Page 1 of Icing Hearts

Prologue

A girl doodles and scrawls in History class. She’s reading Romeo & Juliet in English and can’t shake the poignant lines from the forefront of her mind. She draws roses on thorny vines and hearts that don’t know what’s good for them.

She practices her cursive and calligraphy dozens of times until she’s happy with the iterations.

Love can be icy.

Love can be a warm whisper.

Sometimes it is both simultaneously. Sometimes, the boy you’ve been in love with since fifth grade loves you back but you don’t know it or don’t want to know it. Sometimes love is unrequited for many reasons and also for none. She ponders these things as she writes.

A bell rings and the girl tears the notebook paper from her binder. Such frivolity has no place alongside serious study. It crinkles against her palms and ping-pongs against the sides of the black, plastic trash bin by the door. She skips toward her friend down the hall, giggling at her own gaiety.

The boy is the last to rise and the last to leave the room. But before he does, he reaches into the trash bin and pulls out the crumpled sheet, covered in purple ink. He unfurls the parchment, smooths it out with care. It smells faintly of her. Lavender.

He lets out a smile, catches it and wrangles it, shoving it back down deep inside. The boy folds the paper with delicate movements and places it in his pocket. His fingers toy with the edges all day, tattering them. That night, he puts it under his pillow and prays that someday she will be his and not just a dream.

Little do they know; they are about to embark upon their own tale of star-crossed lovers. Remember, the night is always darkest just before dawn.

Chapter 1

Clara

Beauty. I’m not the natural kind of beauty. I’m fabricated. Created. I’m beautiful, sure, but only with bangs to hide my forehead, a contoured nose and face, and overlined lips. It is what it is, and I’m content with myself. I make the most with what I’ve got, and if anyone has a problem with that, then that’stheirproblem, not mine.

But I’m not like him. No, he’s the kind of beautiful that brings women to their knees. And I’ve been in love with him since fifth grade. Since the day he tackled me just a little too hard in flag football and didn’t help me up, but shoved the other boy who did. He’s the natural kind of beautiful. A ten out of ten. He has millions of followers and is scouted by modeling agencies and division one hockey teams alike.

And he hates me.

He hates his name, too. I think it’s as beautiful as he is. Victory Winner Amato. His parents actually named him that. Everyone calls him Vic, Victor, or Amato. Never Victory and never Tory, as I’ve taken to calling him. He hates that, too. But I love him—love him and let him know it.

He thinks my shameless flirting is a satirical joke and hates me more for it. But I don’t care. At least he sees me. Better than all the girls who fawn all over him and don’t even get a glance—or a glare, as I often get.

I’d rather he hate me than be indifferent toward me. We could never be together anyhow. So it’s safer this way. I always play it safe. Safe keeps me from getting hurt.

He’s the one boy I could never be with. So he’s the one boy I push away.

We have history class together. It’s the only class we have in common. I’m in all honors classes, and he’s in the general courses, except for history, somehow. Such is the curse of being a dumb jock. He’s notdumb, dumb, though. I could never be with someone like that. Tory is the kind of dumb that just has different priorities. Hockey is his priority. I wishIwas at least number two on his list of priorities. But I probably don’t make the cut in any favorable ranking of his. Meanwhile, history is my favorite class.

My locker flings open with a metallic clank as my friend, Jack Olson, thuds his book against the back with a toss. I kiss the poster of my queen.

“Must you do that every single time you open your locker?” he asks with a sardonic eye roll.

I hold my fingers up to the ears of the woman on the poster. “Don’t listen to him, Taylor Swift. You’re a mogul and an inspiration, and that monster deserves a ‘Dear John’ letter.”

Jack isn’t my best friend. We hang out more than any of my other friends at school. There’s a certain level of comfort in that. But I don’t have best friends. I have school friends and friends that I hang out with from time-to-time outside school. And then there are people I can hop in with for a ride to a party. But no sleepovers. No friends to bring on vacation. No one I have hour-long video calls or inside jokes with. Not that my police chief father brings me on vacation or would ever tolerate an hour-long video call.

So, no one ever gets too close. Just the way I like it. The way I need it.

“Can you grab me that body spray?” I ask Jack as I re-apply my Buxom lip gloss in the vanity mirror. Locker mirrors, or really any magnetic mirror, are one of the best inventions known to humankind. Who wants to shuffle into the bathroom during passing times like chattel? Not I.

“I thought you didn’t use crap like this,” Jack remarks as he tosses the spray straight up.

I pluck the amber glass bottle from the air with surprising grace. “This is made from essential oils. All natural, baby.”

“Whatever—” Jack starts, but he’s interrupted by a group of uncultured swine.

Henry Mavis leans against the locker beside me with a smarmy grin.

---