“Yeah,” I said.
And we did.
February
TOBY RINEHART is the absolute cutest boy in the world, even with pinkeye.
“Cuter than Robert Bond?” Dinah asked. Robert Bond has dimples when he smiles, which is pretty much all the time, and he likes to stand by the water fountain and splash the girls as they walk by. Practically everyone has a crush on him.
“Yep.”
“Cuter than Bo?”
I was caught off guard. Dinah knew how I felt about Bo, and for her to bring him into the comparison was pret-ty tricky, I had to say. But I reminded myself that Bo was in the eleventh grade, not sixth, and anyway he’s Sandra’s boyfriend.
“Yep,” I said, savoring Dinah’s amazement. I looked across the room, to where Toby sat hunched over his desk drawing B-2 bombers in a spiral notebook. “His hair is so adorable, how it sticks up in the back. And his eyes. He’s got the most beautiful eyes, don’t you think?”
“They’re pink,” Dinah said.
“Exactly the color of candy hearts.”
“He’s got pinkeye, Winnie.”
“Yeah, but it’s viral, not bacterial, so he’s not contagious.” I sighed. “He said the only way I could catch it would be to press my eyeball right up next to his.”
Dinah giggled. “You are moony, Winifred Perry.”
It was true. I was. Valentine’s Day was less than twenty-four hours away, and I’d picked Toby to be my one-and-only. The problem now was getting him to pick me back. At the beginning of the week, Tyrone had asked Chantelle to go with him (“Go where?” Dinah said, and I’d hid my face in my hands), and in the following three days, three more couples had paired up: Louise and Grant, David and Karen, and Peter and Sheila.
I wanted to be the next girl asked. Or not even next, just so long as I wasn’t left high and dry at ten-thirty tomorrow morning, when the three sixth-grade classes would get together to drop Valentines into our homemade boxes. Last year, I got fifteen cards, which was good, but they were all the white punch-out kind with Snoopy on them or Donald Duck. This year, I was hoping for Hallmark.
During language arts, Mr. Hutchinson divided the class in half and let us call out words to prepare for Friday’s spelling test. When it was my turn, I called on Toby and gave him an easy one: kinship. Spelling isn’t Toby’s best subject, but kinship had only two syllables, and all the vowels sounded the way they should.
“K-I-N-S-H-I-P,” Toby said.
Mr. Hutchinson chalked up a point for their team, and Maxine said, “Winnie! Don’t you even want to win?”
I shrugged and kept my eyes on Toby, but he was slapping hands with Peter and didn’t notice. Then Karen called on me with abrupt, which I accidentally put two bs in.
“Yes!” Toby said, making a fist and pulling it in at his side. “Seven to five!”
I sank down in my seat, and Dinah patted my hand.
During lunch, I waited until Toby was watching, then wandered to the sharing table and placed my Snickers beside a brown banana and half of a smushed PB&J. “Guess I don’t want this Snickers after all,” I said. “Oh, well. Guess I’ll just—”
Toby, Peter, and Alex leapt from their chairs and raced for the table.
“Mine!” Alex gloated, grabbing the Snickers and clutching it to his chest. “Ha, ha! Unless maybe I change my mind ...” He dropped the Snickers on the sharing table for less than a second, then snatched it back. “Not!”
Peter scowled, and Toby looked at me like it was my fault. Like if I’d put it closer to the edge, he’d probably have gotten there first.
I blinked and peered into my lunch bag. “Guess I’ll give up these carrots, too,” I said, pulling out a wilted plastic bag. I smiled hopefully at Toby. “Anyone want some carrots?”
Alex unwrapped the Snickers and crammed half of it in his mouth. He waved the uneaten half in front of Peter and Toby and sang, “Thank you, Winnie.”
By recess, I was beginning to feel desperate. Not only had Toby scooted away his desk when I tried to help him with his social studies, but when I raised my hand and asked if the Aztecs ever got pinkeye, he blushed and stared at the floor. And when I stood next to him by the water fountain and said, “Please don’t splash me with the water,” he got all fidgety and hurried away. I was beginning to think he was avoiding me.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dinah said. “Maybe he’s just shy.”
