Dear Love, I Hate You (Easton High)

I bite back an inconvenient grin, overly aware that Lucille is watching me like a hawk, and angle my body to the right so she can’t see me slide the sticky note out of the book and shove it into my pocket.

“So?” Lucille asks impatiently.

“Nothing. Looks like he genuinely likes poetry,” I lie through my teeth and amble back to the front desk to resume sorting through the return pile as though nothing happened.

As though everything isn’t different now. As though I didn’t break our anonymity pact.

I hate it.

I hate it more than words can say.

But there’s no running from the truth anymore.

Zac is Xavier Emery.

Aveena

Love: I thought we said go big or go home. That last confession was pretty weak, Z.

Staring at the unanswered message on my screen, I anxiously bounce my leg and consider deleting Zac’s—or should I say, Xavier’s—number from my phone.

We’ve never heard that one before.

I keep saying I’m going to ghost him, but my idiotic brain seems to have a hard time differentiating the words “ghost” and “text.” In my defense, I’ve been sitting in my car, waiting for Ashley to come out of her fancy music school, for over an hour. I figured I’d spare myself the boring wait.

Did you hear that?

Sounds like excuses.

Finally, my phone pings with a reply.

But the sender isn’t who I’d hoped for.

It’s Dia.

Dia: Senior prank night tonight, don’t forget. I’ll pick you up at midnight.

Love: Gotcha.

I could pat myself in the back for my lack of resistance. Aveena Harper, going to a social event willingly? Tell the aliens the abduction went wrong.

She likes people now.

Dia and I have been talking about senior prank night since sophomore year when Dia’s older brother, Jesse, started raving about it. He’d ramble on about how he and Finn’s older brother superglued Mr. Tate’s desk shut.

Dia made me promise we’d join in on the fun when the time came, and I agreed partly because it felt so far into the future.

But here we are now, months away from graduation.

Truth be told, I’d gladly pass on the whole, “vandalizing your school” trend, but I know how important these experiences are to Dia. Especially now that she’s cut all ties with Finn and Lacey. She wouldn’t have anyone to go with, so, long story short, I decided to get over myself and go superglue shit with my best friend for one night.

My phone chimes, and I pull up my conversation with Dia, certain she’s to blame for the notification.

Only… she’s not.

The culprit is Zac.

Zac: You didn’t see it, did you?