The class goes silent. The discussion has veered off into weird too-personal territory. We don’t want to think about the romantic lives of our teachers.

I stare at my hands for a minute. I know I shouldn’t argue with her. I don’t even know why I want to argue with her—because I don’t want to let Steven get away with the rose?—but I can’t seem to help myself.

“There was this study,” I say finally, “where a scientist made people ‘fall in love’ with a simple series of actions: he had them talk about certain personal topics and look into each other’s eyes for a determined period of time and have this specific physical contact, and if you put those factors all together then, bam—anyone can fall in love with anyone. Some of the people in that study got married later, and they had a lower divorce rate than the national average. It’s that simple. You do these certain things, you fall in love. It’s biology. Period. That people believe in it as anything else is just proof of how deeply ingrained the delusion is in our society.”

Mrs. Blackburn gazes at me all red-faced like she’d like nothing better than to send me to the principal’s office, but she can’t think of a good enough reason—being the official rain cloud over the V-Day love parade is not going to cut it.

The back of my throat feels tight. I swallow against it.

The round clock over the doorway ticks off its seconds. Then Jill, always the one to come to the rescue in moments of social awkwardness, says, “Hey, I have a word. Moist. I hate the word moist—it just sounds yuck. Who would come up with a word like moist?” She refers to her notebook. “It turns out that it comes from something called ‘Vulgar Latin’—whatever that means—muscidus, which means ‘slimy, musty, moldy.’ Yuck, right? And then somewhere in the thirteenth century it morphed into the Old French word moiste, which means ‘damp.’”

Mrs. Blackburn blinks, like she’d forgotten what she was going to say, then gives a short laugh.

Thank you, Beaker.

“I’ve never liked that word, either,” Mrs. Blackburn says as she glides smoothly back to the front of the class. “Something about the way it sounds is unpleasant, I agree.” She laughs again. “The study of words always brings out an examination of our feelings, which I think has become evident today, hasn’t it? That’s what words do. At the basic level they are simply a collection of symbols grouped together in order to represent an object. C-H-A-I-R represents this”—she puts her hand on the back of her empty seat—“chair. But each word represents something different for each of us.”

The bell rings.

“For Monday,” she says, raising her voice above the shuffle of papers and feet, “write a thousand words about the meaning of one word, and how the word makes you feel, and why.”

Oh, brother. The class gives a group sigh.

“Class dismissed,” she says. “Enjoy the rest of your day of Saint Valentine’s.”

“Hey, Lex, wait up.”

Beaker’s running to catch me as I flee the classroom. I stop in the hall and wait. She pulls up in front of me, her bright, curly hair falling wildly around her shoulders and getting stuck in her hoodie as she puts it on. She tugs at it and smiles breathlessly.

“El and I, we’re going to have an anti–Valentine’s Day party at El’s house tonight. It’s not a party, really; it’s an un-party, just pizza and a couple of slasher movies and maybe a game or two of Settlers of Catan.” She bites her lip and stares up at me hopefully. “Will you come?”

I love Settlers of Catan.

I love pizza.

I even love slasher films.

For all of two seconds I let myself imagine it: me and Beaker and El in our pj’s in El’s basement, the way things used to be. And maybe I’d tell them. We’d curl up on El’s old ratty couch with mugs of hot chocolate, and I’d spill out everything that’s been going on: Mom and her theory that Ty’s still in our house and how I’m not so sure now that she’s wrong, the letter to Ashley so I could ask them what they think I should do with it, and maybe I’d even talk about what happened that night Ty checked out. With Steven. With the text.

But the instant I really let myself picture it, I feel the hole coming on. If just thinking about this stuff makes me feel like I’m going to die, what would saying it out loud do? And then I consider how Beaker tends to laugh when she’s nervous. I imagine El’s face, that look she gets when someone has said something too ridiculous to be believed. And I think, No. No. I can’t tell them. I can’t.

“Lex?” Beaker prompts gently.

I shake my head. “I should be home with my mom tonight, you know?”

And that would be true, if my mom wasn’t working tonight. So it’s not technically a lie.

Beaker’s mouth goes into a frustrated line. I can see her considering her options and then deciding there are none. Nothing trumps sad, lonely mother.

“Anyway, why aren’t you going out with Antonio?” I ask.

She tucks a curl behind her ear. “Oh. We’re not together anymore. He’s a skeez.”

“I’m . . . sorry,” I say lamely. I never liked Antonio. He was the kind of guy that always wanted to make out with Beaker, but never seemed to want to talk to her.

He was unworthy.

Beaker waves her hand like she’s dismissing the thought of him, makes a pfft sound. “Well, love isn’t real, like you said, right? And Antonio’s hormones decided to react chemically with someone else.”