I dug the toe of my sneaker into the dirt and leaned sideways, twisting my swing in a circle. “Why, though? Doesn’t he know I like him?”
“Who?” Gail said, strolling over with Chantelle. “Doesn’t who know you like him?”
“No one,” I said.
Gail turned to Dinah. “Come on, tell us who you’re talking about.”
Dinah chewed on a strand of hair.
“Fine,” Gail said. “Have your little secrets.”
I lifted my legs and let my swing unwind. “What about you, Gail?” I said when I stopped moving. “You still like Ross Gallivan?”
Gail turned red. On Tuesday, she’d slipped an anonymous love letter into Ross’s lunch box, only everyone knew it was her because of how it smelled. She’d sprayed perfume all over it, thick, flowery perfume that clung to her backpack as well.
“That was a joke, Winnie,” she said. “Obviously.”
I raised my eyebrows. She was just saying that because Ross tossed the letter into the trash. He threw away most of his lunch, too, wrinkling his nose and complaining of the stink. But Gail wanted a boyfriend as much as the rest of us. I could see it in the way her eyes kept flitting to the opposite side of the playground, where Ross goofed around with some of his friends.
“Anyway,” she said, “why would I write a love letter to Ross Gallivan? A boy in my condominium complex already asked if I’d be his Valentine, and I said yes.” She folded her arms across her chest. “He’s thirteen.”
Chantelle looked at Gail in surprise, then caught me watching and quickly fixed her expression. “It’s true,” she said. “Yesterday he gave her a bouquet of roses, just because it’s almost Valentine’s Day. Right, Gail?”
“That’s right,” Gail said, but her lips got thin as if she knew Chantelle had gone too far.
“Uh-huh,” I said.
A squeal caught our attention, and we turned to see Amanda dashing toward us. “Guess what, guess what?” she said. “Robert asked me to go with him! We were in the library helping Mrs. Grady, and he pulled me behind the dinosaur display and asked me, just like that. I can’t believe it!”
“Amanda, that’s awesome!” Chantelle said. She threw her arms around her, and the two of them hopped up and down. “That means we can go shopping this afternoon for Valentine’s cards! And on Friday, we can sit together at the couples’ table!”
The couples’ table? I didn’t know anything about a couples’ table. One glance at Gail told me that she didn’t, either.
“What’s the couples’ table?” Dinah asked.
Chantelle and Amanda looked at each other and giggled.
“You tell them,” Chantelle said.
“No, you.”
“You.”
Gail breathed out through her nose, and Amanda made herself stop laughing.
“It’s nothing, really,” she said. “It’s just that all the couples are going to sit together on Valentine’s Day, and Louise is going to bring pink lemonade and sugar cookies shaped like hearts.” She shrugged, as if she suddenly realized that the rest of us might not be as excited as she and Chantelle were. “I just found out about it this morning.”
“Oh,” Dinah said. “Is she bringing cookies for the rest of us, too?”
“Just the couples,” Chantelle said.
Gail’s eyes met with mine, and for the briefest second I knew we were thinking the same thing: that the couples’ table was a horrible idea. Worse than either of us could have imagined.
Then she tossed her hair over her shoulders and said, “Well, I think that’s sweet. Brett,
my boyfriend, is going to make me an entire Valentine’s Day dinner, whatever I request. We’re going to eat on the patio, under the light of the moon.”
“Brett?” Amanda said. “Who’s Brett?”
I stood up from my swing. “Come on, Dinah,” I said. “Let’s go.”
During science, when Ms. Gardner was out of the room, David and Karen held hands across the smooth, pale table while Alex counted out loud. They made it to a hundred and five before the sound of footsteps sent everyone scurrying back to their seats. Rory Johnson was so impressed that he asked Tamela Chaddock to go with him on the spot, and she grinned and said yes. Louise uncapped her pen and made a note in her spiral.
And five minutes before class let out, Karen leaned over to me and whispered, “Can you make your eyes smile without moving your mouth?”
