She was fifteen, sporting braids and her favorite
blue overalls. Everything she knew about love,
she learned from PG-13 films and elementary
school crushes on the playground. She still played
with dolls sometimes, but she’d never admit it.
High school is a slap in the face to girls like her.
Late bloomers, her mom liked to say. February
in your freshman year of high school means
that midterms are coming up, and so is Valentine’s
Day. Girls like her don’t usually get a dozen
roses or a box of chocolates; she still wore
a training bra and she hadn’t had her first kiss
yet. She’d held hands with a boy before, but
only during prayer circle in youth group.
That has to count for something, right? She
was naïve – a late bloomer, remember? – but
not naïve enough to think that anyone would
be making her a Valentine. That’s a real shame,
because everyone deserves a Valentine
on Valentine’s Day. Everyone deserves
a Valentine on Valentine’s Day. She thought
about this in math class, doodling hearts
on her homework. That evening, she jumped
off the school bus and pulled out her yearbook
to make Valentines for everyone, with stickers
and drawings and heartfelt notes. Studying
for midterms could wait. She kept them
in a big box underneath her bed, next to her
baby blanket that she slept with every night,
but hid away during slumber parties.
On Valentine’s Day, she wore her favorite
pink dress and some of her mom’s mascara,
and handed Valentines out to everyone, even
the seniors, who were pretty much grownups.
She didn’t receive a Valentine that year,
but she didn’t mind. Fifteen is young enough
to love the world radically, without expectation
of reciprocity. She would lose that carefree
innocence over the course of the following years,
because that’s what happens to girls like her –
late bloomers, you know – but last February,
she ran into an old high school friend
in the grocery line who pulled a faded
and wrinkled Valentine out of his wallet.
She barely recognized her own handwriting
from years ago. She was astonished when
he reminded her of her own words: “You
gave me this and told me that everyone
deserves a Valentine on Valentine’s Day.”

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