Sweet Romance13 min read
My Red-Black Jordans and the Girl with the "Wrong-Answer" Notebook
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I remember the alarm that morning like a shout in a quiet house. It rang, and I hit mute without thinking. I kept my eyes closed, listening to the thin quiet of the apartment while sunlight moved across the floor.
“Gunnar, you awake?” my mother called from the kitchen.
“Yep.” I pulled the blanket over my head for another minute. The city felt slow and soft at dawn.
When I walked into class half-sleep and half-hungry, the first two periods were already over. The third period was Mr. Elliott Arnold’s math class.
He stood at the front in a dark striped polo, buttoned neat as a brand new shirt, hair combed back in cautious lines. He was the kind of teacher who measured the world by the thickness of his glasses and the crease of his belt.
“Introduce yourself,” he said before I could settle. His voice had the practiced edge of someone used to controlling a room.
“Hi, I’m Gunnar Mason,” I heard myself say. I didn’t know if I was supposed to add more. The class waited, like a held breath.
“Three words, and that’s it?” he asked, eyebrows forming two hard check marks. “Is that all?”
I blinked slow. “Yeah.”
Laughter leaked from the back. A girl near the front laughed, a bright clear sound that didn’t make fun of me. She was the kind of quiet student you don’t notice until you look for her. She sat two rows ahead, hands neat on her desk, a blue-white uniform that had been washed so often its collar held a soft memory of white.
“Gunnar, sit behind Sofia Bergmann,” Mr. Arnold decided and pointed like he was arranging chess pieces.
Sofia looked up, calm. She had a ponytail and a pale, careful face. People around her whispered a nickname—“the scholar.” She never seemed bothered by the noise around her. When she read, it was like she cleared a small space in the air and folded the rest of the world away.
After class, a boy called Gavin Clement who grew up two doors down from me caught my arm.
“You coming for lunch?” he asked. “We go outside. Food better.”
“You coming?” I asked him back, meaning the same thing: you keep your loyalty line clear.
“Of course,” he grinned. “We need a captain on the court today.”
At lunch, I was pulled into Mr. Arnold’s office because of my score. I’d been the new kid shoved into the top class by someone above his pay grade. The headmaster had insisted. Mr. Arnold showed me my test, frowned as if someone had placed a stone in his soup.
“You’re last in class,” he said. “Do you understand how much that drags down our average?”
“Yes,” I told him.
“You sit behind our top student,” he said. “You have an easy tutor right in front of you. Use her.”
He handed me two exam papers. “Look and learn,” he said.
I took them and felt the weight of eyes on me. He wanted me to be ashamed. I was used to pressure, but not like this. Not the public kind.
Outside his office, Gavin and Decker Donovan—Gavin’s childhood friend with a loud laugh—joked to make the hallway bearable.
“That guy,” Decker muttered, “knows how to twist a knife while smiling.”
I shrugged it off. Teachers did that. They had their ways.
Back in class, all the noise circled around Sofia Bergmann. People had measured her with their eyes and decided she was something they could not quite touch. Boys made jokes; girls copied her handwriting by memory. She was quiet, always reading, always folding her notes like the edges of a careful life.
Once, during a test, I ended up with zero on a last geometry question. Afterward, she turned in the front of me and handed me a scrap of paper.
“This is the solution,” she said simply.
“You sure?” I asked, already feeling a map of surprise flatten inside me.
“Yes. You lost a point here,” she pointed at the step I’d missed.
“You didn’t have to,” I said.
“I wanted to,” she said. “We help each other.”
Her voice had no drama. It felt like someone closing a window to keep the rain out. Not a heroic act. Just tidy, sensible help.
The boys in the back joked louder than usual. Gavin nudged Decker and made this face like they’d passed a small pirate code among themselves.
“Is she giving you special treatment?” Decker said with a toothy grin.
“No,” I said for both of us, though it wasn’t strictly true. I resented being the reason for the joke.
“I’ll run for class leader,” I announced out of a sudden idea and a half-joke.
“You will? Are you serious?” Decker asked, surprised.
“I will,” I said.
They laughed, but then I walked up on stage and talked. Not to show off. I talked because I had a stubborn bone and because standing on a platform felt like declaring I wasn’t going to be moved. It worked—somehow everyone voted for me. Maybe it was the novelty. Maybe it was because they wanted a new kind of trouble. I became class leader.
Mr. Arnold didn’t like that. He looked at me like a man tasted lemon and found it bitter on his tongue.
“Gunnar, leadership means responsibility,” he said afterward. “You must guide. You must set an example. You will not be a distraction.”
I listened while he lectured me on duty and honor. Yet, in his voice there was something else—anger at being forced to accept me by the headmaster. He could not show it openly, so he made it small and personal.
