We will become cultured intellectuals if it kills her.

She continues: “Each word has a specific history, a context, a slow evolution of meaning. Most of the words we use today come from a clash of cultures: Norman against Saxon, Latin versus Germanic, smooth against guttural.” She stops next to Eleanor. “Give me a word, Miss Green.”

“Brave,” El says. Which is of course a word that El would come up with. El once caught a guy trying to steal the license plate off the back of her car on the street outside her house and ended up chasing him through the neighborhood with a baseball bat yelling like an Amazonian warrior queen. El is fearless.

“French, am I right?” queries Mrs. Blackburn.

“Yes.”

“And what do you like about this word, brave?”

“I like that it’s derived from a verb,” El answers. “Brave isn’t something you are. It’s something you do. It comes from action. I appreciate that.”

“Excellent,” Mrs. Blackburn says, moving on. She turns around and heads back up the row. “Mr. Blake,” she says. “A word.”

Steven clears his throat. His face goes slightly pink, but his voice doesn’t waver when he answers. “I picked love.”

Mrs. Blackburn widens her eyes and smiles. “Love? So that’s what’s on the young man’s mind.”

“It’s Valentine’s Day,” he explains with a hint of a smile. “So I’m thinking about it, yes.” His gaze touches mine and then moves quickly away.

“Love as a verb or a noun?”

“A verb,” he says.

I love you as the plant that never blooms but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers.

Crap.

Mrs. Blackburn nods. “And where does the word love come from?”

“Old English,” he reads off his laptop. “Lufian. To cherish, show delight in, approve. Which comes from the Old High German lubon, which meant something like joy.”

“Something like joy,” Mrs. Blackburn repeats like she’s reciting a poem. “Wonderful. How about you, Miss Riggs?”

I’m startled, and I’m not ready. Why would she call on me? I’m at the other side of the freaking room. Is my association with Steven that ingrained in everyone around us? “What?” I ask, like maybe I didn’t hear her correctly.

“What’s your word?”

“Oh. Mine’s not very good,” I say.

She waits.

I sigh. My eye falls on a word on my screen. “Delusion,” I say as my fingers type it in. See the seat of my pants, and see me flying by it. “From the Latin, delusio, it means ‘a belief that, though false, has been surrendered to and accepted by the whole mind as a truth.’”

“Interesting,” Mrs. Blackburn says thoughtfully. “What made you pick delusion?”

“Well, we were talking about love, right? Love is a classic example of a delusion.”

Mrs. Blackburn chuckles. “Oh. I see. Not a romantic then, are you?”

“No,” I say flatly. “I don’t believe in romantic love.”

“Why not?” she asks.

Here we go. “Because what we associate with the idea of love is purely chemical. It can be broken down into scientifically proven phases: it starts with a dose of testosterone and estrogen, what we would think of as ‘lust,’ followed by the goofy ‘lovesick’ phase, which is a combination of adrenaline, dopamine, and a drop in serotonin levels—which, by the way, makes our brains behave exactly like the brains of crack addicts—and ends up, if we make it through phases one and two, with ‘attachment,’ where the body produces oxytocin and vasopressin, which basically make us want to cuddle excessively. It’s science. That’s all.”

“Hmm,” says Mrs. Blackburn. “That’s quite the speech, Alexis.”

Steven smiles at me again, but it’s a sad smile this time. A pitying smile.

It makes me mad.

So I keep talking. “All this Valentine’s Day stuff comes from big business capitalizing on the delusion of love. All the candy, the candlelit dinners, the flowers . . .” I meet Steven’s gaze and hold it for a second and then look away. “It generates more than a billion dollars in revenue every year. Because people want to believe in love. But it’s not real.”

Mrs. Blackburn shakes her head, frowning. “But have you considered the notion that what we believe in—what we choose to believe in—is real? It becomes real, for us.”

I push my glasses up on my nose and stare at her blankly.

“Perhaps you’re right,” she adds, “and what we feel as love is nothing more than a combination of certain chemicals in our bodies. But if we believe that love is this powerful force that binds us together, and if this belief brings us happiness and stability in this tumultuous world, then what’s the harm?”

My chin lifts, like I have something to prove here. Maybe I do have something to prove. “In my experience, love doesn’t bring happiness and stability. But believing in love can cause a substantial amount of harm.”

Like with my parents.

Like with my brother.

Mrs. Blackburn straightens her wedding ring on her finger for a minute before speaking again. “I find that love is a concept much like bravery, Miss Riggs. I, for instance, have been married to the same man for thirty-two years. And, in all that time, I haven’t felt ‘in love’ with him every day, not in the way love is described in romantic comedies and romance novels, but I have loved him. Love is a choice I’ve made. A verb. And that, because I believe in it, because I act on it, is real. Love is a very real thing to me.”