CHAPTER 1

Let’s begin with that familiar phrase – no, not once upon a time, but the other one: It all started when . . .

It all started when… #1: I suppose it really all started when our family got our first computer – I was only five or so years old. It was a Tiger PC and it sounded like a chainsaw whenever we turned it on. We had to put pillows over it to drown out the noise.

     Despite its faults, I loved fooling around on that thing. We didn’t have Windows though; my dad morally objected to it during Microsoft’s monopoly days. So we did everything through dos (the command prompt, or terminal). Through this, I became proficient in computer code. By my eighth birthday, I had a greater command of the language of coding than I did of English, which, looking back, probably led to my social awkwardness. I didn’t have any friends in elementary and middle school. And when I say I didn’t have any friends, I mean it. I’m talking about sitting alone at lunch and no hanging out after school and definitely no spending the night at someone else’s house. That changed in high school, though. But I’ll get to that in a second. Back to computers.

     When my dad noticed my increasing mastery with coding and such, he began teaching me about hacking. He had been some kind of covert hacker for the government (he could never give any real details) for several years before settling into his intelligence analyst position, and thought it would be good to impart some of his knowledge onto me. It wasn’t black hat (criminal hacking) or anything. Rather, he brought home old computers to hack into for fun.

     And fun it was. Especially when he finally let me do some real-life hacking during the all-night mission he set up for me when I was in sixth grade. He booked me a room on the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, which was the famous train sung about by the Glenn Miller Orchestra (yeah, I don’t really know who that is either, but everyone tells me it was a huge hit). The train was parked in the middle of downtown Chattanooga (Chattanooga, Tennessee – the city I’m from) and was repurposed as a hotel, a pretty nice hotel, too. He put me up in one of the train cars-turned Victorian guest room, helped me set up a computer work station, gave me a sheet of typed-up instructions and left. Me. Alone. The night was a blast.

     The instructions were pretty scant – I was to complete three related hacks, wipe any evidence that could be traced back to me, and last the night in the hotel room without getting caught. The three hacks were serious, though. Break into the video systems of the Big River Grille, Bijou Theater and the Chattanooga Lookouts stadium, and stream to their feeds the SpongeBob Squarepants episode saved on your computer.

     The jobs were pretty difficult – it took me a couple of hours just to get into the Lookouts, and once I did, I hacked into their security feeds as well to see the fallout. The night game of minor league baseball kept going, the players oblivious to the cartoon on the giant scoreboard, so I shut down their lighting system. Even though hacking into the security feeds and shutting down their lights weren’t in the directions, it was fun watching the confusion on the crowds and players’ faces, and the subsequent scrambling of the crews to regain control of their systems. After watching the scene for the duration of the SpongeBob episode, I relinquished control back to the proper owners. I then moved on to the Bijou theater (now a hipster rock climbing gym) and hacked all of their screens and played the same episode. I felt kind of bad for ruining the movie-goers’ experience . . . for about twelve seconds. As confusion reigned, I moved across the street to the Big River Grille and interrupted the basketball and baseball games on the various TVs behind the bar and surrounding the pool tables.

     After I finished, I deleted all my logs as my dad had taught me and shut down the computer. I lay down on the four-poster and attempted to go to sleep, but my mind was still buzzing. I was tempted to keep hacking. I knew I had the power and capability to have as much fun as I wanted, and I gave in to the temptation. But in less than ten minutes after I turned the computer back on, someone pounded on my door. I expected my dad to be on the other side. I was wrong.

     Two police officers greeted me with a high-beamed flashlight to my face. They asked me a couple of questions about what I was doing by myself, and what I had been doing the previous few hours. I stammered out a couple of pitiful lies. They didn’t believe me, of course, especially when they saw my computer station set up on the desk behind me. They cuffed me and stuffed me into the back of their squad car. I stifled tears all the way to the police station. Okay, I bawled my eyes out. Pleaded for mercy. When they walked me up the concrete stairs and through the opaque windowed double doors, my dad was waiting for me with a scared and disappointed look on his face. They started booking me – fingerprints, mug shot, the whole deal. Before they put me in a cell, however, my dad comes up and says, “Alright boys, I think that’ll be enough.” It was all an elaborate prank. “A lesson,” my dad said. I had to be careful and patient when hacking. I had to know when it was enough and when it was too much, too far. I had gone too far, and the police tracked me down. Or rather, my dad had been monitoring my computer the whole time and, as soon as I turned it back on, sent in his buddies from the force to apprehend me. Lesson learned. Sort of.

