Sweet Romance11 min read
The Pink Bandage and the Promise We Kept
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I still remember the bright morning the first pink Band‑Aid appeared on my life.
"Don't forget the list, Lena," my mother said at the doorway.
"I know, Mom," I called back, tugging my white bag strap tighter and fluffing my high ponytail.
The sun hit hard. I squinted and used my arm like a poor shield from light I could not fight.
I ran toward the small bookstore nearest school.
"Slow down," an older woman sighed from behind me.
Inside, the store smelled of paper and dust. Rows of pens gleamed under glass.
"Watch out!" someone shouted as a crowd shifted.
I was picking up a black‑and‑white pen when a quick gasp cut through the noise.
I looked up and met the face that stopped the small chaos: white shirt, clean jaw, a tiny cut across one finger.
"Do you have anything for that?" he asked, voice light.
"I do." I pulled a solitary pink Band‑Aid from my bag and smiled, handing it across without thinking.
"Thanks." He took it carefully, then stuck the pale pink square on his fingertip as if it belonged there.
"You're welcome," I said, and walked to the cashier.
When I stepped out, the sun seemed less hot than the little warmth that had gathered in my chest.
Later, when I first saw him at school, I did not expect the Band‑Aid to make him familiar to me.
"Are you new?" the tall boy with the lazy grin asked me, leaning against the wall. He had a smoke between two fingers and too much ease in his voice.
"No," I said quickly. "I'm just... here."
He smirked. "I'm York."
I should have walked away. I almost did.
"Stop," a cool voice cut across the courtyard.
I looked up and my stomach did a curious flip. He stood there in his student‑council uniform—white shirt, calm face. He was the same soft‑eyed boy from the bookstore. He looked at York with something like a quiet tide and said, "Apologize."
"Apologize?" York sneered.
"Apologize to her." The amphitheater around them hummed with the curiosity of students.
I froze. I wanted to be invisible.
"I don't want you to ruin my day," I told them both, too loud for my own nerves.
The quiet boy watched me. "Call me Duncan," he said later, as we stood by the trash bins and he wrapped a napkin around his finger. "Duncan Green."
"I am Lena," I said. "Lena Le."
He smiled like sunlight through leaves. "Lena," he repeated. "Thanks for the Band‑Aid."
"That was nothing," I mumbled.
After that, school filled up with small moments that were too bright for someone like me.
"You're in charge of the program," our teacher announced days later. "Lena, you will keep the class fund."
My heart jumped and then dropped.
"Why me?" I asked, because my hands always felt clumsy when other people's things were at stake.
"You're responsible," she said simply.
I kept the envelope in my pocket like a small, warm stone and told myself I would not lose it.
A week later, I did.
"Where did you put the envelope?" Addison asked, tossing a chip at her mouth.
"I had it. I did," I said. I turned my pockets inside out. My hands trembled.
"You looked happy today," Addison said quietly. She was my friend—sharp, short hair, a person who would bring me coconut water when I forgot my bottle. "Tell me exactly where you had it last."
"I swear I put it in my jacket," I said. "I swear."
That night, after practice and rehearsal and too many small, embarrassed phone calls home, I lay awake full of a dread that tasted like metal.
Two days later, Duncan slid a thin, dark envelope across my desk.
"I found this in a small cabinet in the meeting room," he said.
I blinked. The envelope smelled faintly of old paper and his cologne. "You found it?"
He nodded. "I asked around."
"Thank you," I whispered. My throat was full. "How—"
"Never mind that." He looked away. "You're honest. Keep it safe."
I wanted to hug him. I said nothing and let him keep his silence. I wanted him to keep his dignity.
People called him "student‑council," "top of the class," "Duncan, the quiet king." He had the kind of presence that stopped whispers.
"I will help," he said once when I worried about his walked‑injury. "I'll take you to the nurse if you want."
"You're hurt too," I told him. "You should rest."
"It's fine," he said, and then his face flickered. "Just—cheer for me at the match?"
"Of course," I said.
I learned his small habits. He liked thin, bitter chocolate. He hated loud rooms. He carried a spare pack of cigarettes in a pocket he promised me was not for show.
"Why do you smoke?" I dared once. We were alone, and the question felt both rude and honest.
"I forget I'm scared," he said. He smiled, but his eyes were like glass.
Sometimes, when he thought no one watched, he paled under the noon sun and pressed his fingers to a stomach that hurt more than a bruise.
"You're white," I said, worried, one afternoon. "Are you okay?"
He looked surprised. "I will be. Don't worry about me."
But later, in the dim school corridor, he gripped my wrist and asked me not to tell anyone.
"Please," Duncan breathed. "Don't let anyone know about this. Promise me."
"Okay," I said before I thought of the cold place his words had come from. "I won't tell."
One rainy afternoon, he caught me by the staircase.
"Do you need me to hold your hand?" he asked, quietly.
"Just... stay with me," I said.
