. He looked straight ahead, over at Frau Vogel's bakery, and I looked at him. He looked different outside of Literacy; not quite at Anson's level at perfection but cute nontheless. His dark hair was getting long, pushed out of his eyes by an impatient hand, his dark eyes surrounded by stunningly long lashes. He had a good, strong face, and was taller than me by a good seven inches, his shoulders broad from lugging equipment for his uncle, a carpenter.