A small part of me wanted to kill my dad, but I was a good sport about it. I mean, it was a damn good prank and a damn good way to teach me an important part of hacking. And I still got to do some cool hacks along the way that I was proud of. But the most important thing I learned was that I had a dad. I was young, but not too young to know how rare it was to not just have both parents in your life, but to have them actively a part of your life. Unlike Jake, whose divorced parents screamed (literally screamed) at each other during school functions. Or Matt who had never known his dad. And so on. So, despite my youth, I had the capacity to appreciate things like my dad not just simply taking an interest in me, but loving me in a tangible, active way. And I don’t want to neglect to mention my mom. She was great, too. But, for the purposes of clarity and concision (and respect), I’m leaving her out of most of this story.

     Now, back to hacking. One summer day a few years later, when my parents weren’t home, I, like most youth of any generation, did things I wouldn’t normally do when my parents were home. No, I didn’t snoop around their bedroom looking for my dad’s porno mags (if he had any), or try on my mom’s underwear (hey, some kids explore their sexuality during this time of their lives). Rather, I decided to take my hacking skills back into the public domain. The temptation again poked its head up into my mind, and I again gave in to it. I picked our local bank down the street. Now, before you get the wrong idea, I didn’t hack to steal money or anything (I wasn’t that much of a degenerate [not then, at least]). I just wanted to see if I was good enough to crack a more advanced (than a restaurant’s) security. I was.

     When the five ’o clock news reported a security breach at Regions Bank, I knew somehow that I was screwed. My dad didn’t say anything at first, but he went to our office and, even though I deleted my logs, somehow found out that it was me. We had a long talk that night, or at least he had a long talk and I had a long listen. It was serious. It wasn’t a game like before. Thank goodness, though, he wasn’t barbaric like the other dads who took the belt to their children, leather on bare back. But the thought that I had disappointed him was painful enough for me. Looking back, I see that this was one of those defining moments in my life that you hear so much about. More so than the lesson I learned when I got fake arrested, I realized the potential power resting in a few keys, just a set of mindless movements of my fingers. It was a force, an agency of change for myself and others. It wasn’t simply about not getting caught. My decisions affected others as well. Too bad temptation has the innate ability to turn black and white into gray and make someone forget about possible/probable consequences. Rationalization is temptation’s first cousin.

It all started when… #2: Besides that talk I had with my dad, one of the other big moments in my life was during first period on my very first day of high school. It was the day I met Allison Rutherford. I remember her first words spoken to me, partly because of her magnetism, but mostly because she was the only person to approach and speak to me voluntarily.

     “Hi. I’m Allison, but you can call me Al,” she said.

     I’m pretty sure I confirmed the “love at first sight” theory. Too bad she didn’t have any corresponding feelings. She friend-zoned me for the next four years. But that wasn’t all that bad. Because my maturity level was ahead of my contemporaries, I very much appreciated a friend. And since I loved her, I thrived off every moment we spent together.

It all started when… #3: Hacking and love being established as a foundation, I now want to build off them and get to the crux of our story. Throughout our entire senior year of high school, Al and I made plans to move out west to go to Colorado University in Boulder. We chose that because A.) we both wanted to get out of the mosquito-infested, hades of the South. Chattanooga is beautiful, or so everyone says. But it’s mostly a tourist city. We have the Tennessee Aquarium, “One of the largest freshwater aquariums in the world!” and the world famous Rock City on top of Lookout Mountain. No seriously, it’s world famous. Have you never seen the red and black painted barn with “See Rock City” written on it? I once saw a picture of a birdhouse that was a “See Rock City” barn. The picture was taken in Iraq. I digress. B.) We decided that we were both travelers, nomads at heart. So naturally, we wanted to explore the world, and Colorado seemed a good place as any to start. Plus the Rockies seemed much more majestic than the foothills of the foothills of the Appalachians. Yes, I did just say ‘foothills of the foothills’ – the city is that insignificant. And C.) there weren’t any good colleges in Chattanooga. There was UTC (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) where everyone from high school with decent grades went. There was Chatt. State (Chattanooga State Technical Community College) where all the people who didn’t have decent grades but still wanted to make something of their lives went. There were a few religious schools where all the future priests/ministers/theologians, etc. went. And then there was Crockett State. The 13th grade. It was the cheapest school in Chattanooga, so anyone who wanted to extend the glory days of their high school years could just go to Crockett. Crockett did have a good football team, though. The best in the South, actually. But that just added to the typical school hierarchy: jocks on top, me and Al on the bottom. I mean, Al didn’t have to be on the bottom rung, but she valued friendship over popularity. Dang, I loved her.