He took my hand with a gentleness that was almost shy. "I will."
He taught me a fragile thing: that trust isn't always loud. It can be a bandage and a holding hand. I felt my world grow the size of his shadow beside me.
But school is a public stage and people are not kind in the wings.
"She lost the class fund?" someone said, loud and sharp.
"I heard she is useless," Crystal said in a voice that cut like a paper edge. She was the girl who liked control—she liked being the name everyone used when they wanted someone to look small.
"How did she lose six thousand?" another student asked.
My chest tightened. The next day, the rumor swelled.
"She stole the money," someone whispered.
The accusation made the air heavier. I kept my head down, hands folded in my lap, the envelope gone and my stomach a loose knot.
Duncan found me after class. His face had an odd, grim set.
"You're coming with me," he said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because you are not the one who does this. Trust me."
I didn't understand how one person could think me innocent. I only knew his presence felt like home.
On the day of the assembly where the rumor would be addressed, the auditorium filled. Rows upon rows of faces, phones shining like distant stars.
"Someone took money from the class." The principal's voice was small from the stage.
"Who would do such a thing?" several voices murmured.
"No one knows," Crystal said loudly, with eyes sliding somewhere behind me.
I felt the heat. Someone shoved me slightly. "You should step forward," they hissed.
Duncan stood beside me without being asked. He carried that quiet force like an armor.
"You presumed to leave it unattended," York said from a row, smirking as if he enjoyed a private joke. He had a way of spitting charm into cruelty.
"Enough," Duncan said. He walked toward the table, then paused under the glint of the stage lights. He took the microphone from the principal with a methodical calm.
"I have been asking around," he said. His voice was steady like polished wood. "I found the envelope. I also found something else."
Phones rose like a field of thin metal stems. Murmurs swelled.
"What are you doing?" Crystal snapped.
Duncan clicked his fingers and a short video burst on the large auditorium screen. For a breathless second, it showed security footage from the meeting room: a shadowy figure opening the cabinet, the envelope moving, a sleeve with a distinctive bracelet.
"It's not Lena," Duncan said. "Look closer."
The video rewound to a clearer angle. We all saw Crystal's bracelet flashing under the cabinet light as she slid the envelope into her bag. York was there, turning his head, smiling like a guilty saint.
"No," Crystal said, voice thin.
A hundred phones recorded. A circle of students moved closer with eyes that had the keen delight of witnesses to a storm.
"Why?" someone shouted.
"Why would you do this?" Duncan asked. He was calm but very loud. The auditorium listened.
Crystal's face changed. From the pale composed mask she wore at lunch, her expression slid through stages like a broken elevator: confident, worried, furious, then fractured.
"It was a joke," she snapped at first, a brittle laugh. "We were messing around. She couldn't take a joke." She looked toward me, voice blazing, then faltered. "It wasn't meant to be—"
"It's not a joke when you make someone's mother owe money," Duncan said. The lights caught his jaw. "How many of you know Lena? How many of you know what this fee meant to her family?" His question wasn't cruel. It was a blade of light.
The crowd shifted. Phones recorded. Someone began to clap slowly, then the sound spread, like rain starting on a window.
Crystal's eyes widened. She took a step backward. "You have no proof," she cried.
"Do we need more proof?" Duncan asked. On his phone, he flipped through messages—photos, receipts, a chain of payments. He showed the principal copies, and copies to class leaders. The auditorium's murmur turned into a low, shocked chorus.
"I didn't—" Crystal said, then her voice thinned to a whisper. "I only borrowed it."
"Borrowed?" York laughed, then his face lost color when the camera showed him picking up the envelope. He tried to pull back, but the motion was clumsy and obvious.
"Stop lying," Duncan said. "You were seen on the camera. This is not just a joke. You took money."
They were forced onto the stage like two actors thrown out of a play. Students surrounded them. Someone filmed; someone shouted; someone cried a little from the excitement of justice.
Crystal's tone crumpled. "It was supposed to be a prank. I didn't think—"
"You thought what?" a voice called. "That the teacher will fix everything?"
People were close enough to hear each breath. The principal's face shadowed into a mix of disappointment and anger.
"Crystal Cox and York Coleman," he said into the microphone. "You will give back the money. You will stand and apologize to Lena in front of the whole school. You will clean school facilities for a month. Discipline will also follow."
There was a rustle of approval from the audience. Crystal swayed as if struck.
"No," she whispered. The word ended like a brittle thread.
"Apologize now," the principal ordered.
Crystal's face crumbled. The spiral of her emotion moved in these stages I had been told to expect: she went from smug to shocked to denial. Now she was shaking.
"It was—" she began and then her voice failed.
"I was wrong," York said at length, and then it was Duncan's voice that called him out: "You were part of it. You stood there while she pocketed the money. You watched."
"I—" York's composure split. He blinked, looked at the sea of faces, and then his expression collapsed. He sank to his knees on the stage in a motion none of us expected.
