On Valentine’s Day in second grade, the year before I moved away, you handed me a card with something inside it.
“Happy Valentine’s Day,” you said, shyly, and crept back to your seat on the other side of the classroom.
You were one of the quieter kids in class, somewhat of a loner but always sweet to me. A bit of an oddball, but I was too. We weren’t friends, exactly, but acquaintances how everyone is at that age, before cliques started forming and prejudices became known. I learned later that our teacher told my parents about your crush on me, and that everyone thought it was very sweet. At the time, I was embarrassed by the notion of crushes. To me boys were still boys—a yucky, scary thing to be kept at arm’s length. For anyone to know you had a crush on me would have dragged me into the narrative of ‘crush,’ a mortifying ordeal.
When I got home and opened the card, inside I found the first gift of romance I would ever receive: a necklace made of thin, beige string, a delicate cockle shell strung through the middle. Though only eight years old I must have known the significance of such an object, because even though I didn’t wear it to school I put it in a box to keep it safe.
This necklace—a small but mighty token—became the one thing tying me back to the years before my family’s move. So much of what I experienced in the coming years stemmed from the idea that I was undesirable, that I was ugly, that I didn’t fit in. A single seashell was a reminder that, even just once, I was wrong.
I still have the necklace. I thought you should know.
— “Brandon,” Letters to my Lovers (a book I’ll never finish)
