A Reilly McGee Short Story
When Mrs. Harmon said, “Write about your first crush,” I felt my stomach drop like I’d missed a step.
I could already hear Nolan in my head:
“Bro, just write ‘pizza’ and be done with it.”
But I knew exactly who it was. Haley Chen.
Not Hailey Dupree, who showed up halfway through seventh grade with perfect eyeliner and an attitude like she owned the air.
Not Lucia Morales, either. Lucia was different. We were already friends before anything shifted. We’d trade playlists, argue about movies, and roast each other’s lunch choices. Lucia knew me. Still does.
But Haley Chen came before all of that.
We weren’t friends. We never really talked. She sat two rows ahead of me in English and always wore black hoodies with the sleeves pulled over her hands. She’d doodle constantly—little cryptic things. A dragon curled into a teacup. A city floating on a balloon. I never knew what they meant, but they stuck with me.
One time, I dropped my pencil. She picked it up, handed it back, and said, “You should get one with a grip. You hold it too tight.”
That was it.
She turned back to her notebook like she hadn’t just launched a small earthquake inside me.
I didn’t tell Nolan. I didn’t tell anyone. It was one of those quiet crushes—intense, stupid, private. I started carrying two pencils after that—one for writing. One, just in case she needed one. She never asked.
Looking back, Haley was never going to be part of my life. And that was okay.
Lucia… she’s different. She is part of my life. We laugh, we argue, we send each other memes at 2 a.m. She’s someone I don’t have to pretend around. And yeah, maybe that turned into something else, slowly, but it’s real in a way Haley never was.
Still, when I sat down to write the assignment, this is what came out:
Her name was Haley Chen.
She never knew me.
But I noticed her before I even knew what noticing someone meant.
She never said much, but the silence around her felt like something important.
My first crush wasn’t loud. It didn’t burn.
It just sat there quietly, like a spark waiting to go out.
I handed it in, heart thumping harder than it should’ve.
Mrs. Harmon never read it out loud. Thank God.
But if she had, I think I would’ve been okay with it.
Because it was true, and sometimes that’s enough.