Thread by @FrizzlyBarrett

I was trying to come up with the ultimate S***h D****n-esque plot for a hypothetical YA novel.

I think I’ve got a solid-gold idea.

Meet Hope.

(We can rename her, if necessary. I think Daisy would be an equally charming name.)

Hope is about to start her senior year of high school.

Last year, she went to a small private school. This year, things are going to be different.

She‘s been spending the summer before her senior year working with her mother and her 26-year-old sister.

Together, they run a wedding-catering business.

That summer, she’s enlisted to help with an unusually ... atmospheric wedding. Vibes.

At the reception, she meets a young fella called Jake— the bride’s brother. Jake is a member of the track team at, you guess it, the local public high school. 😌

Jake also rides a really cool Triumph motorcycle.

He rides away from the reception, and when he stops at the edge of the parking lot outside the church/reception hall/rec center/wherever —

He turns around, looks at Hope, and winks.

The rest of the summer flies by.

Hope’s mother drops her off at the high school on the first day of classes.

Two really popular girls — I mean, Really Popular Girls™️ — laugh at her for getting a ride from her mom.

So, in her homeroom class, she runs into Jake.

Instead of treating her like a dork, he asks her to sit next to him.

Before we go any further, let’s be friends.

I mean, uh, let’s let Hope introduce herself.

She describes herself as a tall, curvy, toned brunette — with natural auburn highlights.

Jake is just ... hot.

Like, we’ll try to keep his description a little vague for now, and figure out whichever “type” of guy is considered the hottest at the time that this gets put into production. And then we’ll make him look like that.

Jake invites Hope to sit with him at lunch, too. She’s really excited.

Until she meets Tiffany — his blonde, blue-eyed T****r Swiftian girlfriend.

(Sorry about those asterisks — I’m just trying to avoid overzealous stans.)

Like, naturally, she is concerned about his relationship status.

And she muses over the fact that she’s “clearly not Jake’s type.” Oh, well.

Basically, a whole lot of nothing happens for two or three months.

Hope will make all-A’s or something like that — and maybe befriend a cool teen mom/soccer standout/record store employee — but she won’t spend much time thinking about Jake.

Except that he lives three houses down from her. And she sees him everyday.

Also, he realizes that she’s embarrassed about being chauffeured by her mother — so he offers to take her to school on his bike.

She accepts.

By winter break, he and Taylor — er, Tiffany — break up.

He and Hope are both lonely during their break.

They decide to hang out around the neighborhood. They build a snowman, but they knock it over, because they’re cynical teens. (Something they have in common — oooooh.)

There’s also some snide remark about how Audrey — I’ve decided to rename Taylor/Tiffany — was as frigid as that snowman.

“And now she’s gone, just like our snow person,” he says.

They both laugh and take turns jumping up and down on Snow Audrey. Take that, frigid thing.

They go inside for a cup of hot cocoa.

They share a fireside kiss — yeah, in front of a beautiful Christmas tree and all that jazz — but he pulls away to look at Hope.

They look at each other and he’s like, “Ohhhh. I’m so sorry, like, we’re just friends. I didn’t mean to kiss you — it was just my reflexive ... like, I like you, but ...”

She nods solemnly. She walks home by herself.

(So, I’m not gonna spend much time doing research on this. This is just a rough cut, so pardon my errors.)

(Like, I don’t actually remember when track season is. If I remember correctly, when I was in school, it’s probably in the ... spring? Anyway, let’s just go with that.)

Their break is over and they go back to school.

In January, on the weekends, they continue to hang out — with minimal awkwardness. They often go for motorcycle rides.

At some point in January — this will be like more than halfway through the book/film, most likely — she confesses to him.

She’s like, “You know that kiss you gave me last month? It really meant a lot to me.”

And he smiles, but he doesn’t want to make a big deal about it.

But, on Valentine’s Day, he shows up on her back porch, while her mother and sister are catering a wedding. Yeah. He hands her some roses and some chocolates and right when —

Right when they’re about to kiss again, her older sister comes home and says, “Excuse me, what are you two doing?”

She says, “Oh my God, you were kissing the neighbor boy — don’t you know that he rides a motorcycle?!?!”

The little sister rushes over to Big Sis. We’ll call her Harmony.