“You sit in the back and you will learn,” he said finally. “And remember who you owe.”
I remember thinking then that being given a seat in the best class didn’t come without strings. Someone at the top had tied them to my shoulders.
Days fell into a pattern of small wars. I would do something impulsive—drop a pen, kick a chair—and he would remind me of the standards like a guard who reads the rules out loud. I kept my mouth. In return, I collected odd little satisfactions.
I learned more about Sofia each day. She smelled faintly like lemon and mint, like something refreshing. She brought a little black tape recorder and listened to English exercises on the bus. She kept a small notebook with “Wrong-Answer Notes” written in careful handwriting on the cover. I noticed it once, and curiosity sat on my shoulder.
“You always carry that?” I asked one morning, testing.
She blinked. “Yes,” she said, quiet as a closed book. “It helps me remember mistakes.”
“Only the things you did wrong?” I teased.
“It’s how you learn,” she replied.
For reasons I could not name, I tried to make her notice me in ways that were not about tests. I would drop my pen near her foot; I would feign distraction. Once, during chemistry, the teacher—young and fierce, Miss Therese Matsumoto—threw a piece of chalk at me that landed squarely on my forehead. The class laughed. Sofia didn’t laugh. She looked with a small pity that made me angry.
“You’re taking this seriously,” she said later, as she handed me my notebook back.
“I am,” I lied. I was doing it mostly because I could, because I liked the feeling of making somebody flinch.
The school buzzed with a coming track meet. The boys leaped for the chance to join every event. The girls, though, were shy. There were empty spaces in the list the coach needed filled. Calder Kiselev, the sports rep, wore worry on his face like an ill-fitting sweater when he handed the sheet to me.
“Gunnar, can you help? Find some girls to fill the slots?” he asked.
I scanned the room.
“Sofia,” Calder said quietly. “She’s a leader. If she signs up, others will follow.”
I had been studying her like a map and, oddly, I felt protective. Maybe because Mr. Arnold always used her as bait in his speeches—“Look at this example”—and I realized she was being used by authority like a piece on a board.
“Make her do 1,500,” I suggested before I thought it through.
“You sure?” Calder asked, surprised.
“Why not?” I said. “If she’s first in everything else, why not this?”
The idea landed with the force of a thrown pebble. Eyes turned. Sofia’s shoulders tightened. She was a quiet person; the spotlight made her breathe strange.
Sofia swallowed. “I’ll run 1,000,” she said at last, steadying her voice.
I felt a win—small, mean, and successful—like flipping a coin and seeing it land tails for someone else. But I hadn’t expected that when I said it, she would look at me with absolute calm and say, “Thank you.”
I had meant to make her uncomfortable. She had accepted the challenge and turned it into something else. I didn’t like that.
Weeks passed. I kept an eye on the book under her desk. One afternoon, when classes ran long and the sky outside turned to copper, I bumped into Sofia in the library.
“Gunnar.” She looked up at me without surprise. “You came to find the English paper?”
“You left it here.” I held it out. “You asked for an early look only—you said so.”
She took the paper, fingers quick. “Thank you.”
I watched her slip the paper into a pile of textbooks, and something in me wanted to know what else she hid. I reached, and she yanked back.
“Give it back!” she said without anger. Her voice was flat, sharp as a snapped ruler.
“Relax,” I said, holding the book higher. “I’m borrowing it.”
She tried to take it. We tugged. I twisted it to keep it out of reach. Then her toe caught my shoe and I stumbled back. I left a dirty shoe mark on her white sneaker. I wanted to laugh at that moment, but when I saw her face go red I felt suddenly sheepish. I didn’t know why. I let her have the book.
“Just... keep it clean,” she said.
“You mean the book or me?” I muttered.
She didn’t answer. She walked away, small and sure as a practiced river.
The day came when I finally saw what she had been hiding under that “Wrong-Answer” cover. Her notebook was a cover, and inside—because I pressed for a look and couldn’t help myself—was not a stack of flirting-friendly pages. It was a battered copy of a classic story. I read the title aloud.
“Children’s Classics?” I said with a laugh that caught and didn’t ring true.
She came back, snatched it, and hid it like a secret.
“It’s mine,” she said. “It helps me rest.”
“That’s what you hide?” I said. “A children’s book?”
“It’s not for children,” she snapped quietly. “It’s for me.”
I blanked, because suddenly I felt like the one who had been boxed into a shape he didn’t understand. I had assumed complexity where there was simplicity. I had assumed mockery where there was comfort.
“You’re hiding your comforts,” I said, softer than I meant to. “I didn’t get it.”
She looked at me a long time, and then she smiled, not like before—this smile was something that didn’t try too hard. “It’s fine,” she said. “You keep your shoes clean, Gunnar.”