     So we were headed to Colorado. But then (in case you didn’t know, the words but then signify a particular change of events that will alter the course of things, throw a wrench in our plans, if you will), my dad’s pay got cut in half, and Al’s dad left her and her mom. What did this mean? It meant that neither of us could afford to go to CU. Al’s mom had bad credit, so she couldn’t get a loan, and my dad refused to take out a student loan for me for some reason (every time I asked him why, he began spouting out big tax terms that I didn’t understand). This made me quite upset at him. And when I say quite upset, I mean really pissed off. I didn’t show it, of course. I like to stuff my anger. But what was worse than not being able to go to Colorado was that we both were forced to enroll at Crockett State, the most affordable option, the only affordable option. It was going to be a shitty year, but I was determined to not make it four years, or even two. I was going to save up money, or get a scholarship in something, anything, to get to Colorado, my dad and his pay cut and his taxes be damned.

     If you’ve paid attention so far, you’ve probably done the math, added things up. If not, let me spell it out for you: take the fact that I’m a very skilled, yet temperamental computer hacker, I was in love with my best friend, but neither of us could afford to go to our dream college. What do you think happened? That’s what this story is about. Mostly, anyway. There may also be this thing with another girl, and oh, some good ol’ deep and dark family secrets thrown in here, too. But enough with all this backstory and hinting at what’s to come – let’s jump into the real story.

CHAPTER 2

Orientation was a drag-party. No, not that kind of drag. The kind of drag in which a hulk of a man has your wrists knotted together and is pulling you along by a rope, dragging you. He’s walking so slowly, but for some reason you can’t keep up, so you fall to the ground, but he just keeps dragging you. So if you can imagine being dragged along face first on the ground by a big dude, let’s say your own dad (or mom), then you can know what college orientation feels like. At Crockett, anyway. I imagine it would be more interesting at CU.

     We skipped the “Discovery Week” of orientation and opted for the one day intensive. So instead of a week-long event of touring the campus, staying up all night making s’mores and listening to that one d-bag play his acoustic around the campfire, and sleeping in the decrepit dorms with “potential lifetime friends”, Al and I, plus my mom and dad and Renee (Al’s mom) spent eight hours in a lecture hall suffering a slow death-by-powerpoint. I decided that eight hours was better than an entire week, so I tried to stay positive.

     After learning about the exact incline of the wheelchair access ramps around campus, we wrapped up the lectures and began the official tour, which was pretty dead. Literally. Just like the rest of Chattanooga, the grass was crispy and dangerous to walk on barefoot, while the cicadas screamed (some idiots say they sing) in the giant furnace we locals like to call “outside”. I always wanted to do a Chuck Norris roundhouse kick to the face of the numb-nuts who says “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity!” How about both, you dumb-ass?

     Anyway, the tour was pretty dead outside, but once we made our way to the main quad in front of the Student Activities Center (SAC, or Sad SAC, as Al called it), things livened up a bit. A fountain with about a 12-foot spray was the centerpiece of the quad and a few students waded in its overflow. In front of the fountain, a handful of guys were playing Cornhole, with the bean bags making loud thumps as they hit the slanted wooden boards.

     Inside the Sad SAC was even more lively. We were immediately greeted by girls sitting behind tables surrounded by poster boards and signs. One table was labeled IJM, another posted a sign that said “The Arts – Music, Theatre, Literature” with a subtitle of “A Wonderful Alternative to Engineering or Business”. The Sigma Deltas were grandstanding with kettle-bells next to the Crew team and their crew cuts, and to their right a pocket-protector was soliciting signatures to dissolve the Post Office. My head, instead of following the rest of my body, stuck to the Sigma Deltas in their black spandex shorts.

     “You’re ogling, Eli,” Al said.

     “No, I’m just . . . fascinated, I guess.” It wasn’t a complete lie.

At the end of the day, I was hacking my second-hand computer for the hundredth time as Al was lying on my bed reading some book way above my reading level.

     “I know I’ve asked this about thirty-six times, but are you still undecided?” Al said.

     “Yes.”

     “If you’re planning on getting to Colorado, you’re going to need focus – you need to show them that you have a plan. Why would they give an undecided a scholarship?”

