Words of the lesson droned on static in the background,there was only the the lined paper. His fingers gripped the yellow #2, tip blunted, eraser nearly gone.
It had to be perfect, every word a symphony of color and light, eyes pacing the smudged and wrinkled page for a hundredth time it seemed.
The blue steel lockers gleamed in the high stone halls like silent centurions guarding some ancient secret. He folded the creases with his best dexterity as rustling of assignments were passed around the class signaling that the hour was at hand, restless eyes glanced at the unforgiving clock by the door.

Three chimes sang  change of classes, he scrambled to locker 4A with a burning blood, the small square clutched like the world's last precious stone in his sweating fist. The echoing corridors flooded with faces and clamor of boisterous youth as he slipped it between the cobalt metal's narrow gap, breathing in deep with a hope that her perfume might come through and with it all dreams of her visage, and the words that he would tell her softly in some far away room where only she would hear them,  responding to him with lips unspoken, pressed to his in the warmth of all that is or ever could be good.

It was finished now with quivering hands and heart, he sidled through the throng to end of the iron hedgerow, where 4A was still in view. Pink polished digits twirled the combination lock,  then bent to retrieve with careful curiosity the parchment at matching toes. Her gaze lifted and combed the area, panic rose with sudden tornado force that whirled him unseen, then glancing again across the fading chorus he watched her reading. All joy swelled to fill the world as bubble gum glossed lips curled in a smile, her cheek glowed strawberry.

Her name was Alexis, she never knew his, for he did not sign the note.