Ah, young love–it’s wonderful, exciting, and in some scenarios, it can end in heartbreak. Walking through the halls at Cranford High School, you’ll see couples holding hands, showing examples of PDA, or even tagging tables and the like (tagging is when someone writes a name or initials on a surface, for example “J & H forever.”) 

It was quite the surprise for student, Sam Schiffl, when in September 2021 she opened her locker and encountered numerous testaments of high school crushes, the majority of which seemed to be the handiwork of “Joy.” In locker A1087, the graffiti covering the inside of the locker included three CHS students, Joy, Sean, and Dan. From what we can surmise, it seemed Joy was first jonesing for Sean, when she wrote “Joy -n- Sean” or “Joy hearts Sean,” where she drew an actual heart, five times throughout her locker. But eventually, Joy crossed out Sean’s name, and replaced it with Dan, in three out of the five locations.

So the question lies, who is Dan? Who is Sean? And who is Joy? After intense research, we are still unsure who exactly they are. While we have our speculations, we don’t feel comfortable disclosing any of our guesses including last names for the sake of the privacy of the individuals who may have been involved in the mystery. However, if there’s a lot of feedback with this article, we might share our suspicions…

Here’s what we do know. All three students were in the same grade at CHS in the late 90’s/ early aughts however, we are unsure of what grade specifically in which the graffiti occurred. Based on our research, our guess is sophomore year. Additionally, we have interviewed several teachers at CHS, who we believe may have gone to school with the trio, but they claim to not have any details about them or the situation. Even so, there is speculation that one of our teachers’ younger siblings was in the same grade as the trio, although this was never confirmed. 

 So what truly happened between these three? How did Sean mess up so badly to incur the wrath of having his name crossed out? Maybe one day the mystery will be solved, but alas today is not that day.