     “Look, I’m just going to get my gen-eds out of the way, then I’ll tell them that Crockett doesn’t have the same level of education in my major-specific courses as CU does,” I said.

     “That’s actually not a bad lie,” Al said.

     We were silent for a few moments. I already knew she wasn’t going to change her mind on double-majoring in Art and English and double minoring in French and Religious Studies, so I didn’t return the question.

     “What if I don’t get to go to Colorado, and you do?” Al said.

     “Why would that even happen? If anyone can get a scholarship, it’s you, not me.”

     “Okay, hypothetically, then. Would you go to CU without me?” Al said.

     At that moment, a feeling of bitterness towards Al (not a completely new thing) rose up inside me. She seemed so selfish and thoughtless. Of course she couldn’t bear to lose her best friend. But she couldn’t see how much being around her was killing me. I loved her and loved to be with her, but it was tiresome as well – wishing for more than friendship, wishing she would finally see me as more than her “bestie”. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to get out of Chattanooga: if she came with me, maybe a new environment could bring a new life for us together – actually together. But I was beginning to think it would be just fine if she didn’t come. I could move on with my life and find someone who loved me as much as I loved them.

     But I couldn’t tell her that, of course. “Not a chance,” I said.

I TOLD YOU ELI OXLEY, complete at 58,000 words, is an Upper YA Contemporary. My target audience is ages 15+. The story is geared toward both young men and young women.

I TOLD YOU, ELI OXLEY is a novel about guilt, money, hacking, temptation and family secrets. Set in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the story follows would-be nomad Eli, a brilliant hacker doomed to live at home and attend Crockett State University. Eli has never used his hacking skills for illegal purposes, but when he becomes suspicious of his father’s money problems, he decides to act, threatening the principles he once held dear, endangering himself, his family and his love, Allison.

Eli, though knowledgable with computers, is ill-informed in every other aspect of his life: he’s socially awkward, emotionally inept and sexually inexperienced. Maybe that’s why he can’t seem to get out of the friend zone with Allison. But will he even need to when the hot, physically forward blonde, Kara is coming on to him? Or what about when Al finally reciprocates his feelings? Then there’s the intriguing hacker fraternity he joins who may or may not be acting in Eli’s best interest. And to top it all off, a family secret he can’t ignore that goes deeper than just missing money. Eli struggles with his feelings for the two girls while retracing his dad’s digital footprints, digging for both answers and money. Will Eli get caught hacking his local bank? Will he get caught cheating on Al? In the end, escaping Chattanooga might be the least of his problems.

I was born in Chattanooga, TN. I served in the Army for five years, where I worked with computers at the National Security Agency (NSA). I have an MFA in Creative Writing: Fiction and a BA in English. I am a writing professor at Saint Mary’s College of California in the San Francisco Bay Area. I TOLD YOU, ELI OXLEY is my first novel, and it recently won a “Watty” award on WattPad in the category of Best New Voices, and currently has over 100,000 reads. I am also writing a sequel to it.

I can be described as a perfectionist with my writing style. I will think slowly and heavily on every word I write, making sure each word fits into the greater puzzle of each sentence, and each sentence fits into the paragraph, page, etc. But my deliberation does not mean less production. My typical goal for each day is a solid 1,000 words.

Other than reading and writing, my hobbies include taking my infant daughter on walks, watching as many movies as I can and occasionally playing video games.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration,

Best wishes,

Chase Manning

twitter: @chaseman777

WattPad: https://www.wattpad.com/user/ChaseManning2

Anxious. Overwhelmed. Thousands of undergraduates converged on the quad. The throng pressed in on me as I elbowed my way through. My height made me stand out, I just knew it (I’m 6’3”, by the way), but I tried to use it to appear confident. It didn’t work.

     I imagined Allison holding my hand again. I imagined other things as I moved up the stairs to the entrance of the SAC amid riotous co-eds. Like endless lines of seemingly indecipherable code, I managed to break the melee up into more user-friendly pieces of information, deciding what was relevant to cracking into the system. I just had to look beyond the sea of suntans and Solo cups and figure out what was really going on.

     I started in the center. In front of, and in the fountain, girls in long pearl necklaces and sparkling dresses danced together like a scene from The Great Gatsby.

     I thought for a second about getting in between with them, but I honestly didn’t want to get my clothes wet. Gamma Phi Beta.

     To the right of the fountain, next to the bust of Davy himself, girls with swim goggles around their necks and toothy smiles waved their arms in unison. Delta Delta Delta. Sisterhood of Synchronized Swimmers.

