"Something I Love About You Day": short story excerpt

Wednesday 5/7/25

At the end of every school year, Ms. Moriggi’s class had a friendship day.

Each student wrote their name on a piece of paper. Afterwards, they put the pieces of paper in a baseball cap that Ms. Moriggi wore to school in the spring. She was a huge fan who loved going to games in the summer and couldn’t wait.

The summer was great like that, but Ms. Moriggi was the kind of teacher you also knew would be missing her students. In other words, the best kind.

Anyway, after all of the names were in the hat, everyone had to pick out one of the pieces of paper. Then they made a card for the person whose name they got and gave it to them to take home for the summer.

The way the game went—except it wasn’t really a game like baseball’s a game—was that you had to write something you loved about that other kid.

“What if there isn’t anything?” this boy named Ryder asked Ms. Moriggi.

He always asked questions like that, then he’d say, “What? I’m just asking,” which was true enough, but…he did a lot of “just asking,” that Ryder.

“Everyone has something for us,” Ms. Moriggi said. “Maybe you don’t know them well enough yet. We’re all meant to be each others teachers.”

This was a little confusing and some of the students laughed like some of the students had the year before and some of the students would the year after, because everyone knew that Ms. Moriggi was the teacher and they were the kids.

A few of them thought maybe they’d like to be a teacher when they grew up, but that was different than being a teacher right now. They had many types of big dreams.

Some kids wanted to be football players, firemen, doctors, horse riders, explorers, ballet dancers, veterinarians, artists.

There was a girl named Adrianna who thought she’d try and be a princess and would settle for being president if that didn’t work out.

Carter was going to make a time machine and go back and see his mom who had died the year before. See her as often as he wanted to, which was almost always. Then he would open a time machine factory so that everyone would be able to visit the people they missed more than could ever miss anything else and then they wouldn’t have to miss them anymore.

They say there are more dreams in a room in which there is a single child—and there were twenty-one of them in Ms. Moriggi’s class that year—than in all the nights of the world when everyone is asleep.

Just like they say some of the best dreams you ever have are the ones with your eyes open.

Isn’t that funny? But that’s life. It’s a funny place, especially if you know that funny actually means a lot of different things.

This girl named Deborah pulled out a piece of paper that had this boy Nick’s name on it. Hmmm, she thought. They hadn’t done a lot together. Probably not since preschool when there was some finger painting and he’d gotten a bit of orange paint on his nose.

Deborah wasn’t sure what someone could possibly write that they loved about her. She took a quick look around the classroom to see if anyone was looking in her direction to try to come up with something, but everyone was busy working on their cards, including Ms. Moriggi because wasn’t an equal number of kids and it wouldn’t do to leave anyone out.

Then Deborah thought about the first day when she’d come back to school after being sick for a long time. In some ways it was the most important day of her life. More important than her birthday. You get one of those every year.

All she wanted to do for what felt like the longest time was be with her friends, sit at her desk, go out to recess, and make some drawings for everyone to see. Not that her mom and dad didn’t count, but it wasn’t the same.

There were all of these things that she hadn’t thought twice about before, which she couldn’t stop thinking about when she could no longer do them.

“You’re getting so much better,” her mom said, but she’d been saying that for a while. Pretty much all along.

But then there was that day when she said it again and it had sounded different despite being the same words, and she began to cry.

Deborah didn’t understand why. She’d just woken up and though she was still in bed, she felt like she wanted to get out of it.

In fact, that’s what she planned on doing, but it’s hard to get out of your bed when someone’s sitting there crying, including when that someone is you, except now it was Deborah’s mom.

“Don’t be sad,” Deborah said, leaning forward to give her mother a hug. “I’m going to miss you, too, when I’m back in school. It’ll be okay.”

That was probably what was upsetting her mom. She was worried she’d be lonely.

“I’ll be home after,” Deborah added soothingly. It was as if her mom had forgotten how school worked. They don’t make you live there.

Parents are silly, Deborah thought. Sometimes it was like you were their parent, only they didn’t know it.

Maybe Deborah would be silly herself when she was a mom, but that was going to have to wait anyway until she traveled the world making her art for every famous museum so they could it hang on their walls and they’d probably want her to stay and say a few words like when she told her dad about her drawings.

But then again, maybe Deborah was sillier than she thought she was, because as much as she wanted to go back to school, when the day finally came, she was as nervous and scared as she’d ever been about anything.

What if everything had changed? What if her friends weren’t her friends like they used to be her friends?

What if Ms. Moriggi said, “You have to sit over here by yourself, Deborah, because we learned all of these things that you didn’t and you’ll have to catch up if you can.”

That last one wasn’t very realistic, but that’s how fear works. Once it starts, it can be hard to stop it from growing.

Deborah even considered asking her mom if she could she stay home with her instead. Keep things like they had become.

They could do more watercolors. And read more stories together. And drink more juice in tea cups like it was a special occasion.

But she also wanted to go so bad. It was both. It was just so much both. Life is funny that way, too.

Deborah had a hard time sleeping that night. The hardest time in her whole life that she could remember.

Maybe once when she was a baby there’d been a night she hadn’t slept at all, but there probably wasn’t. Her mom and dad would have told her.

“We thought you’d never sleep again,” they’d have said. “It was like some world record.”

She’d have to remember to ask them someday. But not now. It was time to get sleep. Pronto. That meant fast. Quick as can be. One-two-three-sleep!

She kept peeking at the clock on her nightstand. It was amazing, she thought, how something could be different and the same each time you looked at it.

Okay, Deborah said to herself, If I’m asleep by such and such a time, everything will be okay. I won’t be too tired. I’ll have gotten just enough rest. Ready, go.

But then the time would come and she’d still be wide awake—if anything, more awake than before.

She pledged to be asleep by a new time she selected, but the same thing would occur again, until finally Deborah decided that there was nothing to be done except stay up all night like a very busy grown-up, at which point she fell asleep and then it was the new day and she wasn’t sure what had happened, but there she was in her bed, with the sunlight finding its way between the shade and the window frame as though it had come to say hello, glad that you could make it.

Deborah only ate a little bit of her breakfast. Half of an egg, three corners of a piece of toast.

It was like having breakfast on a day when you have a doctor’s visit that morning. The kind when you know you’re getting a shot. They never hurt as bad as you think they will, but that doesn’t stop you from thinking that the next one might, until you don’t anymore. Who can eat?

Deborah drank most of her juice, though, because her voice felt dry and she didn’t want to squeak when she tried to talk.

She had already packed her bag a long time before so that it was nice and ready. Her favorite pen was in her special pen pouch along with a fresh pack of markers and the Buffalo nickel her grandfather had given her from his priceless collection of coins because of how much he loved her and that she had promised to keep safe for him forever.

The bag had been checked the night before—twice—and then one last time after the breakfast that mostly wasn’t eaten.

“Are you all ready?” Deborah’s mom asked after watching her zip up her bag for the last time.

Normally Deborah’s dad was at work before she woke up, but he was there in the kitchen, too.

“I…think so,” Deborah said.

She was a little squeaky, so she finished what was left of her juice.

“Yes,” she added.

It was now or never.