Hi! Hello! I'm not dead. I've just been busy.
We're a couple weeks away from February, but here I am with a chapter that takes place on Valentine's Day in 1997. It seems almost like bad timing, but I didn't want to line my chapters up with real holidays.
Some fun notes about this chapter without spoiling anything... I played around with the Valentines a bit. I looked up real Valentines from 1997, sneaking a couple into the story. If you Google it, you can probably find them out there.
Ah... Actually... This is probably where I should mention that I'm not sure I had a normal holiday experience growing up. I went to a French school in a small town until about Grade 9, so I'm not sure how my experience compares to that of other people.
My school was really small. Like, there was only maybe a hundred kids in the whole school. In a single grade there was between six and twelve kids and they paired the grades together so you'd have classrooms of about twenty.
We also weren't allowed to speak English except in our English class. And, uh...while I do know French, I'm super rusty and my grammar is so bad. Not that my English grammar is much better.
I try to quadruple check everything I write. Reading things out loud helps too.
Anyway, the point is, around the holidays (like Valentine's Day), everyone at school would slack off. There would still be classes, but everything was half-hearted. We'd exchange Valentines between class breaks.
It was an unspoken rule that you had to get everyone in your class a Valentine's Day card. The teachers didn't want anyone to get left out. But it was also totally normal to get candy for your really close friends so that they would get something extra.
So, that's where I was coming from with this chapter. If your school wasn't like this, don't worry. I know I'm the weird one.
I should also mention that I still intend on putting together character profiles. Unfortunately, I've been really busy with real life. It's still on my to-do list, but...it's a work in progress.
Anyway, thanks for reading!