That’s right — Hope and Harmony.

“Oh my gosh, Harmony! How could you ruin my real first kiss with Jake? How could you do that to me?! That was so humiliating. He’s going to think that you’re prejudiced against boys who ride motorcycles.”

Harmony says, “Don’t you understand how disrespectful that is to our father’s memory?!”

And at that point, they finally address why their father hasn’t made an appearance.

When they were much younger, their father had a motorcycle accident.

Ever since, Hope’s mother and sister have always protected her. Overprotected her.

And, the older sister reminds her, “you know I had *my* problems after dad’s accident. You don’t want to have to go to Seabrook Recovery Center, like I did.”

She says, “Don’t you understand how hard it would be if you lost him, too? You have to protect your heart.”

Hope says, “You think that since he rides a motorcycle, and since I hang out with him, we’ll end up just like Dad. But he’s not like that. And I’m not like you.”

Hope decides to keep meeting up — discretely! — with Jake.

He asks her, “Are we still ... Is it really okay to meet up like this?”

“Yeah, yeah — we’ve just got to keep it on the low.”

They have a picnic on an empty baseball diamond.

[Ooooh. Is this leading up to a diamond ring? Nah. These two are still in high school, so we’re not trying to usher in an engagement scene. This isn’t a H*llmark movie.]

Back to the picnic.

He says, “You know, it’s a shame that I went to prom with Audrey Swift last year — because I wish I’d been able to go to a prom with you. And I’m not going to be able to go this year.”

He says, “This year, we’ve got a track meet on the same day as prom. And it’s two hours away. I’ve got to go to that meet, or else I’ll let the coach down. I can’t do that — he’s my brother-in-law.”

“But, uh, since I can’t ask you to go to prom — would you come out and watch my race?”

“I’d rather go to a race with you than to a prom without you,” she says.

A week later, he ends up crashing his motorcycle into a ... a little ditch or something.

His mom calls Hope. She says, “Come quickly. We’re at the hospital — and he won’t quit asking for you.”

“You’re his only Hope,” she says.

I’m kidding — she doesn’t say that.

She rushes to the hospital and heads straight to his room.

He sits up in bed. “Oh, Hope. I’m so glad you’re —“

“Stop.”

“I can’t ... I don’t think I can handle being in love with somebody who is going to maybe throw my heart around carelessly. The same way you got thrown carelessly from that motorcycle.”

She can’t believe it.

She goes to school on Monday as if nothing even happened.

She spends the next couple of weeks reading, weeping, and eating fruit, like a Victorian-era widow.

Finally, on a warm Friday evening, he shows up her front walk. He’s using crutches and wearing an aircast. He’s going to make a full recovery.

He beams. He holds up a sign that says, “Prom?”

“What?!”

“I think we should go to prom. I can’t go to the track meet now, so...”

They go to prom.

She wears a delightfully twee vintage dress; he wears a suit with Chucks.

Well, a singular Chuck and an aircast.

(I feel his pain — I, too, have worn an aircast with just one Chuck.)

They sway together under some low-hanging fairy lights.

“Hey,” she says. “I’ve got a question for you.”

“What’s that?”

“The next adventure you go on — bike or no bike — will you take me with you?”

“Only if you’ll take me with you.”

FIN.

If anyone wants to take this and run with it — look, I only spent about thirty minutes thinking about it.

It took me longer to type up these tweets than it took to conceptualize the whole story, from start to finish.

Probably because I followed a formula.

But still! This story has it all!

A motorcycle! A tragic backstory! A hunk! A cocoa-flavored kiss!

A best friend who works at a music store! An overprotective but big-hearted sister! Weddings!

A prom-posal! A picnic! Secret meetings! Fairy lights!

That said, if someone turns this into a W*ttp*d novel and Netflix makes a movie out of it, I want 0.5 percent of the profits.

Making that “you’re his only Hope” joke would be enough of a payoff, you’d think —

But I’d want my share of the coins, too, should it come to that.

Okay, I want one of Wattpad’s most talented authors to expand upon this — all I want is a thank-you shoutout in the Acknowledgments section, once you eventually land a three-book publishing deal.

I also want to be listed in the credits when the film version is inevitably released on Netflix in 2023.

@threadreaderapp Unroll, please. 🥺