This story is for my co-author.
So many things had happened in the last few chapters, I never got around to explaining what I had said to Heathcliff at Selene's birthday party.
The reason why I understood one hundred percent what Heathcliff was going through was because I had experienced it myself, but it wasn't me who fell in love first. Here's my story:
By the time I got to ninth grade, where I lived, most kids have already gone on at least one date and have had their first kiss. I was among the small minority who didn't do either, but I didn't know that at the time, because I had no close friends and was poorly informed about school trends. Interestingly, all my classmates thought I was smart at science, so they would often socialize with me for a few moments, bringing me homework to do, or to me to ask about what they didn't understand in class. I helped everyone as best as I could, until my science teacher told me after class one time that nobody was really learning anything because I had done all their homework for them. She suggested that I should start a homework club at school instead if I wanted to help people with their homework. Through this, I found out how to start a club.
That's how I came to know my sweetheart (who back then wasn't my sweetheart yet); she was a frequent member of the homework club and helped me a lot with writing essays while I explained maths to her. Later I found out that she was writing an action-adventure-mystery-thriller-romance novel, so I read her manuscript and thought it was a really good book in-progress. After that, whenever she got stuck in a part of her book she didn't know how to finish, I gave her some ideas she could use. For these ideas I drew inspiration from old Hollywood movies I had watched, and she liked the ideas very much.
Eventually she became my best friend; we spent a lot of time together discussing the books she was writing (there were more than one!) and essays and maths. To show my friendship I invited her to watch my favorite movies with me; she liked my movies, just as I liked her books. We found out that we have a lot in common.
That was when she told me that she has a crush on me; it was after watching Superman at my house, and the credits were still rolling. She leaned against me and whispered it just as the romantic cue on the soundtrack came up, but I didn't make a remark about this amazing coincidence, because at that moment I felt very hot on the inside, which was strange, because I didn't think (and neither did all of my family) I had ever blushed before. I had never felt so uncertain in my whole life.
From then on afterward, her friends began dropping obvious hints that I should get together with her. One particular friend of mine did so too, because he had gotten to know her through me mostly. I still didn't know what to do, so I did nothing and didn't think much about it.
Gradually, my best friend and I, we drew apart. It might have been her doing, but for the most part I think it's because I was acting oblivious and not even saying anything. At this point, my friend was desperate, and he told me that my best friend thinks I don't like her, so she was trying to avoid me and get over the crush.
When my friend told me this, I was sad and angry at myself, because I had hurt my best friend's feelings.
If there's one thing I never wanted to do, it's to hurt someone's feelings. Dad always told me to never hurt anyone's feelings, because feelings are a lot more valuable and fragile than the body (which to hurt occasionally is okay, but only at fight clubs and in emergencies). It wasn't that I had hurt my best friend's feelings because of something I said or did, it was because I didn't do anything when she said she likes me, and not doing anything turned out to be a lot worse than doing something.
I thought about it, as I had been doing for some time. I realized that I like her, I like her a lot and much more than the books she was writing, and to my surprise, a lot more than my favorite movies too.
Of course, I didn't have the guts to tell her so late after she told me that I like her too, so I was helped along by a wonderful coincidence. My best friend attended the same English class as me, and at that time we were studying short stories. At the end of the unit, our assignment was to write a short story, so this was what I wrote it on.
I changed all the names and the places, but all of her friends and my friend too saw the parallel between my short story and what happened between me and my best friend.
In my story, the protagonist - a boy who likes movies - has a best friend - a girl who write books, which the boy also wants to do - who confessed to him that she has a crush on him. The boy was too shy to respond, and the girl thought he didn't like her. To make up for his mistake, he wrote a short story based on what happened between him and his best friend and read it aloud in class. The story was the same as the story he was in, with the main character writing a short story to tell his best friend that he likes her. In the end, the girl saw that the boy likes her too, and they joined hands and walked off into the sunset.
My English teacher loved my story, not because it was true (he didn't know that), but because I incorporated a story-within-a-story loop in my short story, and he complimented me, saying it was clever of me to have thought of that.
After school, my best friend walked up to me as I was walking home and said it was very touching of me to have done what I had done, she thought it was cute and she liked it very much. Then, she said if I wanted to cause a lot fewer misunderstandings like the one between me and her in the future, I'm going to have to learn to express myself better, of which I'll have plenty of practice, because from that moment on we were officially in a relationship.
That was how my best friend became my sweetheart.
I wanted to tell Heathcliff this story because I thought he doesn't have to try so very hard to woo Theo, because I'm sure that Theo is a good person who knows that Heathcliff's feelings are valuable and will value them like he values her.
When I get the chance, I'll tell Heathcliff this story...as soon as I lose the very angry Magic School Bus, which had just sped up and was near to catching up to the hovercraft.
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