Chip Clarke looked like a dream. Frankly, he was a dream to me. In 2012, he was practically identical to Justin Bieber—same honey-brown, gravity-defying swoop and soft, cherubic face—except he was eight. I would fantasize about him being my boyfriend, about him noticing me in the ways that counted, not just because we were assigned seats near each other in Spanish class, but because he had privately concluded I was beautiful. That I was, in some quiet tribunal of his mind, The One.
My affection for Justin Bieber was most definitely loud and girlish; my deep crush on Chip was nearly monastic. Burning alive, buried inside of me. Pressed between diary pages, woven into the storylines I made up for my Barbies (he was always Ken), humming quietly in my subconscious as I slept for ten hours every night—the sleep of the morally uncomplicated. I was eight, and the boys in my grade were supposed to be disgusting, carriers of germs and cooties. It felt unkempt and embarrassing to think otherwise.
In some vague season, on a day whose weather I do not know, I walked into Ms. Spooner’s second-grade homeroom, and Stewart, one of my close friends at the time, came bounding towards me. Stewart was like a golden retriever puppy—puppy because she was eight, golden retriever because she had electric blonde hair, tan-tinged red skin, and shocking blue eyes, bright and startling against her round, full cheeks. She was always bouncing, wagging her tail, always excited about something. I was curious what she had to tell me, of course, but not in a way that prepared me for surprise, because at eight in the morning, news from another eight-year-old rarely alters your life. But what she told me most definitely surprised me.
I have a crush on Chip.
Surely I was going to throw up. My stomach churned with hot disgust, and it didn't help that my heart was sinking right into this fiery pit of despair. She “called him.” She got to him first. She was the first lady brave enough to admit that he was absolutely the cutest, most wonderful boy in our class. And her courage, well, I couldn't argue with that. And I could hardly make my admission in tandem. At eight, that’s copying. Instead, I suggested she write him a love letter.
I recall her giving me a kind of slanted, confused, lost-puppy (classic) look back. Clearly, Stewart was not a wordsmith. I insisted, This would be good, and anonymous—he would know he has an admirer. (The logic of this plan is entirely lost on me now, but I had probably seen it played out perfectly on some Disney afternoon specials. Front-runners include: Hannah Montana, Liv and Maddie, Ant Farm, etc. (Also… the anonymity of the letter didn't entirely kick me out of the race…)) She conceded, and we set out. We gathered pink and purple construction paper—that was Stewart's hand in all of this, the making of the card. Our other friends came up, nosy, asking what we were doing. Secret project, butt out, we’d snicker. Then it was time to write. Stewart held the pen, shaky and unsure. I leaned in: Well, what do you want to say? How do you feel about him?
She didn't know. Either I liked him much more, or her feelings were bigger than her vocabulary. Regardless, Stewart was out of her depth, so she passed me the pen, insisting I would be better at this. So I proceeded. Gladly!
I can't remember exactly what I wrote—only that, judging by the aftermath, it might have been a little racy for second grade. Something along the lines of: I think you are the most handsome boy in the whole school, and I would love nothing more than for you to be my boyfriend. Then I think it said I’m in love with you. Love, your secret admirer.
We felt not only a great sense of accomplishment, but also gloriously corrupt. We had stepped one inch past the invisible chalk line drawn around our youth. We had written to a boy. We had written love. We had invoked forces previously reserved for middle schoolers with lip gloss. At eight, this was complete and utter debauchery. But I could tell the devious sparkle was brighter in my eyes than in Stewart’s; while hers was more of a porch light eerily flickering in a storm, mine burned steady and devotional. She seemed nervous, understandably; this was an enormous admission, heart laid bare on pink cardstock. But I reassured myself, in my benevolent internal monologue, that I was here to help her.
So I offered to slip the letter into Chip’s locker. It would be far too risky for her. What if he saw? What if he knew about her big fat crush? No, no, allow me. I would be the courier of longing. Stewart was the horse, and I was the mouth. The body trembling with desire and the articulate tongue. This was completely altruistic of me, entirely selfless. I was happy to help!
We walked all of fifty steps down the hallway and to the left, holding our feminine divine quite literally in our hands, in a thick pink envelope with red Sharpie and heart stickers that caught the fluorescent light like sacred relics. The hallway buzzed with that classic institutional buzz, warm from the carpeted floors and bulletin boards declaring READING IS FUN! And we moved through this playpen like conspirators, giddy, knowing we knew something no one else in the whole school did. This wasn't a prank or a childish game; this was romance, yearning. Ancient and operatic and wildly disproportionate to our height.
