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Chapter One
The morning bellhad not yet rung, and the hallway at Harry Truman High School was still full of kids passing time. Agatha Christie Lovely looked over her domain; she was a senior, so therefore, she ruled the school. Yes, she had been named after the famed mystery author. No, she did not actually rule the school, but she finally had a place in it. After spending every day of her high school career at HTHS, on the last week of the last year, she had a place. Because she had a boyfriend. Finally!
Not just any boy either, Christopher Lowell. He’d been her crush for years at Harry Truman High School, and during her time at Ben Franklin Middle School, and even before that at PS12 Elementary School. Agatha had fallen in love with Christopher in third grade when he had sat at the table right next to her with his blond curls and told her he liked her drawing. Even then, he knew the way to a woman’s heart.
Just because she had fallen in love with him in the third grade didn’t mean he fell for her or even noticed her. In the fourth grade, he had accidentally slammed his locker into her face, which got her three stitches in the forehead. Christopher had given her a get-well card but had spelled her name wrong, which had made her mad. But he personally handed her the card, so she forgave him quickly. Sure, “Christie” and “Chrissy” were close, but not really. Both were very different from Agatha, a name she refused to use in school.
By fifth grade, he had remembered her again. Due to their last names, Lovely and Lowell, their lockers were always side by side, and he would say hi to her. He would look right into her eyes, because they were the same height, and say, “Hey Chrissy.” So maybe he remembered her name wrong even though it was written on her locker, but he remembered her. It was enough to make her stomach queasy, in a good way.
In sixth grade, they moved to middle school, and Christopher started to call her Christie every day. He had also grown when she had not. She was short, and he had to look down at her. That was the year he had gotten really good at football while she quit sports altogether. It was also the year her dad married a new wife and then took off, leaving her stepmom in charge. Seeing Chris at their lockers every day was the only thing that stayed constant for her that year—a constant she desperately needed.
Sixth grade was also the first year that kids were not required to give Valentine’s cards to everyone in their class. Christie still did because her stepmom bought them and forced her to fill them out. To her delight, she had gotten one from Christopher, football star Christopher.
When seventh grade rolled around, having her locker next to Chris had gotten to be old hat. He only accidentally slammed her head with his locker four times that year, but no stitches. And each time he apologized profusely. He told her he didn’t always see her since he was still getting taller and she stayed short, something she didn’t need to be reminded of. There were no valentines that year for either of them. It was also the first year she became serious about getting over her crush and moving on. After all, she was almost a teenager, and there was quite a few cute boys in school. But he still flashed her knee-weakening smiles every once in a while, and everyone else was instantly forgotten.
In eighth grade, a steady stream of girls loitered around his locker, making getting to hers almost impossible. Usually, she didn’t take any of her books with her to class because she couldn’t get to them. It was that year, on September 19th, that he told her she should let her hair grow out, that he thought she’d be cuter with long hair. One thing women don’t tell you is that hair takes forever to grow, no matter what home remedies their sisters tried on them. In the end, she came to the conclusion that she had slow-growing hair and evil sisters. Once again, no valentine.
Finally, when she’d moved on to high school, she thought that her Chris days were finally behind her. But no, the entire year of ninth grade, they were again locker buddies. Every week his locker would be decorated by the cheerleaders. How it helped him play better, Christie never knew, but every week there were steamers and signs everywhere—except for the two times they decorated hers by mistake. A new school meant a new name: Chris. Sure, it was not the name her family called her, and it was the same as his, but Chris and Chris would be so cute on a Christmas card, and everyone would just call them the Chrises. Chris didn’t notice her new, longer hair, but he did say “Hey Chris” all the time. He liked it. Since she was finally in high school, she was able to take an actual art class, and she found her place in a place she had never been comfortable before.
Tenth grade was a bust. Her older twin sisters, Lucy and Mabel, were seniors and involved in everything. They routinely forced Christie to go to football games with them, which wasn’t actually forcing because Chris was playing. Christie thought he was so cute in the blue uniform. He would still say “Hey Chris” to her every day and would even do it when they weren’t by their lockers, recognizing her in the wild! That was all he would say to her, but then again, she wasn’t trying all that hard to start conversations with him. He had more than enough girls around who were trying to get his attention. Christie had started painting and drawing a lot more. It had always been her passion, but now suddenly she was getting direction, and people were noticing her works. So, she would stay up late and then wake up late the next day, leaving her no time to do a lot of girly stuff in the morning. He was still growing, and she had finally realized she would never grow again.