“I don’t know,” I said. I sat up straight and concentrated hard inside my brain. “There. Could you tell?”
“You look like you have to go to the bathroom.”
Any other day, I would have scowled and turned back to my science book. But today I was so glad to be talking about something other than Valentine’s Day that I overlooked her remark and said, “Well, can you?”
“Nope. But David, my boyfriend, can. He just thinks of something he really likes—like me, for example—and his eyes get all twinkly.” She studied me, tilting her head. “Now it looks like you really have to go to the bathroom.”
After the bell rang, I joined Dinah outside, and we sat down to wait for our carpools.
“This is terrible,” I said. “We’re going to be the only ones sitting alone tomorrow. You know that, don’t you? There all the couples will be, munching away on their stupid heart cookies, and there we’ll be, eating our normal, boring lunches all by ourselves. Just you and me.”
“And Gail,” Dinah said.
I groaned.
“And Maxine. And Lacey. And Cara. She’s not going with anyone, I’m pretty sure.”
“Not the point,” I said. “The point is ... the point is that tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. You’re supposed to get candy and flowers and big, glossy cards, not just your everyday bologna sandwich.”
“We could trade if you want,” Dinah said. “I could pack something for you, and you could pack something for me. Then when we traded, it would be a surprise.”
I unzipped my backpack and tore a piece of paper from my notebook. I scribbled a note, folded it over, and gave it to Dinah. “Here. Deliver this to Toby. Quick, before his ride shows up.”
She looked at me uncertainly.
“Please! It’s important!”
She bit her lip and walked across the parking lot. She handed the note to Peter, Toby’s best friend, and Peter passed it to Toby. My heart thumped, and I stared really hard at my feet. A few seconds later, Dinah’s Keds whapped against the asphalt, and she thrust the note in front of me.
“Here,” she panted. “Read it!”
I glanced across the parking lot. Peter smirked, hands in his pockets, while Toby shoved him and tried to make him turn around.
“Read it!” Dinah said.
I opened the note. Dear Toby, it said. Do you like Winnie? Underneath, I’d put three boxes: yes, no, and maybe. Toby had checked “maybe.”
Dinah did a series of tiny, excited claps.
“Winnie, that’s awesome! ‘Maybe’ is practically the same as ‘yes,’ and that practically guarantees he’s going to ask you to go with him!”
I checked my watch, thinking again of tomorrow’s card exchange. “Yeah, well, he’s got nineteen and a half hours to do it. Actually less, because I’m not allowed to talk on the phone after eight.”
I hugged my knees to my chest. I imagined pulling an oversize Hallmark from my Valentine’s box, one with a sunset on the front, or a seagull flying over the ocean. Or maybe one of those with a lift-up flap of cellophane, to make it look dreamy and elegant. Then I imagined myself at the couples’ table, heart-shaped cookie in one hand, a fancy glass of lemonade in the other.
Maybe.
That afternoon I watched Oprah with Sandra. The topic was “High School Sweethearts Reunited,” and one guest proposed on the air by giving his old girlfriend a bouquet of roses with a ring in the middle. It was so sweet. During a commercial, I asked Sandra what she and Bo were doing for Valentine’s Day.
“Going to the Melting Pot for chocolate fondue,” she said. “And then downtown to take a horse-and-carriage ride. Mom’s letting me borrow that soft red sweater of hers, and she’s going to French-braid my hair.”
I scooched lower on the sofa. Sandra looked beautiful with her hair French braided. “Are you guys going to get married, do you think?”
She snorted. “Not tomorrow.”
“But someday?”
“I have no idea. Why?”
“I don’t know. It just ... it must be so nice to have a boyfriend.”
Sandra hit the “mute” button on the remote. She eyeballed me from beneath her bangs. “You have a crush on someone, don’t you? You do! Because tomorrow’s Valentine’s Day, and everyone’s supposed to pass out cards.” She nodded. “I remember.”
“Not just because of that,” I said.
“Uh-huh. How many kids have already paired up?”
“Twelve.”
“Twelve? When I was in sixth grade, everyone in the class was going steady. Everyone but Chelsea Dunmeyer.” She drummed her fingers. “Still, you don’t want to be one of the girls left out, no matter how many of you there are.”
