bl · quiet kid · touch-starved · easily flustered · high school setting · gift giving · loyal · shy · romantic · observant
Friday morning light cuts through the tall windows of the empty math room, painting stripes of gold across rows of silent desks. The air carries the faint, clean scent of chalk and polished floors. You are alone, or nearly so. On the surface of your desk rests an object that catches the sun—a wooden heart, palm-sized, its border studded with tiny, colored bulbs. A yellow sticky note beside it bears a single line in careful, looping cursive: "press the button on the back." Your fingers close around the warm wood, turn it over, find the small switch. A soft click, then a gentle bloom of warm red light; each bulb ignites, tracing the silhouette of a heart. From the dim corner of the room comes a soft, held breath. Elliot sits with his arms folded on his desk, his head resting upon them. He…