Episode VI - The First Letter ~ Anthony's Confession Part 1

Anthony.

That's what Janella had called me.

She wouldn't tell me why she'd been crying so hard.

I waited until her tears stopped and then walked her home. As we walked through the rain together under Alice's violet umbrella, Janella kept her eyes down and said nothing. I had stolen a closer look and saw that her eyes were red from crying, and her lip was slightly swollen and tinged with blood. From time to time, she would glance up at me, wary and surreptitious, as if to reassure herself of something, and then would quickly look back down, blinking rapidly.

Finally, we reached a two-story house with neatly tended flower beds, and we went our separate ways.

"Thank you so much for walking me home."

"No problem. You should go change out of those clothes and warm back up."

She looked up at me again. She peered at my face as if she saw something written there, then looked back down with tears in her eyes. She ducked in a quick bow and disappeared behind her door.

We were in the first-period break the next morning, and she hadn't come. I stayed in my seat, constantly glancing over at the door, so when she came into the classroom, my eyes met Abegail's.

Ack, now what?

She looked flustered, too, and though I didn't move a muscle, she walked over to stand in front of me, her lips pressed thin and tight.

"Here's your change."

She stuck a fist out at me brusquely.

"Oh, thanks…. Uh, this is fifty francs."

Abegail had dropped a fifty-franc bill into my hand.

"Isn't this ten franc too much?"

"I know that. Give me change for my change."

"Um, sorry, I don't have any small change right now."

"Later is fine," she muttered irritably. She was fidgeting, apparently reluctant to go away just yet. "Janella's not coming today, huh?"

"Uh, yeah. I guess not."

"So yesterday after school… you came back in here all of a sudden, remember? Are you sure you didn't hear anything?"

She peered at me.

I smiled easily. "Was there something I should have heard?"

Abegail's face flushed an impressive shade of red. "I-if you didn't hear anything, then never mind."

She turned her back on me and returned to her desk.

I still had the bill in my hand.

The chime announcing the second period rang out gently overhead.

Janella didn't come…

She didn't appear during the second break, either.

I started to worry that she'd caught a cold and stayed home, and I decided to go see how she was. While I hesitated outside Janella's classroom, she came through the door herself, laughing with a group of friends.

"Geez, I can't believe you! You're awesome, Yoyo! Fine—I'm gonna bake a cake for his birthday and put my whole heart into it! Oh—" Janella had just struck a heroic pose when she saw me.

Her eyes widened and she dropped her hands. "Andy…"

"Uh, morning."

"Oh my God, what're you doing here? Oh, sorry, Yoyo, you go ahead. Andy, come with me?"

Janella took hold of my arm and started walking down the hallway. She was practically skipping.

What the heck? Why is she so cheerful? I was so confused.

She brought me to a deserted spot in the hall, then turned around with a smile.

"Heh-heh-heh… what a surprise to have you come to me, Andy."

"I was just wondering if you were all right… since you were crying yesterday."

"Oh, that? It wasn't anything important, really. I guess I just got a little high-strung or something. I guess I was a little down because of the rain. And you looked at me so kindly… I guess I just got carried away with it. Oh geez, it's so embarrassing. Please just forget that happened."

She flapped her hands back and forth, her face bright red. She was acting so much like she always did that I started to wonder if I had just imagined her tortured sobbing yesterday.

"Nothing happened with you and Anthony?"

Was that boy who'd come looking for her Anthony? He'd called her "Nella," as if he knew her really well.

Janella's expression clouded over suddenly.

So something had happened.

"It's just… it seems like something is bothering him. He gave me a letter yesterday, but the things it said…"

A letter?

"Oh! But I'm totally fine! Really!"

Her hand popped back up and she struck her heroic pose again.

"Oh yeah! Can I have another letter today, Andy?"

"Sure. I brought it with me."

When I handed her the folded paper, her face dissolved into joy. "Thank you so much! I'm sure once Anthony reads this he'll cheer up, too. Oh, I have to go—my next class is in a different room. Eek!"

Janella's foot caught on something, and she tumbled to the ground. I quickly helped her up.

"Heh-heh… thank you. I'm such a klutz. Okay, see you!"

I watched her patter off haphazardly, unsure of my own thoughts.

She had said that something was bothering Anthony.

Was her crying yesterday somehow related to that?

What kind of person was him anyway? I'd written lots of letters addressed to him, but I only knew him through Janella's stories.

He was a third-year student on the archery team, had lots of friends, and was good at making people laugh.

He was always upbeat and smiling. He only got serious when he was shooting arrows.

He'd seemed pretty nice, but when she talked to him, he turned out to be super nice.

All this was what Janella had told me.

Maybe Anthony wasn't the kind of person she thought he was. Love often clouds judgment, so it was an easy scenario to imagine.

"You're on the archery team, right?"

During clean-up that day, I struck up a conversation with my classmate, Johnny Grims.

"Yeah, I am," he answered matter-of-factly in his deep, grown-up voice as he moved desks around.