When the track meet finally arrived, the whole school was a mall of noise. Girls’ names filled slots like small votes. I watched Sofia steady at the line, her face calm as a page.
“You can do it,” I said, before I knew I would say it.
She looked at me as if deciding whether to give me a gift. “I will finish,” she said. “That’s the plan.”
The crowd watched as we lined up. Mr. Arnold was in the stands, his smile small and pinned. He had spent the year turning praise into armor and armor into chains. If anyone could be called the villain so far, it was him. He used respect like a weapon and rewards like bait. I had been angrier at him than I knew.
Sofia ran with the earth under her shoes. She kept a steady cadence. People cheered, the crowd a wave. She crossed the line not first, but not last. She finished with a look of quiet victory that made the boys cheer louder for reasons that had less to do with speed and more with respect.
After the meet, something bigger happened. It had been another small battle stacked into a bigger war. The headmaster announced a school-wide assembly for “honors and integrity.” Students packed into the hall. I sat with Gavin and Decker, watching the room.
“Why the big show?” Decker asked.
“Something’s coming,” Gavin muttered. “They always bring big shows for small things.”
Mr. Arnold rose to the stage to accept some plaque for “teaching excellence.” He smiled wide, a little too wide, as if the space around him belonged to him.
Then the screen behind him flicked on. I tensed because slides at school meant lists, and lists meant names. But the slide didn’t show names first. It showed messages. A cascade of messages, screenshots, and an audio clip.
The screen lit up with the headmaster’s voice from a meeting room: “We have strong support. His grandson’s placement is justified by...”
Then it showed Mr. Arnold’s face next to messages, private notes: “Keep him in the top class. He improves our stats.” “He’s under my watch.” There were emails with congratulations for pushing students into certain awards. There were messages, hidden for months, showing that Mr. Arnold had been shifting grades, steering praises, and pressuring counselors.
The hall went quiet with that slow kind of silence like breath held too long.
I felt my stomach drop. People who had trusted him looked suddenly small and embarrassed. Sofia’s hands tightened in her lap. Calder’s face went pale. The front rows had parents, teachers, and students; their eyes were wide, full of the dawning of unwelcome truth.
“Elliott Arnold,” the headmaster said, after the slides ended, voice unsteady. “You have been found to manipulate the ranking, to favor some students based on external pressures, to misreport results to make your class look better. This is dishonorable.”
Mr. Arnold’s smile collapsed like a paper cup. His face went through stages: first confusion, then denial, then anger, and finally a loss of color like someone had pulled out the plug on his confidence.
“This is a mistake,” he said at first, voice pitched. “I—I have always wanted the best—”
“Silence,” the headmaster snapped. “We have evidence.”
“Lies!” Mr. Arnold cried. “Lies and fabrications—who put this together? Who dares—”
It felt like watching a slow unpeeling. Students whispered, taking out phones. A mother near us wiped her eyes and whispered to her son, “We trusted him.”
I watched Mr. Arnold’s face. He started to pace like an animal in a pen. He reached for papers and then held them up as if they could defend him.
“Those messages were private—” he stammered. “I was pressured—”
“He was pressured by which office?” someone shouted. A handful of students immediately booted up their phones and began to record.
The headmaster read aloud a chain of emails that tied Mr. Arnold’s actions to favoritism and pressure from people who had given resources to the school, and to Mr. Arnold’s willingness to shape outcomes in return.
As the truth spread, Mr. Arnold’s voice broke. He went from anger to pleading, his vocabulary shrinking.
“Please,” he said, suddenly small. “Please, I— I didn’t know what else to do. I thought—”
Students began to talk, at first in hushed disbelief, then louder. Some parents gasped. Some teachers looked betrayed. Phones were up, cameras rolling. The assembly hall filled with the low hum of whispers and the occasional harsh laugh.
Sofia sat with her hands clasped. Her face was pale but steady.
“Elliott,” the headmaster said finally, voice flat. “You are suspended indefinitely. We will report this to the board. You are to leave the premises now.”
For a first moment Mr. Arnold stood frozen, then reality hit him like cold water. He staggered forward, then seemed to slump into himself. He turned toward the audience, eyes frantic for allies, for someone to deny the evidence.
“Please,” he said again, voice breaking. “I was only trying to help my students—”
“You put your students at risk,” the headmaster replied. “You put fairness at risk. That is unforgivable.”
The room erupted in murmurs and exclamations. Someone in the crowd hissed, “Finally.”
Mr. Arnold’s face shifted. The mask of confidence shattered. He stumbled down the stage steps and nearly dropped the plaque he’d been awarded. The crowd started to record everything. I could hear a chorus of whispers all at once: “He knew.” “He lied.” “How could he?”
Suddenly a student in the front row stood up and shouted, “You humiliated so many of us!”
