I am fifteen, when it starts, or fifteen and a half, and I have cut off most of my hair. We are in the same creative writing class, and I’ve started to write these poems, about an older boy that I don’t know, because it’s safe, and whatever adolescent longing I’ve accumulated from being the bookish, blush-prone, chubby nerdy girl who then developed a love of backpacking and wearing men’s boxer shorts as outside shorts doesn’t matter, in between the syllables. One of these poems, I can’t remember which, makes you write me a letter, and hand it to me, as we’re leaving class. The letter tells me that I have stunned you. You have a girlfriend. I ignore them, those two stray marks…