     To the left, beyond the plaque commemorating the graduates lost in wars past, the female representatives of the black community at Crockett practiced their step routines. Delta Xi Phi getting krunk.

     On the historical steps up to the admin building was a career cover band and belt-buckles and George Strait country boys dressed country strong. The southern twang was loud. Kappa Sigma boot-scootin’. Why? I mean, why? Eighteen years in the South and I still didn’t get the appeal. Anything but rap or country.

     Entire quad: cracked. Focus left.

     On the outer edge of the quad, straw sucking guys in flannel crowded the top of a flatbed, and bales of hay surrounded the truck while smoke rose from a grill in front. The cowgirls seemed to prefer this laid-back CCR scene to honkey-tonk. Kappa Alpha Order. A maybe.

     Pi Kappa Alpha had a trampoline set up with girls in two-piecers bouncing up and down. Up and down. Up. And. Down.

     To the right of the quad: a seven-foot black tower with a flame shooting from the top. Standing guard of the tower was a long-haired guy painted brown with a white hand print over his face. Next to him a wizard figure held his staff to the ground in front of him with both hands. Delta Upsilon.

     Don’t get me wrong – I enjoy Lord of the Rings as much as anyone else, but I saw immediately what my life would be like if I pledged with them. I would be more of a pariah than I was in high school.

     Closer to the SAC: Omega Psi Phi. MMA octagon. Blood-lust.

     Behind the octagon was an unmanned Glee Club station and the Leftists silently petitioning a mascot name-change from the Cherokees to something more culturally sensitive.

     Code cracked, I felt confident enough to move through the crowds again. I did linger at the trampoline for an extended minute.

     “Hey hottie – come up here with us,” the girls begged for me to join them, but there was no way in hell I could manage the logistics of jumping with them while hiding the inevitable erection.

     I felt myself blushing, so I waved them off and tried to regain my confidence and focus. At the flatbed, I scoped out the men of KAO and looked for potential people to start a conversation with. Three guys encircled the grill, passing around a large stack of folded money. A scraggly-looking guy was walking the other direction. I initially thought the worst – drugs, probably. But I shrugged the thought off and made my way to them.

     “How’s it going?” I said. It was best just to dive into conversation, of course.

     “You here to check out Kappa Alpha Order?”

     “Yeah.”

     “Great. I’m Jake.”

     “Eli.”

     “We’re a newer frat – we’ve only been at Crockett for three years. But we’ve been doing a lot of great things in the community, you know, philanthropic work. And of course, we’ve got killer parties nearly every weekend. The Pi Kappa’s are our sister sorority.”

     I looked back at the trampoline again where he pointed. “Nice.”

     “What’s your name again?”

     “Eli.”

     “This is Eli,” Jake said to the group. “He’s thinking about pledging. Eli, this is William, our president.”

     “Wassup,” I said with a firm handshake. Wassup? Really? I wanted to literally kick myself – I deserved the pain.

     “Listen,” William said, “I’m not doing this for everyone, Eli, but I’m offering – lookout!” we dodged a water balloon “––someone a chance to join our frat without pledging.”

      This could be it, I thought, my chance to get in with the least amount of effort. But...

     “What’s the catch?” I said.

     “It’s simple.You can skip the pledging process if you can complete one single task. Do it, you’re in. But if you fail you’re out. No chance to pledge.”

     “Okay,” I said.

     “Anywhere,” William said.

     “Okay.” The stakes were rising.

     “Eli, are you our guy? Will you represent Kappa Alpha Order?”

     Our Guy? But should I risk it? “What’s the task?”

     “The Gallon Challenge,” William said. “Drink a gallon of milk in half an hour without blowing chunks. It’s not hazing. I mean, it’s milk, not Natty Ice.”

     I had no idea what Natty Ice was, but I didn’t want to look stupid, so I didn’t ask.

     William was distracted and kept looking over my shoulder, waving at people he knew. “A few other people have already declined. I don’t even remember who they are, and probably won’t.”

     I thought of all the stories of those who survived pledge week. Harder than boot camp. Sleep deprivation. Physical exhaustion. Social humiliation. Emotional instability. For an entire week.

     I knew I loved a good challenge. But I couldn’t decide which one to choose – one that would last for thirty minutes, or one for seven days.

     “I just have one question,” I said. “Is it two percent, or whole?”

Thirty minutes. That was it. Time and a gallon of milk were my only obstacles. The only things in the way of a higher social status, wild parties and hot girls. Maybe if I started dating someone else, Al would get jealous. That’s what happened in movies, anyway.