He wasn't angry; he just wasn't a talkative guy. I had never seen his guffaw. That detachment probably appealed to girls. Looking at him up close like this, he really was pretty cool with his height and his muscular arms and shoulders, and his calmly handsome features. Unlike me.

"Do you guys have a third-year student named Anthony Flavier on the team?"

Johnny looked as though he was thinking for a very brief moment, then replied curtly, "Don't know him."

"Huh? Um, maybe his name is a little different. I heard that people call him Anthon or Flavio or something like that."

"We've got a guy named Francis Garcia, but he's second-year, not third. And I don't think anyone ever called him that."

"Seriously? There's no one else named Shu-something?"

"Never heard of one."

What did this mean? Maybe Janella had made a mistake. Well, that would have been possible before she'd told him how she felt, but now she was giving him letters and talking to him regularly. Was it really possible that she had his name wrong?

When Johnny had finished moving the desks, he looked at me.

"Do you have some problem with this guy?"

"Uh, he's a friend of a friend, and—Oh hey! Do you think I could come to watch you guys?"

"Could I come today?… Although, I'm not a recruit. Maybe it's not allowed?"

"Don't think anyone cares. I'll find out."

"Thanks, Johnny."

The archery team's practice hall was an old wooden building to one side of the gym. Five wooden targets were hung up on the far wall. They also had bales of straw on platforms secured from behind by wooden planks, old floorboards, and other stuff set up as targets.

The team members wore chest guards over traditional white uniforms and black pants. They pulled the bows into tight curves, then sent their arrows flying. Along the side, a few dozen kids wearing sweats were using thick rubber bows and arrows, swinging them around as they called out in unison, "Plant your feet!" "Square the chest!" "Raise the bow!" They were probably first-years.

Johnny came over to me, dressed in his practice clothes.

"I got you permission. It's dangerous, so don't get in anybody's way."

"I won't."

Just then the sound of an arrow striking one of the old floor-boards shot through me.

"Wow, I didn't know it was that loud! It really is intimidating seeing it up close."

I remembered Janella mentioning that. She'd said that the moment Anthony's arrow struck the target, it had lodged in her heart as well.

"I guess it can surprise you the first time you hear it, yeah," Johnny replied gruffly, then he left me behind to go join the practice.

I observed the team members from the back of the room.

The archery team practiced all together, both boys and girls, and the squad seemed about evenly split between them. There were a lot of people on the team; I counted fifty with a quick glance.

I expected Anthony, the boy Janella had fallen in love with, at first sight, to be among them.

Lessee… it was love at first sight, so he has to be pretty good-looking. So forget that guy. Not that guy, either. That guy over there isn't quite…

About halfway through, I wanted to pull out my hair.

This was bad. The number of candidates was decreasing steadily.

Johnny is definitely the best-looking guy on the archery team. But Janella said Anthony is actually happy-go-lucky and popular, even if he doesn't look it. There's no way to spin Johnny as happy-go-lucky… But maybe he's only distant in class and he gets more upbeat with the team. Hmm…

In the end, I couldn't decide which of them might have been Anthony.

During a break in the practice, Johnny came over to me and whispered in his low, flat voice, "I asked the captain about people named Anthony, but he said he didn't know any."

The mystery only deepened.

Thanking Johnny, I left the archery team and headed to the book club.

"Choo!"

I heard a cute sneeze.

"Choo! Mmrf…"

Alice pulled a tissue out of a box and blew her nose.

"Oh, hello, Andy. Ah-choo!"

She sneezed again and demurely blew her nose.

The trash can at her feet was full of pink tissues.

So she'd gotten soaked on her way home yesterday, after all, and caught a cold.

"Uh, thank you for the umbrella yesterday."

I held the violet umbrella out to her awkwardly, and Alice beamed at me with bleary eyes and a nose as red as a reindeer's.

"Yoooou're welcome! And I put your umbrella back in the locker. Sorry I kept it so long."

"You look like you have a cold. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine! I was rereading Cartland's Theirs to Eternity in the bath and lost track of time, so I didn't notice the water getting cold. I'll be all better soon."

"You shouldn't stay in the bath so long that the water gets cold. The pages of your book are going to get soggy and fall apart, you know."

"And that is also de-li-cious. Like dipping a biscuit in pink champagne, maybe?"

"I doubt that champagne tastes like cold bathwater or bubble bath."

"Geez, you have no imagination whatsoever, do you? Ah-choo!… Hnk…

Anyway, you sure took your time getting here today, Andy. Did you have clean-up duty again?"

"Um, no… I went to watch the archery team practice."

"Hnk… the archery team?"

Alice cocked her head, the tissue still covering her face. Her long braids swung smoothly.

"Actually…"

I summarized how I'd run into Janella yesterday after school, how she'd been crying, and how there was no one named Anthony Flavier on the archery team.

"Oh my…"

Alice was speechless.

Then, struck by an idea, she said, "Oh yeah! You should be able to search all the students' names on the computers in the library. Let's go see."