The word love may have occurred to me in connection with Bobby, but I don't remember. It did occur to him in connection with me, and if I had ever wondered about it, on Valentine's Day I didn't have to wonder any more. Bobby gave me a large heart-shaped box of chocolates and a very grown-up romantic card with a satin heart and a verse I must have memorized on the spot. I still remember it.
Sweetheart, you're the dearest thing in all the world to me. You are ever in my heart, always, constantly. In all my dreams, in all my schemes, you play the dearest part. And I will always love you, from the bottom of my heart. (See, grown-up.)
And under the verse, in pencil, Love, Bobby.
We never kissed. By the end of the school year Bobby had lost interest in me. I never knew why. He just stopped liking me. And though I saw him give special thought to what he should write in my autograph book as the school year closed, he ended up writing the same little sing-song in my book that he wrote in everyone else's. "I oughtta cry, I oughtta laugh. I oughtta sign your autograph."
I don't know where I learned to be stoical about things, but stoical I was, although my heart broke a little that year. When I was eleven.
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