That was the tilt. The hall turned into a chorus of voices. People told their stories aloud. A teacher wept openly. Parents demanded answers. Cameras streamed live. The public shame spread.
Mr. Arnold went pale. He fell to his knees on the stage, the plaque clattering to the floor.
“Please,” he begged, voice raw. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Please—don’t—”
No one stepped forward. Phones were pointed. Someone took a photo. Several people recorded the moment when he touched the wood of the stage like a man holding to a last lifeline.
Parents pressed questions. A teacher in the front said, “This is not how we teach. This is not how we grow children.”
Mr. Arnold’s hands trembled and his legs shook. He tried to stand, but sat back down. Tears ran over his cheeks. He cried out like a man realizing the house he built was on sand.
The crowd’s reaction was a mix of shock, anger, and a strange satisfaction. Some students clapped when the headmaster announced Mr. Arnold’s suspension. A father whispered to his neighbor, “I want my child’s name cleared.”
Mr. Arnold went through motions I’d only seen in films: denial, pleading, collapse. He asked for forgiveness from parents. He asked forgiveness from students. He tried to explain himself. “I thought I was protecting the school’s future,” he said. His voice dropped to a broken whisper. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”
People filmed, talked, and some cried. A teacher stepped forward and said, “You don’t get to pawn off your guilt on us.” The words burned.
After the assembly, as students streamed out with their phones and their stunned faces, I felt something shift inside me. The whole structure we’d been living under—the invisible rules, the secret favors—had been laid bare. It felt like the clearing of a long, smothering fog.
Sofia walked past me. She didn’t look triumphant. She looked tired.
“You okay?” I asked.
She paused. “I am,” she said. “But it’s ugly, isn’t it? The way people hide.” Her voice was tired in a way that made me jealous of her calm.
“It was public,” I said. “He begged.”
“He cried,” she said. “And crying doesn’t make it right.”
I had watched the man who had harassed his way to power collapse in front of the whole school. The event was a public correction I had wanted in secret. Yet, when I saw him fall, I felt uneasy. He had been oppressive and unfair, but he had been human too, reckless with his power.
“Do you feel better?” I asked Sofia.
She looked at me for a long moment. “I feel like we have to be better,” she said. “Not because he was removed, but because we need to make sure it never happens again.”
I nodded because she made perfect sense. I had wanted a reckoning. I had expected a victory parade. Instead, the victory felt thin. The lesson felt heavy.
We walked out of the assembly hall into the late sun. Students clustered in knots, replaying moments from the scene, pointing to their screens. The world outside felt louder for a minute, then quieter as people returned to the long slow work of ordinary life.
Later that afternoon, Sofia handed me her “Wrong-Answer” notebook.
“I want you to look,” she said.
I flipped it open. Inside, folded in the back, tucked under a homework sheet, was a small dog-eared page. On it she had written one line: I make mistakes and I keep them.
“Why hide a children’s book?” I asked quietly.
“Because sometimes comfort feels childish,” she said. “And sometimes you need to be small in public to be strong in private.”
I thought about Mr. Arnold on his knees, about his face pocketed with tears, about the power he had abused and the lessons we had to learn. I thought about the girls who ran, and the boys who cheered, and the parents whose trust had been misplaced.
“You’re strange,” I said. “You keep things people don’t expect.”
She smiled. “Maybe,” she said. “But who decides what people expect?”
That answer sat in the air between us like a small coin.
Days turned into weeks and the noise faded into the background hum of classes. Sofia ran, studied, and kept her book. I learned to actually ask for help instead of waiting for someone else to notice. Gavin and Decker kept making jokes, but they watched me differently now—not with the same mockery, more like teammates.
Once, after a practice match, I saw Sofia sitting under the shade, eating an orange with slow care. The smell of peel warmed the air. I sat beside her, not because I had a plan, but because I wanted to be near her honesty.
“You kept the children’s cover,” I said.
She nodded.
“I don’t understand why,” I admitted.
“You don’t have to,” she said. “Just keep your shoes clean.”
We both laughed then. Not big laughs. Small ones, like a match lit in a room. She offered me a wedge of orange. I took it.
The world was still louder than I wanted, still full of small cruelties and larger corrections. But in the quiet between them, I discovered something that didn’t belong to Mr. Arnold and his games.
“Gunnar,” she said softly.
“Yeah?”
“Keep your promises,” she said. “To yourself.”
I swallowed, feeling a weight loosen.
“That I can do,” I promised.
Outside, my red-black Jordans hummed on the pavement. The lemon-mint smell of the day drifted between us, small and clean. I wound my watch and felt the second hand move. The beating was steady and sure.
I didn’t know what would happen next. I only knew I had a notebook that showed mistakes and a girl who kept a children’s book under a cover. And somehow both were enough to begin again.
The End
— Thank you for reading —