Not a Valentine

Chapter 1

January 31st

"Tell me why I signed up for this in the first place," I ask my best friends, who were laying on my bed, as I pace around my room before school. They had both come over to my house, Quincy having driven, and when I didn't come out of my house, they had to come inside to check on me.

They found me pacing around my room, and with nothing they could do to help my excessive stress, they both decided to lay down on my bed on their stomachs.

Quincy laughs as she takes a bite of her gronala bar. She decided to chew for a while before answering my question. "Because, Thea, you chose this," she says as she looks up at me after having perched up on her elbow. I give her a narrow look of my eye, and she puts her hands up as she says, "Come on, it was your idea. A very good idea; you're presenting it to get credit."

"I definitely regret it now," I say with a groan when I realize that what my friend said only adds more pressure to myself. Quincy elbows the solid body beside her, and my eyes move over to my other friend, who was looking at me lazily. It seemed he was tired, his blue eyes threatening to close. Or maybe that's how he always was; he seemed to be tired all the time.

His face contorts into a scowl as he turns his head to Quincy, which causes his hair to fall into his eyes. Quince and I have been telling him that he needed to cut his hair again, but he says it was better this way. Maybe that was true, but with the amount of time he touches his hair, the messy, fluffy look deems itself a more flattened look. He tells us that he has to wash his hair every day, which I could never do.

"Quince," he hisses through his teeth as he places a large hand on his rib that was hit. His eyes narrow as he looks at my best friend. "I told you you have bony elbows; this shit hurts."

Quincy sticks her tongue out at him. "Then add something to this conversation then, Mason."

Mason blows a breath out of his mouth dramatically and turns his head back toward me. His eyes cast a better expression—one that was less tired in his eyes than before—when he smiles up at me.

"Since Quincy insisted and not because I'm tired of hearing you doubt yourself," Mason starts with an easy smirk on his face. "It's fine, Thea. You got this. You're going to walk in there, give the best presentation of a lifetime, and then you're going to walk off feeling like a million bucks."

I cock my head to the side, a lock of my red hair that I curled today falling into my eyes, and say, "You do realize that I'm not, personally, getting money from this function?"

"No, but you'll still feel like a million bucks," Mason says, flashing me his very whitened teeth. "Say, is it five dollars per telegram being sent?"

"Yes," I answer, and then look at him with a pout. His eyes glance down at my lips before he looks back up at my eyes, running a hand in his hair. "Yesh, Thea?" He draws out the words teasingly, already knowing I'm going to be complaining about something.

I place a hand on my hip and say, "Why aren't you helping me out with this?"

Mason sits up on his elbows rather than fully laying on my bed and says, "I'm a busy man, darling." I make a face at the nickname he used in the joke, and Mason looks away from me, the side of his jaw moving up and down as he clenches it. 

"Right as if you have any extracurriculars right after school," I say with a slight chuckle, and then I meet the eyes of Quincy, who shares a laugh with me. Quincy and I met Mason last year while he was waiting outside for a ride after our student council meeting. It was evident then that he had been waiting for over an hour and didn't have a ride, so we offered him one.

Ever since that day, we have all grown close to each other. Of course, there was a dynamic between our friendships; Quincy and I were closer to each other, and it would be hard for Mason to be as close to us considering the fact that Quincy and I had just been friends for way too long. When we first met, Quincy had taken a liking to Mason, but after hanging out with him for a week, it was clear that he didn't like her.