She waited about ten paces back, posted as a lookout, hands clasped tight in front of her, while I advanced. We knew we needed to be quick about this; the school day would start any minute. The logistical problem: Chip’s locker was two down from the door to his homeroom. Dangerously exposed, but luckily, most of the students had already been funneled inside, so the corridor lay briefly unguarded, giving us a narrow strip of possibility. It felt safe, but like a heist nonetheless.
I tiptoed up, heart battering my ribs, slid the note through the top slit of three, and turned back to Stewart. We did it. Home free. And then—
Coco, what did you just put in Chip’s locker?
Chip’s teacher stood in the doorway, adult and enormous. I turned to Stewart for backup. She was gone. Evolution at work: survival of the least implicated, joke’s on me. Ummmmmm. I can't remember the teacher's name. She opened the locker, picked up the letter, and asked me to return to my classroom.
Some portion of the day dissolved, and I moved through it underwater, so nervous about what was to become of me. I felt dirty, and not the kind of dirty I felt after recess, but spiritually dirty. A promiscuous degenerate who was itching for the hands of Aphrodite to bring me my mini Justin Bieber. And the worst part: It was true. Stewart barely had anything to do with the whole farce. The urgency, mine; the hunger, mine. This no longer felt like yearning or anything close to romance. Frankly, I felt like I had betrayed my adolescence and Stewart’s and Chip’s. It was my perverted mind that landed me smack-dab in the middle of this whole mess.
By snack time, Ms. Spooner called me into the small auxiliary office—the one used exclusively for teacher lunches and child discipline. I knew immediately which category I fell into.
She was very pregnant then, and luminous. Thick black hair pulled into a tight ponytail that could only wrap twice around itself. A sharp, almost animated nose and a sweet smile that had previously been a North Star for me. I loved her with the fierce devotion reserved for second-grade teachers, the ones who function as your mother for eight sanctioned hours a day. I wanted to be her, or, at the very least, to be approved by her.
Today, she was not amused. This was not precocious or adorable. This was a breach: I, Coco, had invaded someone’s personal space. The word inappropriate landed like a verdict, so final, chilling. That's what I was, inappropriate. She said she would speak to Stewart, too, but we both understood the authorship here; I was, as it goes, caught red-handed, and between the tone, the flourish, and the reckless leap to love, she would have to call my parents. Shame quickly became physical. My face burned so hot it felt radioactive, and I was nauseous. But this was different from the kind I felt when I found out Stewart liked Chip; this was consequential nausea. I wished the chair would sink through the tile and lower me quietly into the earth. Preferably somewhere subterranean and punishing. Get it over with already. I wanted my mom. I was also certain she would despise me now. Everyone would. Ms. Spooner. Stewart. Chip. God. Hell, probably Justin Bieber too, in his handsome, all-knowing ways. I despised myself most efficiently of all.
The end of the day couldn't come slowly enough. When I got home, I opened the door quietly and slipped in like a trespasser. I eased it shut without a click, and as I shimmied off my shoes and attempted to disappear, unknown, upstairs, I heard my mom beckon me from the kitchen. Shoot. Jacket and backpack still on, I shuffled in, head down. My parents sat at opposite ends of the table, grave and symmetrical. I hovered by the door next to the landline, noting the instrument that had carried my prosecution.
My head was down, not because I feared their crucifixion but because a new part of me, one I had only recently discovered myself, was now exposed to them. I was supposed to be their little girl, not some sexually craven rebel, scribbling love letters to boys. And I still was! All I wanted was to collapse in my mom’s arms and let the dam break, tears, hiccups, all of it. I imagined pressing my face into her soft chest, breathing her in, as her hand rubbed slow circles on my back like she always did when I was sad. Then she would laugh a little, and tell me, smiling, lifting up my chin to face her: Oh, Coco, you have a crush, it's okay. If anything, you are just a true romantic! She would then remind me of the time her brother read her Hello Kitty diary and discovered her own crush on Ryan Koffman, proof she knew this feeling all too well.
That was not the ending I got.
Hello, I said, bracing. They asked me to sit and told me Spooner called. Coco, we don't do things like this; that’s inappropriate. That damn word again. They couldn't quite articulate why it was catastrophic, only that the school had deemed it so, and therefore it was. Institutions speak, and parents echo. This was the kind of behavior parents in a small buttoned-up town in Connecticut would talk about and refer to as cheeky. Cheeky was not good; cheeky was sassy and slutty.
As they rambled on, I drifted somewhere above the table, above the house, observing this small disgraced girl in her little jacket and little backpack, realizing with a clarity that wanting can indict you.
This was when I learned true shame. The slow, interior kind. The kind that suggests something in you might be fundamentally miscalibrated. Too much, too soon, too intense. Maybe this was the afternoon my romantic world first shrank.
Or simply the moment I understood that desire, once made visible, can turn on you.