I couldn’t help but look up from my gallon sitting on a wooden stool in front of me and into the crowd and wonder how I got there. The rush had been put on hold for the challenge. The bloody, shirtless MMA guys were hitting on the trampoline girls. Gandolf was using his staff and shouting LOTR lines to hold back the crowd from pressing in on me and the other guys in the challenge. Lord, I thought, please don’t let me end up on a lower social rung than Delta Upsilon.

Twenty-five minutes. The crowd was a blur. I had already drunk the first quarter of the gallon. I looked to the other hopefuls representing each frat to see where they were. They were all fairing the same.

Twenty minutes. Half a gallon down. Me. Towering over my milk and the crowd. I felt unstoppable. Half a gallon in ten minutes. I had a full twenty minutes to chug down the other half. I could take my time if I wanted. I thought about asking for some Oreos or Nutter Butters.

Fifteen minutes. My pace had slowed considerably. I began shivering. The cold milk was freezing me from the inside out. Heavy. Yeah, that’s a good word. Cold and heavy.

I still had about a third left. I knew I had to think about finishing. About not being black-listed from all the frats. About becoming a social outcast. All eyes. On me. The initial cheers from the crowd were turning into impatient screams to keep going.

Ten minutes. I walked in circles around my milk. I lied down in the grass. So cold.

The milk was destroying my stomach. Destroying my life. This was it. I wasn’t going to make it. A quarter gallon to go. I couldn’t imagine taking another sip. I could have eaten a bowl of cereal every day for the rest of my life. That was before. Bile made its way up my throat in small, intermittent bursts into my mouth. The guy next to me retched.

Five minutes. The crowd was alive again. Two people remained: me and some guy representing Omega Psi Phi. The Omega guy only had a few sips left, but he hadn’t drunk anything in the past seven minutes. I took another sip. I had a good five or six sips left. One sip a minute.

The final countdown began. One minute left. I still had about three sips left. Omega still hadn’t drunk anything, but looked like he was going to make a final stand. I had tears in my eyes. I couldn’t imagine shivering any harder if I were naked in Alaska. I let out involuntary grunts. I didn’t care about living anymore. Rest. Give me rest, I thought.

     But the crowd wouldn’t let me rest, and I wouldn’t let the crowd down. Sip. thirty seconds left. Sip. Twenty seconds. Ten. Nine. Eight. The anxiety paralyzed me. My legs were numb and I dropped to my hands and knees with the milk still in my hand. I looked at the grass and saliva built up in my mouth. I knew what was coming. So close, though. 

     One large sip left. One left. C’mon!

     Five. Four. Three . . .

     Omega man didn’t make it the last two seconds. Neither did I.

From: Eli_the_Ox@me.com

To: Ragamuffin_Al@me.com

Subject: Us

Al, I’m going to save you the trouble of having to read over a hundred lines of apologies from me and get to the point. I’ve loved you for over four years and, even though I pretty much destroyed any semblance of a relationship we had, I refuse to give up on myself and you. I know that I don’t deserve you, and you deserve someone better than me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you anymore. It would be impossible for me to stop loving you. Which means I’m going to keep pursuing you, keep chasing you, keep trying to deserve your love again – I’ll never give up. Wherever you are, I want to be there. I know that sounds like I’m your new stalker, but regardless, I’m just trying to tell you that I love you, and I’ll do anything or sacrifice everything to be with you. I love you – I can’t say it enough – I LOVE YOU.

I don’t want to presume that you’ll even forgive me, but still, I will wait here until you do.

Sincerely and always yours,

Eli

From: Ragamuffin_Al@me.com

To: Eli_the_Ox@me.com

Subject: Re: Us

Eli, If I could take it back, I would have never said “Hi” to you that first day of high school. If I could take it back, I would have never kissed you back or told you that I loved you.

These are lies, Eli. I love you, and I don’t regret anything I’ve said or done regarding you (including punching you). I do wish you hadn’t have hurt me. Things would be so much easier. But you did hurt me. I’m a forgiving person, and I don’t believe in the forgive but not forget sentiment, but that doesn’t mean my wounds don’t need time to heal. What happens when they do heal? Do I just allow you back into my life?

I don’t know yet. We’ll just have to see when we get there.

From: Eli_the_Ox@me.com

To: Ragamuffin_Al@me.com

Subject: Re: Re: Us

I’ll take it.