"Please." York's voice shook. "Please don't—"
The auditorium seemed to tilt. People whispered, filmed, and some shook their heads. A few recorded the moment and already posted it.
I felt a strange, absolute calm in the eye of that storm.
Duncan simply watched them break. He did not gloat. He stood tall and solemn. The principal ordered the arrangement: Crystal and York would remain on stage, return every penny, and deliver an apology in front of everyone.
Crystal's face moved through every shade: false bravado, sharp denial, cold fury. Then she felt the weight of the crowd. She could see her friends back away. A phone flashed. Someone laughed. Someone began to clap in a small, chopped rhythm.
"Please!" she cried, voice small.
"No," York said. He tried to stand, but legs failed him. He crumpled, fingers clawing at the stage like someone trying to hold sand.
People recorded. Some pointed. A few hissed at them. Someone started to chant Lena's name—soft at first, then louder.
"You don't get to make her life smaller," someone shouted. "Not in our school."
Crystal dropped her head. Her face flooded with the wetness of public shame. Her eyes searched for an ally and found none.
She took in a deep breath and then spoke, barely audible at first.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Lena, I'm sorry."
Her apology broke into a sob. The auditorium was full of witnesses. Phones clicked. I saw students phone cameras pointing—some with sympathy, some with hungry satisfaction. A group of girls who had once giggled at my expense looked stunned and embarrassed. A few clapped ironically.
York crawled to a kneel beside her, his suit wrinkled, his face pale. "I'm sorry," he said again, voice small. "Please, please."
I watched their pride fold away on stage. They had been powerful in a tiny cruel way. Now their power lay in the smallness of their apologies. They met the requirement the principal set: return of funds and public apology. They would also face detention and community service. Students around the auditorium whispered that they might be suspended.
"I forgive you," I said after a long moment, because there was a strange kindness that wanted to unburden them as well as myself. "But it will be hard to trust."
Crystal's shoulders shook. York's mouth moved as if to speak and then closed. The principal led them down the stage and the crowd filed out in a mix of triumph and unease.
Later, the videos of the apology trended. People recorded the moment from every angle. Some students applauded. Some laughed. Others shook their heads.
Duncan walked with me out of the auditorium, his hand light on my elbow.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"I am," I said. "Because you stood up."
He shrugged. "Because you trusted me."
I looked at him. His smile was a small thing like a broken comet. "Thank you," I said.
After that day, little things changed.
People who had once laughed at me learned I was human. I learned that sometimes being small and honest is enough to be brave. Duncan and I kept our promises: he kept his quiet watch and I kept my clumsy, stubborn loyalty. We sat on benches that summer and ate cotton candy one with a pink edge and another with strawberry flakes, and he stopped pretending that he hated sweetness.
"Do you still want to eat the cotton candy?" he asked once, surprising me with a childlike grin.
"Yes," I said. "Because you promised to take me when I was little."
His hand found mine and he squeezed it like he meant the word "promise" with the weight of everything he could not say.
We made small, honest promises to each other. We let the bandage between us be more than an object. It became a story we would tell in whispers for years.
Later that year, when the leaves turned and the school held the autumn fair, I stood by the Ferris wheel with a pink stick of cotton candy in my hand, the taste like a childhood kept in sugar.
"Do you remember the Band‑Aid?" I asked Duncan softly.
He smiled, eyes like tidewater. "Do you remember your promise?"
"Always," I said, and the cotton candy glowed like a small moon between our fingers.
He tapped the Band‑Aid on his finger where it still had the faint pink mark of our first meeting, and we both laughed. The laughter echoed into the dusk, and it felt very much like a small, private victory.
I learned to run that year. I learned to stay. I learned to forgive and to be forgiven. The envelope, the Band‑Aid, the cotton candy, the sick stomachs and the strange quiet courage—they all braided together into a small life.
"Don't go too far," he said one evening when we stood under a willow, watching the light break into fingers on the pavement.
"I won't," I answered. My voice was small and sure.
That night I slept with my hand curled as if it were holding onto his; a tangible reassurance, like a Band‑Aid pressed into the skin.
Months later, I found an old scrap of pink wrapper tucked into the pages of a notebook Duncan never opened in class any longer. I kept it in my pocket like a little talisman. Sometimes I would smooth its edges and remember that small day in the bookstore, the startled gratitude, and the way a pink Band‑Aid made two lives touch.
We kept growing. I kept losing petty things and finding bigger ones. He kept the quiet around him as shelter rather than a wall. When I grew tired, he offered a nap in the school's sunny reading room. When he broke down, I made a ridiculous face until he laughed.
One ordinary evening, after a day full of river light, he looked at me across a table and said, "Lena, keep being my silly friend."
"Only if you keep being my gentle guardian," I replied.
He grinned, folded his hand over mine, and that was a promise neither of us ever wanted to break.
The End
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