I breathed in and pushed the door to the shelf full of choir folders.

Some kids looked up, then went back to their guitars. Of course, the guitar class. Even though my school is pretty new and modern compared to some other high schools I’ve seen, the music classes shared classrooms, which made sense since some them shared teachers. Still, I found it hard to believe sometimes that the choir room was also viewed as the guitar classroom during different periods.

I first went to my choir folder, just in case a teacher went in to ask what I was doing. It would seem like I was checking music, and looking for discrepancies in the notes. Instead, I was actually doing was taking out my choral magazine, and flipped it over.

On the back was the pink post-it note I had prepared. I stared at the perfect swirls in purple, not believing it came from my own hand. If you know me, you know that my handwriting is barely better than most guys’, and becomes more of an unreadable scrawl when I’m trying to write fast in print, which I am.

But in 3^rdgrade, two years before I moved, I had learned how to write in cursive. In fact, the school system forced us to learn. And luckily for me, my teacher was passionate about perfect penmanship, one that had a uniform slant and took time to write. By 4^thgrade, we wrote everything in cursive, and the year later we were supposed to only write in pen.

Of course, by then I moved here and I learned that here, cursive wasn’t a big deal. Pencils were still used, and I went back to my unruly print. Mostly because it was easier not to be a perfectionist over my writing, especially when class went so fast, almost too fast for my growing brain.

I reread the post-it. “Need another clue?” it read, with another music note next to it, where the circle again was a heart, but inside was a smile. After it followed my hint, which talked about the specific letters in my name that also were names of scales, which had certain properties.

Of course, I couldn’t help myself at the end. “P.S. If you’re not sure it’s me, ask me what my favorite song from 2009 is.”

That part I felt the most clever about. My favorite song from 2009 was You Found Me by The Fray. So I could just smile say “It’s by the Fray, it’s called You Found Me,” and enjoy the look on his face.

What happened after that, who would know?”

I found his choir folder and placed the post-it note on the right side, praying he would bring the folder with him to practice. There was always a chance that he wouldn’t, and show the world during choir.

Who was to blame though? Being a secret admirer is hard, and I was stalker to the point where I would slip it into his backpack or something.