Page 1 of Lonely Hearts Day

Year 1

(Freshmen)

Chapter 1

“Jack,” I hissed as the fourth rose was passed out in our English class. And it was only first period. The group of five leadership students had come in, recited a poem that I could’ve sworn rhymed the wordsfinnickyandyou picked me, then proceeded to hand out the roses while our teacher stood at the front of the room, arms crossed, waiting impatiently.

My best friend turned in his seat. “What?”

“Remember when I got sent home to change last week because a strip of my stomach was exposed?”

“Yeah.”

“This is more distracting than that ever was.”

“True. But your exposed stomach didn’t raise any money for the school so the hypocrisy will live on.”

“You’re right. Maybe that’s the key to changing dress code rules—somehow monetizing tank tops and three-inch inseams.”

“You should raise your hand and suggest that.”

“I should.” I looked toward the front of the room and started to raise my hand.

“Don’t, Scarlett.” He pulled my arm down by the sleeve. “I’m less bitter about the dress code and more bitter that I have to listen to that poem six times today,” he said quietly as the leadership group left, minus six roses.

“Of course you’re not bitter about the dress code. You’re a guy.”

The girl next to me, rose smashed up against her nose as she took a large inhale, said, “You’re bothactuallybitter because you’ll never get one.”

I rolled my eyes. She didn’t know us at all. The last thing we wanted was a school-bought rose. Even if someone did have a crush on me, I wouldn’t want them to give their hard-earned money to the school so that a stranger could hand me a rose in class.

Valentine’s Day was a stupid holiday as far as I was concerned. If someone had to be reminded to show their love for you, did they really love you in the first place?

“Are we going tonight?” Tessa asked at the locker next to mine. She wasn’t talking to me. She was talking to her boyfriend, Brady, who was helping her shove the oversized teddy bear he’d brought her today inside. It wasn’t fitting and every time they tried, her shoulder would bump into me. I was in the process of trading my math book for my history book because even though half the school thought learning ceased on this day, teachers still continued teaching. Or attempting to.

“Do you want to go?” Brady asked.

“It was fun last year.”

She was talking about the party that Micah and Cassidy—king and queen of the sophomore class—had thrown every year since they’d gotten together three Valentine’s Days ago. They weren’t the literal king and queen of their class—as in, they’d never been crowned at prom or anything—but everyone considered them couple goals. And they must’ve taken the title seriously because they threw awe are so in love and you should be tooparty that was attended by a lot of the student body.

I had never gone.

I shut my locker, having made a successful book transfer, and walked toward fourth period. Jack and I met in the hall halfway there. We had three classes together, history being one of them.

“You know what really needs its own special day?” I said. Jack was used to my antics; used to me pulling him into my thought process mid process. We’d been friends since the third grade when we’d both ended up in the same church parking lot on our bikes for a Pokémon raid. We didn’t play Pokémon anymore (well, rarely) but our friendship stuck. We liked the same things—anime and board games and discovering terrible bands that we could love-hate.

“What needs its own special day?” he asked now. “By the way, that poem is even more terrible than I realized. They rhymedfrieswithyour eyes.”

“That’s the only line I like. It makes me hungry though.”

He smiled his lopsided smile. Jack was stringy, his limbs too long for his thin frame, his hair too short for his oversized glasses. “I don’t know how the leadership students read it with a straight face. I couldn’t even read agoodpoem in front of the class. Not even to someone I liked,” he said.

“I would die to see you reading a poem in front of the class to some girl.”

He shuddered at the thought of it.

“Wasn’t it Elizabeth Bennett who said that one poor sonnet could kill love stone dead?”

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