Chapter 2: Chapter One

The look my best friend was currently wearing on her face was a bit troubled, as if she was trying to let me know how much of an idiot I was and that she was still struggling to find a way to tell me so gently.

"Hannah..." Even the tone of her voice told me the same thing—that I was a total featherbrained human being and she was embarrassed to be seen within a five-mile radius of me, yet she didn't know how to tell me that. "You're not actually doing that."

"And why ever not?" I made a show of flipping my blonde hair over my shoulder. It had gotten too long for my liking—the straight ends fell against the middle of my back and it was getting trickier to tie it into a neat ponytail in three seconds. I did a mental note in my head to stop by the salon sometime this week to give it a little trim. Maybe get a highlight? A complete dye?

"Hannah, stop playing with your hair! You're not listening." Gina huffed and crossed her arms in front of her chest, her natural curly hair bouncing a little. I'd always been envy of her cute curls. My hair was too straight, too blonde, too flat— "Hannah!"

"What? Sorry."

Gina let out a long, dragged-out sigh, and I waited. "You know what? Whatever. You won't even listen to me. I don't know why I even bother." I gave her my biggest grin and she softened, the corners of her lips twitching into a smile. "You're such an idiot. Why are you my friend?"

I rolled my eyes. "Because you love me?" I leaned over to steal a grape from her tray, popping it into my mouth. "You just can't admit how brilliantly genius my plan is."

"There's nothing genius in this!" she exclaimed, despite the fact that she was oh so done with me. "You should just as well dig up your own hole and lie in it. Hannah, I just honestly cannot see the logic in your 'genius plan'," she said, making a quotation mark in the air with her fingers.

"The logic is there, clear as crystal. You know we've watched Apple all these years—"

"You mean you, as you're so obsessed with him," she interrupted.

I ignored her. "—and never once we've seen anyone around here come close to becoming his friend, let alone hear him say more than one whole sentence. No one can crack open his shell by trying to become his friend, so why not try making him hate you?"

"See, that's what I was saying. There's no logic in here. What is your goal, exactly?" she asked, leaning her chin on top of the palm of her hands, her elbows propped on the table.

"I've told you. Tear down that tough bad boy walls he's put around him."

"By making him hate you?"

"Yep."

I could see that she was fighting the urge to laugh. "And then what, hope to God he'll somehow grow to love you instead?"

I beamed at her. "Now we're talkin'!"

She scoffed. "The chances of it happening is slim to none. You know how it works with Apple."

Simultaneously, we glanced at the said "Apple" who was sat in the corner of the room, all by himself as usual. "Apple" was our codename for my longtime crush, Jonah Gibbs. The name came up after I saw him walk in the hallway one morning, with a red apple mid-bite in-between his teeth. So the name came up and he'd been stuck with it without him knowing.

Real-time Jonah was wearing a long-sleeved white button-down shirt, with a navy t-shirt peeking underneath, a pair of dark gray jeans and white sneakers. That kind of broke the unwritten rule that the quiet, brooding high school guys were only allowed to wear everything dark, like they did in the movies. His head was down as he slightly bobbed his head up and down to the music he was listening through his earphones. The sandwich on his lunch tray was half-eaten, long forgotten by his fingers that are tapping on the table.

It was the most emotion anyone in Northside High could ever get from Jonah Gibbs so far. I wish I was exaggerating, but that was the truth. Jonah had no friends. He strolled along in the hallway solo, backpack slung over one shoulder and headphones on. No words spoken, except when necessary (i.e. talking to the teachers, saying "excuse me" when the crowd gets too tight, getting lunch from the lunch lady, etc). He never smiled, never laughed, never did anything that indicate that he actually felt emotion—or that he'd like to share it to the world. Except when it came to mild annoyance, or irritation, or impatience; then he'd let out a small scowl to silently bark at the person in the line in front of him to move the hell faster.

He'd been like this ever since he first showed up at school in ninth grade, abruptly transferring from another state about two months into the school year. Some people tried at first to become his friends, to ask him to join their lunch tables, but then they got tired of asking and just left him be. Eventually, he became known as "that guy" who never talks, who was just so weird and sullen and is such a freak. There were rumors, probably being told around by the people that got butthurt over Jonah's "rejection" to their lunch table offers.

Some of the rumors were pretty bizarre. There was one about him being an actual vampire and that was why he stays out of people's way—to distance himself from the smell of human blood. Or that he was actually a serial murderer waiting to strike. Or a thousand different laughable rumors that I was pretty sure Jonah himself was laughing at them every day at home—all simply because he'd chosen to shut himself off from the world.

