A childish crush

In the summer of my eighth grade year, my parents decided to put me and my sister in a deaf/hearing day camp few miles away.

There were about a total of 20 of us, half which were deaf and the other half, hearing. Mostly, those hearing ones were simply the siblings of the deaf ones.

We mostly spent our time hiking, doing creative projects, canoeing, and rehearsing for a silent play, called "Midsummer's night dream".

During this time, there was a fad of liquid flavored candy-laced toothpicks. Some liquid candy was so spiced that if you merely touch the very tip of a toothpick on your tongue, you would immediately feel the burn.

One day, there was a guy named Chris whom I had a crush. Some other deaf kids and I were playing a joke on Chris. Somehow, it went awry. In the midst of our playing around with Chris, a bottle of the spiced liquid candy spilled on Chris' face.

Screaming and crying, Chris thrashed on the floor, with the rest of us, looking terrified at him and dreading the looks of the camp coaches who came in to see what the racket was all about.

Immediately, he was taken to the hospital where the nurses put some medicine on his face. The next day, he came to the camp with all the band-aids. His skin looked quite reddish and sore.

Of course, the camp coaches confiscated all our bottle of liquid candy and toothpicks.

I kept my crush on Chris a secret, yet I wanted to "confess". So, I thought of a method to write it down so that way, no one would ever know.

Or so I had thought.

One evening, after a day at the camp, my sister and I arrived home. My mother was working in the kitchen when my ten-year old sister suddenly piped up to my mom that made me want to wring my little sis' scrawny little neck.

"Nita loves someone and it is written at the bottom of her shoe."