"I love you," she said.

I wish I could start there, but I can't.

---

January is the month of love. I don't care what anybody says about spring or Valentine's Day. January is full of scarves and pink noses and people failing to accomplish their New Year’s resolutions. That is the perfect time for love to blossom. Valentine's Day is a celebration of the love you found in January.

It is in the middle of one such lovely January that this story takes place. This story lives in a place called Petersville. It is a decent-sized city. It's not big enough to be a metro, taking up a big pink patch-of-hives space on the face of the map. It was more of a zit.

In this zit-town, there is a little private school called Petersville Academy. It goes without saying that the founder of said school must have been very short on creativity. Apart from its snore-in-a-bucket name, it is also unusual in the fact that it doesn't have a uniform. The parents complained that they spent hundreds of dollars on their children's clothing, and they would not allow their children to wear a uniform.

Mr. Short-on-whit founder is obviously a big pushover as well.

In this good-sized-mole town, in this unthoughtfully named school, there dwells a boy named Maddy. He didn't have a whole lot of friends. He'd never had a girlfriend. He was kind of weird. I mean, he's got a girl's name for crying out loud. Maddy Carver was an artist, a writer, and a musician.

And nobody really cares about him.

Moving onto the next phenomenal character. Michael Hunter. He's your average hot guy. He's almost six foot four. He's got big strong arms, big brown eyes, and thick curly hair. He's also made it his goal to date every single girl in the entire school. Each week he gets a new girl. He takes them out on Monday, kisses on them, buys them everything their heart desires, then dumps them by Saturday. They're like an accessory to him. Arm candy.

So of course he set out to make Linda Jones his girlfriend the second he laid eyes on her. She had naturally butter-yellow hair and big, dark blue eyes. She was tiny and petite with a beautiful face. She was new to the school. Shy. Quiet. Didn't smile much.

He walked right up to her and asked her to go out with him.

She stared at him, eyes wide. "No," was all she said before scurrying away.

"No!?" He practically shouted, chasing after her. "Wait, wait, wait," he could not believe it. "Why not?"

"I don't know you!" He had to forgive her. She was new.

The next day at lunch, he and his friends swarmed upon her table like hornets. He wrapped his beefy arm around her and whispered in her ear. "You are the most beautiful person I have ever seen." His S’s tickled her ear and she giggled. He thought he was succeeding. "You have to say yes." He slid his class ring in front of her - something he had never done for any of the other girls. "Be my girlfriend. Make me the happiest guy ever." She picked up the ring and placed it on her itsy-bitsy thumb. Michael Hunter smiled. Linda smiled politely back.

They all took it as a yes.

Four months later, the ring has never left her hand, no matter how big and clunky it is. The guys ignored her, knew she was off-limits. The girls ignored her because it was easier than hating her. Michael wore her on his arm, attached her to him like a big fancy watch. Everyone thinks it's cool for a while, but soon they just get used to it.

He latched onto her before school, during school, in the halls, at lunch... he didn't see her after school on account of him playing every sport known to man. So everyday after school, she'd load up her backpack with more books than half her body weight. She'd put the oversized bag on her tiny little form and she'd walk home - terribly terribly alone. Like the piece of jewelry that everyone ignores when you set it on a table at night.

She had the perfect boyfriend, the perfect school, and more money than she'd ever need. She was beautiful, she was smart - she was the happiest girl alive.

And yet everyday after school, the girl who shuffled along the lone country roads wasn't happy at all. Her emotions were barely even awake enough to realize she wasn't happy.

Thus, our story begins.