The Thing About Flip Flops

Chapter One: Hello Again

Jack's P.O.V. - One Week Ago

What is a heart?

Most people would tell you it's a central organ in your body, complicated but logical, a muscle that pumps the blood to all of your cells and keeps you going until it stops and you die. That would be the purely scientific take on it.

Others might call it the center of passion, the place we can truly feel the joy and pain that is love. I guess that's the philosophical take on it.

But when I think of a heart, I think of a scrawled doodle in ballpoint pen, jotted down on a post-it note and pasted neatly into my seventh-grade locker. No name attached, no message, nothing but the heart drawn in black ink.

I was so excited to have a secret admirer, even though all of my friends teased me about her.

Being nosy seventh graders, everyone tried in vain to find out which of the girls in our class gave it to me, but with no luck. Chasing pigtailed girls on the playground and demanding them to draw a heart on a piece of paper for comparison proved useless.

Years later, I still have no idea who sent me the post-it, though it's become much less of a pressing issue in my mind. The only time I think of it now is when I think of her.

She wasn't the one who sent it, I had thought, because she helped me in my interrogation process while I tried to work out who had sent the post-it. Why would she help me if she didn't want to be caught?

It only occurred to me years later that because she was helping, she was the only girl who's drawing ability I didn't test.

But I moved away the summer after ninth grade, and I never got the chance to ask her, or to tell her...

It doesn't matter anyway.

I was dragged away from my life, my friends, and the possibility of ever finding out if the person who sent the note so long ago was who I hoped it was.

Today, I am finally coming back.

***

After twenty or so minutes of internet stalking, my phone rewards me with a location. 290 Rosamund Street.

Joshua Aaron's birthday parties are always huge and full of people. I still remember that from elementary school, though from what I can see in people's instagram stories, there's much more liquor at the parties nowadays.

But as it's the main social event of the semester, and since it's my first weekend back in town, I feel the need to be there.

I don't even like parties. It's just that, on the off-chance that she's there, it would be worth suffering through a night of horny teenagers and shitty disco beats for just a short conversation with my long-time crush.

Ex-crush, I remind myself, because I'm pretty sure I'm not in love with her anymore. At least, I don't think I am. If I see her at this party, I'm probably just going to want to be her friend instead of anything else.

Probably.

Some people would think I'm a crazy stalker, still thinking about the girl I've liked since seventh grade, especially since I moved away at the end of our freshman year. But for me it's hard to see it that way.

The thing is, I'm still in touch with a lot of people from the area, including her twin brother. Actually, her brother was one of my friends before I left, and we still text a lot even though we're not that close anymore.

But he definitely knows about my feelings for his sister, even though I've never explicitly told him. He always used to tease me about her, and he still sometimes sends me updates about her life even though I try to never ask about her.