Read Something About Love: A YA contemporary romance in verse for Free Online Page A

and
    Streams of students flow around me.
    What is he doing?
    Standing there with that nervous smile,
    Murky eyes,
    Too-long hair?
    His feet shuffle;
    He clears his throat.
    What is he thinking?
    He won’t try to hold my hand in public, will he?
    I haven’t told anyone but Jacey about my break-up with Harris, but
    That doesn’t mean Trevor doesn’t know.
    “Hey,” I say, and
    Make to step past him.
    “You can’t go to your locker,” he blurts,
    The panic and concern evident in his tone.
    I turn around,
    Doing my best to ignore the icy fingers reaching into my stomach,
    Eliminating the slow burn that Trevor ignites.
    “Why not?”
    “There’s…”
    He seems to lose the oxygen he needs to speak.
    “Did you break up with Harris?”
    “Yes,” I say,
    Still trying to figure out what my locker has to do with Harris.
    “I’m gonna kill him,” Trevor says,
    The worry suddenly replaced by fury.
    My camera could catch his mood swings,
    Even though they happen in milliseconds.
    “Come on.”
    He grips my hand and enters the river of students cascading down the hall.
    “Trevor, tell me what’s going on.”
    My backpack swings wildly as Trevor cuts left and then right.
    I feel my cell phone buzz in my pocket.
    Trevor doesn’t answer until we reach B-Hall,
    Where my locker is.
    “I thought you said I couldn’t go
    To my locker.”
    “I was wrong,
    You need to see this.”
    He pauses at the corner,
    His chest heaving,
    His eyes bright.
    I wish I had my camera so I could capture the urgency in them,
    The emotion I can’t quite name in real time, but
    Could if I had enough time to analyze the shot.
    It’s something hot, and
    Pulsing, and
    Alive.
    Something I haven’t felt since breaking up with Trevor eighteen months ago,
    Something that if I understood what it meant,
    I’d call it…love?
    “I’ve already told the office, and the janitor,”
    He explains, “But it’s still there, and
    Well, everyone’s staring.
    But you need to know what kind of guy
    Your boyfriend is.”
    My ex-boyfriend.
    I suddenly realize how quiet B-Hall is.
    I wonder if the absence of noise can consume a person, because
    This silence feels predatory.
    “How bad?” I whisper
    With no movement in my lips.
    I picture Harris from yesterday:
    Broken, confused, and
    So, so angry.
    But he’d said he loved me;
    He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me.
    “Bad,” Trevor whispers back, and
    He squeezes my hand for strength.

“BAD,”
    Doesn’t begin to describe it.
    The first locker on the corner has writing on it.
    Red spray paint, if I had to guess,
    There’s no need though, because
    The empty can is lying on the floor.
    All the other seniors are on the opposite side of the hall, and
    Vice Principal Archibald marches up and down the line,
    Barking questions.
    When he sees me and Trevor, he makes a beeline toward us.
    “Miss Winging,” he says crisply,
    “Come with me.”
    I can’t move.
    Every locker from mine to the corner is defaced.
    Various notes have been scrawled on the locker in black Sharpie, and
    The red spray paint makes up a larger message.

SLUT.
    WHORE.
    BITCH.
    Above those bright,
    Bold,
    Red words,
    Sits my name.
    First and last.
    OLIVIA WINGING.
    SLUT.
    WHORE.
    BITCH.

“OH…”
    My breath leaks from my body,
    Leaves me cold,
    Comes out in a low moan.
    Someone next to me whispers, but
    I don’t hear what they’re saying.
    A buzz moves along the crowd,
    Down the line,
    Through the rumor mill.
    If everyone hadn’t been staring at me before,
    They all are now.
    It’s then I realize that Trevor and I are still holding hands.

“OLIVIA WINGING IS A CHEATER.”
    One of the smaller black Sharpie messages declares.
    Could be true.

“I TOLD HER I LOVE HER, AND SHE DIDN’T CARE,”
    Says another.
    Totally not true.

“OLIVIA IS A TEASE,”
    I read.
    I didn’t mean to be.
    I thought I was doing exactly the opposite.
    “She’ll kiss you, but
    Don’t expect anything more,”
    The note continues.
    I don’t know what