Falling in Love (with Back-to-School Supplies)

The night before the first day of classes, I go back-to-school shopping at Target and purchase nineteen-cent notebooks in purple, red, and blue, seventy spiral-bound pages in each, more than enough space for me to record hush-hush hallway conversations, compile a long list of things I hope to accomplish before I turn twenty-one, and compose lengthy love notes I know I’ll never send to the gorgeous guy in the Oakland A’s hat, the bad boy in the back row carving words into an old wooden desk because he’s got nothing else to write on.