Then prom season arrived.
And with it, a boy named Leo.
And then a police officer.
And a revelation that made Hannah realize she’d been looking at herself through everyone else’s eyes for far too long.
The Silent Tradition of Hannah’s High School
At Northbrook High, prom was a big deal. Not just the dance itself, but the ritual leading up to it. The elaborate promposals. The corsages. The photos on the steps of the old courthouse. Every girl wanted to be asked. Every boy wanted to ask the right girl.
Hannah had no such illusions.
She knew what she looked like. She knew the odds. She’d watched other girls get asked with balloons and banners and one boy even hired a mariachi band. She’d smiled and clapped for them, genuinely happy, and told herself she didn’t care.
She did care. She just didn’t want to admit it.
The week before prom, the whispers started. A few kids in her English class had a running bet—who would be desperate enough to ask Hannah? Some said it would be a freshman, too naïve to understand the social hierarchy. Others said no one would. Hannah pretended not to hear.
She didn’t cry. She’d learned not to.
But on Thursday morning, three days before prom, a boy named Leo Johnson walked up to her locker with a single daisy in his hand and asked her to prom. Just like that.
No banner. No crowd. Just Leo, his hands shaking slightly, his voice steady.
“Hannah, would you go to prom with me?”
Leo: The Boy Who Looked Past the Mark
Leo was not the kind of boy anyone expected to ask Hannah.
He was smart, quiet, and uncool in the way that smart, quiet boys often are. He wore glasses that were perpetually crooked. He read books during lunch. He spent his weekends volunteering at the local animal shelter. He wasn’t popular, but he was kind—and in high school, kindness was often mistaken for weakness.
Hannah stared at the daisy. She stared at Leo. She waited for the punchline. For the hidden camera. For the laughter that always followed when someone thought they were being clever at her expense.
“Is this a joke?” she asked.
“No,” he said, looking genuinely confused. “Why would it be a joke?”
She told him no. She told him he didn’t have to be the one to rescue her. She told him she wasn’t charity.
