There's a boy in her class who she sort-of likes, a lot, definitely, so much.
Shirley confesses this to her diary, in sensible black ink because all her fun-colored pens have run dry and she'd forgotten to replace them.
Thing is, he worse than doesn't know she exists: he just doesn't care.
Not that he's mean. Just polite. Just, oh, silly Shirley. Always running around like a goose, harping on him, doting on him, making such a spectacle of herself, so obviously and obliviously in love.
Sometimes she almost wishes he would be cruel. She pushes at the breaking point. Cutesy nicknames, invades his privacy, chases him around campus. He should just quit her. He should just tell her to screw off. She doesn't know why he puts up with it.
Except that he's polite, of course, and he doesn't care.
That's the worst part of it, him not caring. An angry little part of her wants to slap him across the face just so he'd-
She hasn't thought that far ahead.
Think she was crazy. Get angry. Something.
But he probably wouldn't. He's her Lulu, and he'd just rub his jaw and look at her with those enormous, gently-mocking eyes and laugh at her. Like a father might. Oh, what's got you worked up now? I'll make it up to you, I promise.
He never does, of course, because it's Lulu, and he's got something like a dozen unofficial girlfriends who he pays even less attention to than her, and-she's his friend, right? She must matter to him at least a little.
Her ink busts, and the page fills with black splatters, coating her hand in ink, and destroying half of what she had written. Inarticulate, insubstantial, and halfway gone.
She starts to cry without knowing precisely why, then forgets about her hands, and rubs the black into her eyes too.