The Notebook (aka Facebook was my idea)

I am so smitten with a boy named Myles with soft blue eyes in the eighth grade that my hor-motional body may burst. There is no Facebook profile to stalk in 1993, so I begin what I believe is the first Facebook wall in analog, a page of an erstwhile Social Studies notebook that I devote entirely to writing thoughts and feelings about Myles. Things I observe after he gets a haircut, witticisms he utters during a pop quiz in language arts. The page looks like the diary of a crazy woman, every thought punctuated with hearts and swirls. It is my private graffiti and I write on this page at least once a day. The release feels good. Even as I am scrawling all over the page, though, I am aware that this paper is a complete liability to myself.

On a family vacation, I am suddenly conscious that I am sitting in the middle seat of our mini-van and my younger sister Taryn is in the far back seat where my notebook is. Just before I turn around, I feel the knowledge tightening in my chest that there is nothing else on earth that Taryn could be reading right at this moment than my Ode to Myles.

My instincts do not disappoint me.

My face, hot, my eyes cast down as I grab the notebook from her.

I leave Taryn to digest this collateral damage she has just read.