Passing Notes Read Online Free PDF

public, but keep romance discreet. A woman needs to
believe that you are hers alone, and that you will share with her
what you won’t give to anyone else.
    I understood it this time. The penmanship was
easier to read, and his fancy vocabulary didn’t test me. He was
basically telling me I’d screwed up by writing my apology in a
public forum. That only made it worse because now all 382 of her
“friends” knew I’d done something stupid toward her.
    382 people had probably jammed her phone
messages with “I told you so” and “Who is the jerk?” texts. I saw a
handful of them last night on the computer. A couple old
boyfriends, including Lance, probably made themselves known, too.
“Dump the loser and remember what we had.” I really was an
idiot. She should dump me.
    I put my pen to the paper under that note,
curious to see what would happen if I wrote:
    What should I do now?
    Letter by letter an answer appeared.
    Try again.
    I pulled out my phone, intending to sneak
online for a second and email her. That would be more private.
    But bold, black letters scrawled across the
page so dark and thick that I could almost hear the scraping of the
invisible marker: NO!
    “Okay,” I whispered. “Calm down.” I pocketed
the phone.
    What then? I wrote.
    On paper. A fresh, clean sheet of
stationery. A piece of parchment that shows that she is worth
something more substantial than scrap paper.
    I didn’t have anything like that. All I had
was college rule, 3-hole notebook paper. Where was I going to
get... I noticed Jill over at her desk, her backpack open and
dangling from the back of her seat. Her sketchbook for Advanced Art
class stuck out of it.
    “Jill?” I whispered loud enough to get her
attention. “Can I have a piece of your drawing paper?”
    “No,” she whispered back over her shoulder.
“It’s expensive.”
    “I’ll give you a buck a page.”
    “How much do you want?”
    I traded my lunch money for five sheets.
    I wanted to write something to Bethany right
away, but I figured that was not what the ghost wanted me to do. I
hardly had enough room to write neatly on this edge of desk I had
to work with. To make space for an answer from the ghost, I wrote
as small as I could at the bottom of my note:
    What should I write?
     
    What you feel! But practice first. Get it
right.
    Why are you helping me?
    The ghost didn’t answer right away, but when
he did his response was in neat printing, not the cursive he
usually used.
    A man in the army needs to be able to write
to the woman he leaves at home. It may be all she has left of him
if things go wrong.
    I wanted to ask more, but I was out of space.
I ripped out a new sheet of paper and wrote a couple more
questions. He didn’t answer any of them. He was gone.
    I practiced writing letters every moment I
got a chance that day. Not having heard from Bethany at all, I
avoided the cafeteria at lunchtime and sat outside on the football
stadium bleachers to write—and scratch out—and write again. Nothing
seemed sincere enough.
    Just before lunch ended, my phone buzzed. A
message from Bethany:
    Hi.
    Not much to go on, but I answered.
    Hi.
    Are you okay?
    I gs. U?
    Yeah. Fine.
    I didn’t know how to respond, so I
didn’t.
    See you later , she sent.
    K
    I didn’t ask when. I didn’t push. I wanted to
send her this letter before I did anything else she’d dislike. I
slipped my phone back into my pocket, and it crunched against some
paper. Another note from my ghost.
    Absence makes the heart grow fonder. Keep
some distance, and your letter will make more impact.
    Not feeling patient enough to write, I
whispered to the note as if the ghost were inside the words written
there, “But I really want to see her.”
    Letter first.
    “How should I give it to her?”
    Mail is best. It is a thrill to receive
mail.
    “Mail is slow. We call it snail mail these
days for a reason. That’ll take days. Can’t I just slip it into her
locker?”
    No. Mail it. Heed my words