The rumors eventually died out and he simply became a guy who blended into the crowd in silence, but my curiosity—and that teeny tiny bit of a crush I had going on for him—never stopped wondering what an enigma Jonah Gibbs was, and that I had to crack it somehow.

That was exactly why it was my next task to get an emotion out of him.

Gina's voice cut me out of my trance. "You do realize that there's a bigger chance that he would end up hating you, right?"

I shrugged at her. "There's only a veeery thin line between love and hate, so I'll take that chance."

She threw her head back in exasperation. "You're so hopeless. How many times do I need to tell you to stop watching all those cheesy movies that your sister left you? I get that you miss her, but seriously."

My sister, Leann, had always been an aspiring movie actress. Her specialty: cheesy romance flicks, the ones that would be a must to watch if you love Nicholas Sparks' books. She had tons of that kind of movies, watching one by one every night and day so she could perfect her acting skills (as well as taking acting classes). So when she eventually got the big opportunity and fled to Hollywood, she left all of those movies in the top drawer of my closet, handing out all of those flicks for me to watch, in hopes that one day I could follow her there.

And to be honest, being an actress wasn't her dream alone. It was mine also—we'd always shared that dream since we were little, but I couldn't deny that she was always the better actress between the two of us.

"It has nothing to do with  her or her movies," I waved my best friend off, biting into my own sandwich. "I just really, really, really, really, really—"

"Oh, here we go again," she interrupted, rolling her eyes at me.

"—really, really want to take a closer look at Apple. Alright?" I finished my lunch, grabbing the soda on the table and taking a gulp of it. I held up the can and shook it a little, feeling the remaining of the liquid inside swaying from the motion. "Just trust me on this."

Gina swept a hand over her face with a sigh, a sign that she was giving up on her attempt to make me back down. "You're just gonna embarrass yourself."

"I most likely am, and I have accepted that. But I won't drag you into the embarrassment," I promised.

"But I'm your best friend. Your only friend. Of course I would be linked to you."

I gasped as if I was offended, but in reality, I was not really. "I'll try to keep you out of this, alright?"

Before I could stand up, she grabbed my arm, pulling me back down. "Okay, tell me again why you're doing this." I groan out loud at her. "Just so you can hear your own crazy idea out loud and maybe rethink about it."

"Because I'm in love with Apple and I'm tired of seeing him so emotionless like a robot all the time and I want to talk to him?"

She rolled her eyes. "And?"

"Because..." I trailed off and sighed. "Because this is an experiment and you know it."

"An experiment of what?" she pushed with a grin, even though she already knew the answer.

"Okay so it has to do with my sister and our Hollywood obsession, so what?" I huffed. "It's an experiment to see if I'm a good enough actress to be able to look... to look like I'm not in love with him."

"And if he ends up hating you, you will..." she trailed off to let me finish.

"I will act like I hate him too," I answered. "It's easy, right? A guy and a girl hate each other, they end up falling in love? Come on. Romance comedy 101."

"Except you have been in love with him all along," she pointed out. "Have you thought over the consequences? What if things turn to shit?"

"The worst thing that will happen is that people will call me crazy and my name will be a trending topic here at Northside High. Which I'm not unfamiliar with." I shrugged and she sighed. "Don't worry about me, Gi-Gi. I'll take care of it."

"What if Jonah actually hates you—like, you know, loathe you and your existence—and you two become, like, I don't know, actual enemies? Wouldn't that break your heart?"

"Enemies? Pfft, what are we, eighth grade kids? Don't be dramatic. Besides, you know I'm not really in love. It's just a crush."

She held up her hands as if to say, "Okay, okay. You do you." She then glanced at something behind me. "Go do your experiment on your Prince Charming."

I discreetly followed the direction of her eyes, watching as Jonah took the last bite of the sandwich and stood up. That's my cue, I guess.

I grinned and saluted her, standing up with the can of strawberry soda still in my hand, walking fast toward Jonah—who had his eyes on the ground, still focused on his music as he walked—and pretended not to notice that he was in my way.

Right on point, I bumped into his chest, my soda spilling all over his white shirt. I pretended to gasp and took a step backward, staring at the bright red stain all over the front of his body. He stood stiff, his head staring at the stain too, and the whole room was in full silence until the sullen boy in front of me growled.

"What the fuck."

Well, it's showtime.