I know that hallway too. Ever since I was disconnected from the Red String, it has been too easy to fall into a feeling of hollow absence, especially when passing through particular hallways (or is it always the same one?) between classes. Though the feelings it gives me always drives me away, I keep seeking it out, feeling for the raw edge where my emptiness begins, but where someone else is just out of reach. Because I want to make that connection.

I have one particularly long piece of the Red String left. I've tied a small fishing weight to one end, and I hurl it into the despair, hoping to land it on the other side.

THUNK

There -- it's landed once again.

I wait to feel the tug of someone on the other end of the line.

I am crushed. My crushes all became a single giant tsunami of crush. A crush on the whole world! A crush of every potential at once. A crush on that damn red string. Until it crushed me.

That teacher's pet @Otto Ahn and his sister, tools of the administration, came in and snipped all the red string to bits. All of us students, frothing at the mouths as we were, screamed and wept and gnashed our teeth until nobody was paying attention to us anymore. Then we all crawled through the bits of red string and, in our tears, began to weave hair ties, and bracelets, and ear cuffs and piercing adornments.

I made a whole bunch of bracelets, and you can buy them from me at lunch. Guaranteed to be connected to your own true love.

Oh I’m just so tangled up in all this red string at the dance. I followed mine all the way from the lunchroom, and we were supposed to find our true love at the other end. But instead it’s just one big knot! So here we all are trying to untangle it, brushing elbows with each other and knowing that any one of us could be the other’s true love… I think my deodorant is wearing off. What if it’s that disgusting Riley Ryan? I think I will barf and die! And the damn band just keeps playing the Manamana song over and over and over again—how are we supposed to think in here? How could anyone think this is perfect? It’s like the most anxious day of my whole life!