Saint Joseph School

Thrift Store Valentine: A St. Valentine's Day Rhapsody in Three Parts

Part 1: The Overture

“Venus in your opposite sign of Aries counsels that you might as well focus on your associates’ redeeming qualities. You’ll garner more cooperation than you would from pointing out their honking flaws.”

Sebastian threw the daily horoscope across the room. Next time, he would be consulting the Famous Quotes 365-day-a-year desk calendar for instruction in the finer points of love.

And yet his heart remained on the floor…and scattered across the desk, piled in the chair, overflowing the wastebasket, and littering the bed. Well, most of them anyway. He stared blankly down at the pink, paper, heart in front of him; the cheery motif mocking him with sugar-coated promises. The half scrawled “I like y…” hastily scratched out for the safer and less threatening “You have a nice smile”. Scratch that too.

Flinging the latest of his poetic failures into the trash, he rifled through the remaining boxes of Valentine’s Day cards. The pink and white fairy ones were almost gone, the casually cool-guy-retro, Land of the Lost, ones had run out hours ago, and the last remaining Elvis cards were all a little too Hound Dog and Anyway You Want Me, when it seemed that Return to Sender was much more likely.

Digging into the torn box, Sebastian opted for a “Hunk-a-Hunk-a-Burnin’-Love”, but after several minutes of consideration, it just made him nauseous. Instead, he continued to idly practice memorized lines of verse in his long-handed, elegant script. He frowned at the notepad, Sister Constance was right, he really did write like a girl.

The notepad promptly vanished beneath the growing piles of torn and broken hearts.

How many times had he stood in front of crowds of people? Had performed complicated music before perfect strangers? Oozed confidence with a winning smile and subtle nod? And here he was, nine o’clock on a Friday night, unable to fill a three-by-five pink and red card with even the most asinine cliché, having been utterly undone by a passing smirk and casual wave in the hallway…over three days ago.

His head met the desk with an uncomfortable ‘thud’. Ok, so trying your hand at dating was hard. But he didn’t think that even the likes of the great Cyrano De Bergerac had once considered the possibility of a wrong step getting your face melted off.

By half-past midnight, only one Valentine remained. It was the last of them, so he figured he’d better make it good.

It was a garish bit of paper and punched-out lace, mostly pink and white with an out-dated swoop motif. It probably would have been better off staying in the 80’s, where it came from, and the verse he had scrawled onto the front wasn’t faring much better.

Will you be mine?
I await reply.
Sweetly nod or, if not, deny.
Say it softly,
and none will know,
Will you be mine?
Yes or no?

Part 2: Fugue

“Few girls are as well shaped as a good horse.”

~Christopher Morley
1890-1957, American Novelist, Journalist, Poet

So the desk calendar was a bust too. It was summarily shoved aside.

Sebastian decided, on second thought, to banish the desk calendar into the nearest drawer all together. He had slept for only a few hours and, though freshly showered, he felt droopy and slow. For a Saturday morning, things were all ready not shaping up too well.

Hands gripped tightly into his hair, he stared down at the Valentine’s Day card on his desk. The quiet that crept throughout the room became ominous; silence becoming as long as the rope he had been given to hang himself with. Every nervous, angry thought harmonized with the emotions beneath it, a crescendo swept through his ribs, slow ripples of mellow trills into shoulders and arms, and a broad sweep of baritone reverberating though chest and throat.

“Damn!”

The sound lashed out of him without warning, bouncing across the cheap school desk and echoing against the wall behind it. The lamp, having taken the brunt of the outburst, slowly fell into four neat, shattered, pieces; rolling sideways onto the floor.

Sebastian’s face fell. The wall showed a few hairline cracks and the desk had lost a bit of varnish towards the back edge.

“Stupid.” He sighed. “Stupid, stupid.”

He’d gone almost three weeks without these incidents, but the mounting stress of his new forays into the world of heroes was weighing on him. But not as much as this Valentine.

He thought about throwing it away. It was just some thrift store piece of junk, anyway.

Part 3: Coda

With only five minutes between classes, the hallways were almost never completely empty and Monday morning was certainly no exception. The chatter was generally light-hearted and drifted between forgotten homework and weekend anecdotes.

Somewhere, a freshman whimpered inside a locker.

Sebastian stared down at the card in his hand. He’d managed to convince himself that it was a small thing; cute, funny, and insignificant. Something anyone would laugh off and later use as a bookmark. He might have found it funny too, if only he wasn’t so nauseous.

He couldn’t do this.

With a flurry of nearly thrown book bag and running footsteps, he jammed the pink, paper, heart into the nearest locker and fled.

Anything was better than this. Even math.

When the piece of paper hit the ground, she didn't notice right away. With her head stuck in her locker she rummaged through the heavy gloom, sorting the textbooks by weight more than anything else. She shoved the two she needed into the backpack along with the matching duotangs. It was only when she banged the locker shut and started to step back that she realised there was a piece of pink and white paper under her foot.

Aura reached down and picked it up, the imprint of her shoe now clearly visible across one corner. What? It took a surprised second before she realised she was holding a valentine.

She smiled and the locker door reflected back with dull happiness. She damped the flash or tried to, looking around. Thankfully nobody was close enough to complain this time.

It must have been Diego. It would be just like him to do something unexpected like this, late because they hadn't been seeing each other in February. She skipped right over the thought that Joni still wasn't talking to her either about it. She opened the card eagerly, wondering what he'd said. Something utterly and completely romantic, no doubt.

The verse was certainly cute if short, but it was more wistful than romantic. Aura nibbled her lip, frowning. There was a no signature either, nothing at the bottom, nothing even on the back when she flipped it over to look. She opened her locker again to search for the envelope which must have been lost, but she couldn't find one. She read the card again.

It dawned on her then that the handwriting was utterly unfamiliar; smooth and precise and completely unknown. Finally she had to admit - she had no idea who it was from.

She looked around guiltily although why she'd be guilty was anyone's guess. Nobody appeared to be paying any particular attention but that didn't really mean anything around here. If it was a joke, the joker could be hiding anywhere; including on the roof and spying through the floor with x-ray vision. Maybe she had a secret admirer? Somebody who didn't want to be identified?

Somebody who was trying to find out if she was interested without ending up at the pointy end of a rapier?

She wiggled, looking around again. Nobody ducked behind a door or immediately buried themselves in their locker and there was no time for more than that; the bell rang for next class. She stuffed the pink frothy paper into her backpack and ran for it.

Wow. A secret admirer.

-------------------------

After class she went to the corkboard by the office and pinned up the mystery. Pencilled carefully underneath the verse was her reply:

I can't be yours
Sweet words deny.
A kiss, a flower,
A trembling sigh.
Please close your eyes
No one can know
Turn your face
My answer's no.