Avery opens her AirPod case and puts both in her ears. As she walks up to the school she scrolls through the hundreds of playlists she has created until she lands in the ‘L’ category. She smiles the slightest bit and opens the playlist titled, ‘Love 💕’.

As Avery pushes open the double doors to the cafeteria, all of the noise and chatter swirling around her begins to dissipate as she clicks shuffle on the playlist. The chaos gets drowned out as the beginning notes of ‘I Wanna Be Yours’ play in her ear.

“Secrets I have held in my heart, are harder to hide than I thought. Maybe I just wanna be yours. I wanna be yours.”

Her Converse high tops click on the floor as she makes her way up the stairs leading to the high school.

The first song reaches its end and the first notes of ‘Lovers Rock’ twinkle in through the speakers of the ear buds. As people walk around her, and talk, and fill the halls with miscellaneous noise, she tunes it out and begins to daydream about being hopelessly in love. And about him.

“But if you’re too drunk to drive, and the music is right, she might let you stay. But just for the night.”

After entering the classroom and swinging her backpack behind her chair, ‘Lovers Rock’ ends and a new song plays. She taps her fingers on the desk in sync with the notes of ‘Apocalypse’ just like how she plays it on piano. She smiles as it plays and she looks out the window looking at the clouds and noticing how one looks like a heart.

“Your lips, my lips, apocalypse.”

As people begin to flood the classroom, Avery doesn’t notice. The next songs plays, carrying her into the beat and lyrics of ‘Flawless’. She puts the phone on the desk and pulls out a book from her bag. Better Than The Movies. Her classic go to romance book when she listens to this playlist.

“I fell in love today. There aren’t many words that you can say that’ll ever get my mind to change.”

She gets a few pages into the book, lost in the music that amplifies the words on the pages, when ‘Flawless’ ends. She pauses in the middle of a sentence on the page, waiting to hear what plays next before she continues. The next song that plays is her favorite on the playlist, its ’Wildest Dreams’. She doesn’t usually like her style but Taylor Swift writes songs perfect for hopeless romantics.

The song makes her put down her book and smile to herself. This song was playing when Avery first realized she had a crush on him.

“He’s so tall, and handsome as hell. He’s so bad but he does it so well.”

She spins the ring on her finger absentmindedly and stares off into space, recalling the dream she had a few nights ago.

“Say you’ll remember me, standing in a nice dress, staring at the sunset”

She sets her head on the desk and sighs while her eyes linger on a tiny red heart on the corner of the whiteboard infront of her. Her thoughts wander off and she starts to daydream again, feeling lost in the music, until the teacher walks into the class and says, “Alright everyone, phones and AirPods away.”

Avery sighs and takes out her AirPods as the final notes of ‘Wildest Dreams’ fade out. Finally out of the trance that her playlist always puts her in, the fluorescents are shining too bright in her eyes, and the people around her are talking too loud, and she sighs. Way to kill the mood.