Better Than a Candy Heart, but Not as Good as a Necco Wafer

The 2nd floor geochemistry message board is currently playing host to an anonymous, rapidly updated dialogue-by-means-of-pushpin. The exchange has lasted some three weeks. It began, or at least I noticed it, when a smiley face morphed into "Hi!," which was shuffled to a "Hey" overnight. I have the identity of one participant (a labmate); the other is a mystery person in the halls of Hoffman. Having established that I was not involved, the labmate and I recently gathered enough pins to eke out "Who?" on the board. This was replaced, overnight, with a somewhat disappointing "Me." So much for the direct approach.

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My labmate has left for the rest of summer, and the pins have mirrored a slide from assurance to confusion: a smiley face dropped to "?!" Today's reaction to the prolonged radio silence: a heart with an arrow through it. For one thing, that took a lot of pins. I scanned the hallway for pin-poor posters hanging off the wall. Logistics aside, hmm. I wonder who in Hoffman is heartbroken.