The Valentine No One Sent

Annalise had been working on her valentines for three whole days.

Not the kind you buy at the store where you just sign your name at the bottom. No, Annalise made real valentines — the kind with glitter glue and puffy stickers and little folded pockets that held secret messages inside. Each one was different, because each person in her class was different.

For Marcus, she drew a soccer ball with a heart on it, because Marcus loved soccer more than anything in the world. For Priya, she used the fancy purple paper, because purple was Priya's favorite color and everyone knew it. For Sam, she wrote a joke inside, because Sam was always making people laugh at lunch.

She made one for every single person in Ms. Huang's class. All twenty-two of them.

On the morning of the Valentine's Day party, Annalise carried her valentines in a big paper bag that she'd decorated with red and pink hearts. She could barely see over the top of it.

"Careful on the stairs!" her mom called.

"I'm being careful!" Annalise said, even though she bumped into the railing twice.

At school, everyone's desks had little paper bags taped to the front — the mailboxes they'd made on Monday. The room smelled like frosting and strawberries because Ms. Huang had brought cupcakes.

"Alright, friends," Ms. Huang said, clapping her hands. "You may deliver your valentines!"

The classroom turned into a wonderful, noisy mess. Kids criss-crossed between desks, dropping valentines into bags, peeking at what they'd already gotten, laughing at the funny ones, trading stickers.

Annalise walked around the room, placing each valentine carefully into the right bag. She watched Marcus pull his out and grin at the soccer ball. She saw Priya hold up the purple card and say, "Ooooh, this one's so pretty!" That made Annalise's chest feel like it was full of warm soup.

When she'd delivered all twenty-two, she went back to her desk and reached into her own mailbox bag.

She pulled them out one by one, reading each name at the bottom.

From Marcus. A store-bought one with a dinosaur on it. She smiled.

From Priya. A pink one with a lollipop taped to it. Nice!

From Sam. It said "You're DINO-mite!" and she laughed.

She kept going, making a little pile on her desk. She read every single name.

Then she counted.

Twenty-one.

She counted again, slower this time, touching each card with her finger.

Twenty-one.

There were twenty-two kids in the class. She had gotten twenty-one valentines. Someone hadn't given her one.

Annalise looked at the names again, going through the pile carefully. She matched them up in her head, thinking of every person who sat in every seat.

No valentine from Oliver.

She glanced across the room. Oliver was sitting at his desk eating a cupcake and reading one of his cards. He didn't look up.

Annalise's warm-soup feeling was gone. In its place was something tight and prickly, like a rubber band stretched too far.

She'd made Oliver a really good valentine, too. She'd drawn a little rocket ship on it because Oliver always read books about space. She'd even written "You're out of this world!" which she thought was very clever.

And he hadn't given her one.

Not even a quick one. Not even a store-bought one. Not even a piece of paper with just her name on it.

Nothing.

Annalise tried to eat her cupcake, but it tasted like regular bread.

During the party, Priya came over and said, "Annalise, do you want to trade stickers?"

"Sure," Annalise said, but her voice came out flat, like a tire with no air in it.

"Are you okay?" Priya asked.

"I'm fine."

But she wasn't fine. She kept looking at her pile of twenty-one valentines and thinking about the one that wasn't there.

After the party, Ms. Huang put on a movie while everyone cleaned up. Annalise was wiping glitter off her desk when she noticed Oliver at the craft table in the back of the room. He wasn't watching the movie. He was hunched over, cutting something with scissors.

She looked away. She didn't want to think about Oliver right now.

She stuffed her twenty-one valentines into her backpack and zipped it up hard.

The movie was something about penguins. Annalise watched it, but she kept hearing a little voice in her head that said, He forgot about you. And then another voice that said, Maybe he didn't forget. Maybe he just didn't want to.

That second voice was worse.

The next day was not Valentine's Day anymore. It was just regular Friday. The cupcakes were gone, the paper hearts were coming off the walls, and everything felt like it did before — except Annalise still had that rubber-band feeling when she looked at Oliver's desk.

She was hanging up her coat when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

She turned around.

Oliver was standing there. He was holding something behind his back, and his face was the color of a tomato.

"Um," he said. "Here."

He held out a card.

It wasn't like the other valentines from the party. It wasn't store-bought, and it wasn't quick. It was made from white paper that had been folded and cut into a rocket ship shape — a paper rocket ship with careful, wobbly lines drawn in silver marker, and little windows colored in with yellow crayon so they looked like they were glowing.

On the front it said: To Annalise.

She opened it.

Inside, in Oliver's scratchy handwriting, it said:

I'm sorry this is late. I ran out of the cards my mom bought. I wanted to make you a real one but I didn't finish in time. You always make really good stuff and I wanted mine to be good too.

From Oliver.

Annalise looked at the rocket ship card. She looked at the careful silver lines, and the glowing yellow windows, and the way he'd cut the edges so they weren't quite straight but you could tell he'd tried really hard.

She looked at Oliver, whose face was still bright red.

"I saw yours," he said quietly. "The one you made me. With the rocket. It was really cool. I just… mine wasn't done yet."

Annalise held the card in both hands.

"I like the windows," she said. "How they glow."

"Really?" Oliver said.

"Yeah. It looks like a real spaceship."

Oliver's red face broke into a huge smile, and he looked down at his shoes, and then he looked up again, and then he walked away very quickly to his desk.

Annalise stood by the coat hooks for a moment, looking at the rocket ship valentine. She turned it over. On the back, very small, Oliver had drawn a tiny Earth with a tiny arrow pointing to it that said "You are here." And then a tiny arrow pointing to the rocket that said "Going somewhere amazing."

She laughed. A real laugh, not a flat-tire one.

That afternoon, Annalise put all her valentines into a shoebox she kept under her bed. She laid them out in a neat row — twenty-two cards, side by side.

She picked up Oliver's last. She looked at the wobbly silver rocket and the glowing windows and the little Earth on the back.

Then she set it down right in the middle of the row, because that felt like the right place for it.

Twenty-two valentines. Every single one.

She put the lid on the box and slid it under her bed, and the rubber-band feeling was gone for good.