Rachel Lynn Solomon

A low whistle rolls through the crowd. Five thousand dollars—that’s more than double our prize from last year. It would cover the first-year tuition my scholarships didn’t.

I could buy so many books

MOST RUTHLESS KILL: Alexis Torres Aiden Gallagher, by way of breaking up with him

“Come on. I’m giving you an olive branch here.”

“If I can’t smack you with it, what’s the point?”

I sincerely despise you

Then he makes a shooing motion with one hand, snapping me out of my nostalgia and replacing it with the contempt that’s been both a warm blanket and a bed of nails. A comfort and a curse.

But sometimes I get this strange feeling, an ache not for something I miss, but for something I’ve never known.

And you have this energy that radiates off you, a shimmering optimism I wish I could borrow for myself sometimes.

You’re looking at me like you can’t believe I’m not done yet, so let me wrap this up before I turn it into a five-paragraph essay. But if it were an essay, here’s the thesis statement:

I am in love with you, Rowan Roth.

Please don’t make too much fun of me at graduation?

Yours,

Neil P. McNair

“Crush” is too weak a word to describe how I feel. It doesn’t do you justice, but maybe it works for me. I am the one who is crushed.

There is too much care and sincerity in those words for it to be a joke.