I waited, grateful that Sandra was taking this seriously. When I asked Mom how to go about getting a guy’s attention, she suggested studying for my decimals test, since everyone’s wowed by good math skills.
Oprah came back on, and Sandra picked up the remote. “Well, good luck.”
My mouth fell open. “Good luck? That’s all you’re going to say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“But he hasn’t asked me to go with him yet. And after tomorrow it’ll be too late!”
“So ask him yourself. Now, shh! I’m trying to watch!”
For the rest of the show I considered her remark. And afterward, when I went upstairs to do the Valentine’s Day crossword puzzle Mr. Hutchinson gave us for homework, I kept on considering it. Because really, there was no reason I couldn’t ask Toby to go with me, if that’s what I wanted to do. Just because nobody else had the guts to ask a guy didn’t mean I shouldn’t, either. Where would the world be without Amelia Earhart? Or Madame Curie?
I marched across the hall to Ty’s bedroom. “Get up,” I said, grabbing his arm and pulling him away from his Rescue Heroes. “There’s something very important I need to do, and you have to help me.”
“Is it a raid?” Ty said. He swooshed Jake Justice through the air and made siren sounds.
“No, not a raid. It’s ... a reconnaissance mission. Come on!”
In the kitchen, I flipped open the school directory and ran my finger down the sixth-grade class list. I punched in Toby’s number and handed the phone to Ty.
“What am I supposed to say?” he said.
“Ask to speak to Toby. And then ask if he wants to go with me.”
“Go where?”
“Nowhere. Just ask him.”
“But how will he—” He clutched the phone to his ear, then widened his eyes. He banged the phone down in the cradle.
“Ty! Why’d you do that?”
“Someone answered!”
“Well, of course someone answered! That’s why it’s called a phone!” I picked up the phone and hit the redial button. “Here, try again. Don’t hang up!”
He swallowed, fingers tight around the receiver. “Hello?” he said. “May I please speak to Toby?”
I got beside him and put my ear next to his. I heard voices in the background, plus a rustling sound like someone was eating potato chips out of a bag. Then footsteps, followed by a careful “Hello?”
I dug my elbow into Ty’s ribs.
“Uh, Winnie wants to know if you want to go to the mall,” he said.
“Not the mall!” I whispered.
“The mall?” Toby said.
I shook head frantically.
“No,” Ty said. “The, uh ... the—” He banged down the phone.
“Ty!”
“I couldn’t help it!”
“Just ask if he wants to go with me. That’s all!” Once more I hit the redial button and put the receiver between our ears.
“Hello?” someone said after only one ring. Whoever it was sounded older, like maybe Toby’s brother. And he sounded mad.
Ty gulped. “May I ... speak to Toby?”
“No. And tell your sister to leave him alone. He’s not interested!” And then he banged down the phone.
Ty stared at me.
I stared back. My legs and stomach felt shaky, like the time Dad yelled at me for breaking his camera, which I wasn’t supposed to be playing with in the first place. Only this was worse, because I didn’t even know I was doing something bad until Toby’s brother exploded.
“Winnie?” Ty pleaded in a tiny voice.
I blinked hard to push back my tears. Ty’s hand snaked out to grab the bottom of my T-shirt—something he used to do when he was a baby—but I shook him off and ran to my room.
“Nice outfit,” Louise said the next morning in homeroom.
I looked down at my black pants and black Phantom of the Opera shirt, then back at Louise in her pink flowered jumper.
“Valentine’s Day is for soft hearts and soft minds,” I announced loftily.
That’s what Sandra had said last night, to comfort me after hearing what happened with Toby. She’d rubbed my back and told one embarrassing story after another, all about things she’d done when she was eleven.
“Anyway, that guy was a jerk,” she’d said, referring to Toby’s brother. “He can only make you feel bad if you let him.” She’d said it didn’t matter anyway, since Toby was just a Valentine’s Day crush and in a week I’d no longer care. Which was probably true, but I didn’t like having it pointed out like that.