Eleventh grade was a big year for her because she took a few more art classes. Chris still said hello to her every day, but she had started to go by Christie again. She enjoyed that Chris was all muscly that year. For the first time, there was a new student whose name fell between theirs, separating their lockers for half the year before she left, which then meant they had an empty locker that they shared. Both knew the combination, and both stored their coats in it. Every day she got to smell him on her coat as she walked home from school. Most of her classmates thought she had gone goth that year, but really, Christie just liked to wear black and happened to have black hair. Never did she wear black makeup or much leather. She was just herself and accepted herself easily, which to others, looked gothic.
For their senior year, they were back to being locker neighbors, but with no extra locker for storage, and the cheerleaders never decorated the wrong locker again. Chris spent most of the year dating Savannah J, who he had taken to junior and senior prom. Christie spent the year watching Savannah J’s hands slide all over Chris. He still said “Hey Chris” to her, and in science class, they ended up being lab partners all year. Tuesdays and Thursdays, they spent an hour together talking and laughing, not doing overly well in science. He was a jock, and she was an artist, and they were destined for the C plus grade they got. By the end of the year, she was considered them friends and knew she was just as much in love with him as she was in the third grade, but now they were more than strangers. Sure, he didn’t love her, but he knew her.
In late March, a new girl showed up at the high school. Unlike Christie, she was absolutely a goth. Dayle Sullivan had taken Christie under her wing from the moment she sat down next to her in Math class. From then on, they went to every party they heard about. Dayle was completely different from any of her other friends and made Christie way more outgoing than she ever had been. She also encouraged Christie to apply to art school for the next year, the one she got into. It was a dream come true.
On May 1st, Savannah J broke up with Chris. He was devastated, but girls huddled at his locker en masse. In science lab, he told her that he was going to remain single and play the field for the rest of high school, the entire month left of it.
Christie began running into Chris at all the parties Dayle dragged her to. Not that she approached him since he had his friends and tons of girls surrounding him after the break-up. The last Friday before graduation, Christie was drinking one of the horrid mixed drinks at a party. Whoever was in charge should be fired because they were not even close to actual drinkable combinations.
She had quickly learned at these parties that her taste for alcohol was a bit more sophisticated than her peers. But then again, thanks to three older sisters and some very lax rules at home, she had been drinking for years already.
But thanks to a good buzz, she did what it had taken ten years to do: Christie asked Chris to dance. He had shrugged off his friends and had danced with her. Her, Agatha Christie Lovely, with long, black stick-straight hair and dressed from head to toe black. The song was “Hero” by Enrique Iglesias, and it was absolutely perfect. Her feelings had been summed up in one song. Maybe it was her buzz or finally being in his arms, but Christie knew that nobody else would ever be able to compete with him in her eyes.
It must have been the same for him because when the song ended, he kissed her on the lips. Right there in the middle of some house on Kendel Street, she got her kiss from Chris Lowell, captain of the football team, tall with curly blond hair and baby blue eyes. It was everything she had dreamed it would be, including a bit of tongue, which she was absolutely ready for.
As they kissed, his friends pulled him away, laughing. He laughed too as he went, leaving her heart broken in the middle of the dance floor alone, the butt of their joke.
Not wanting to spend another moment as the punchline of a joke, she went looking for Dayle. Without success on the main floor, she found her on the second floor, making out at the end a hallway with someone Christie didn’t recognize, so she took her car keys and headed back to the main part of the house to get away from all these people. She hadn’t liked most of them sober, so why would she want to be with them drunk?
As she neared the stairs, a bedroom door opened suddenly, and Chris Lowell was standing there looking at her in surprise. With a wave, she gave their usual greeting, this time half-heartedly, “Hey Chris.”
With a cocky grin, he took one step out of the room, grabbed her arm, and pulled her back inside with him. The room was decorated in blues and browns and looked like it had been pulled from a magazine.
“Hey Chris,” he whispered back as his arms went around her.
She had no time to answer before his lips were on hers again. There was no song playing; it was just them alone. Everything he asked for, she willingly gave him in that perfect bedroom. They messed up the bed, and Christie couldn’t bring herself to regret it. It had been the magical first time she had dreamed of.
After it was done, he told her that they should date, that he really liked her and thought she was special. He’d said everything she had always dreamed of him saying to her. He had helped her dress and had walked her to her car. The party had broken up, and most people were gone by then.
They had kissed at the Jeep, and she had driven home as his girlfriend. Saturday and Sunday were spent hiding her excitement from her sisters and stepmom, not ready to share her fortune with them yet. She wanted to have one date under her belt before telling everyone. She walked into Harry Truman High School Monday morning as his girlfriend.
Chris was leaning against his locker with his back to her, talking to his two friends, like she had seen many times over the years. Putting her backpack in the locker, she listened to his deep baritone.
“Christie? What about her?” Her head snapped up at her name.
“I heard you were dating the weirdo,” the blond friend said, shifting so she couldn’t see anything but his back. He must have known she was there but didn’t want Chris to know.
