The Valentine Box

10

The Valentine Box

Early in February the weather changed to wind and snow. Mrs. Pitt managed to shovel a path on the sidewalk in front of her house. Then schools were closed for almost a week. Ramona and Daisy were too busy coasting on the Thirty-seventh Street hill on Mr. Quimby’s old sled,“a real antique,” Beezus called it, to think about anything that had happened at school.

That was why Ramona was surprised when school reopened and gray envelopes of class pictures were handed out. Feeling sure that Bill had snapped her picture a second before she made a face, she opened her envelope expecting to see herself cute and perky, maybe a little bit pretty. But no. She wasn’t cute. She wasn’t perky or the least bit pretty. She was a plain, ordinary girl making an ugly face. Ashamed, she shoved her envelope into her book bag.

Unfortunately, everyone in the class had, in addition to a big picture and several smaller pictures, a sheet of pictures of each member shown slightly larger than a postage stamp.

Everyone pointed to Ramona’s picture and snickered.

Susan said much too nicely, “It’s too bad about your picture, Ramona.”

Daisy, who was always kind, said, “Don’t worry about it, Ramona. We all know you don’t really look like that.”

Yard Ape was silent. Ramona was suddenly cross with him for not paying attention to her, not even on the bus. It wasn’t her fault Mrs. Meacham confiscated his note and embarrassed him in front of the class.

Ramona tossed her hair to show her class she didn’t care what they thought.When she returned home that day, she hid her pictures and hoped her family would never find them.

This lasted for about a week until one evening at dinner Mrs. Quimby asked,

“Ramona, what happened to your school pictures? Howie’s grandmother says he has his.” There were no secrets in this neighborhood.

Ramona took a big bite of potato. She wasn’t supposed to talk with her mouth full.

“You don’t like your picture,” guessed Beezus.

Ramona chewed her potato more than potato needed to be chewed.

“Come on, Ramona,” said her father.

“We love you no matter how you look. Go get them.”

Ramona swallowed, sighed, and fetched the gray envelope, which she thrust at her father. He pulled out the individual pictures and passed them around to the family, who, as Ramona expected, laughed. She put on her you-hurt-my-feelings expression and said, “You’re being horrid to me.” “I think this is a great picture.” Mr. Quimby smiled at his middle daughter. “It captures the real Ramona.”

“It does not!” contradicted Ramona.

“Your Grandpa Day is going to love this,” said Mrs. Quimby, “and so will your Aunt Bea.”

“Mom, that’s mean! That picture is awful.

I hate it.” Ramona wondered if this was all worth a tantrum and decided it wasn’t.

Maybe she was outgrowing tantrums. Instead she explained about Roberta and the peas. She concluded with, “If Roberta had eaten her peas, I would have had a nice picture. At least I don’t spit on the floor like Roberta.” Mrs. Quimby reached over and patted Ramona’s hand.“We all know you are nicer than your picture.” she said.

“Except sometimes,” said Beezus.

Ramona ignored her sister. “All the kids at school except Daisy laughed at me,” she went on,“and now our relatives will, too.” She was beginning to run out of reasons to feel sorry for herself.

Beezus spoke up.“What difference does it make? When we take our family picture for our next Christmas card, you can smile twice as hard to make up for your school picture.” This led to a discussion of how the family should pose for their Christmas-card picture even though Christmas was months away.

After that no more was said about Ramona’s picture. At school everyone seemed to have forgotten it, too, perhaps because Mrs. Meacham brought out a box decorated with hearts that Ramona could see had been used in the many classes Mrs. Meacham had taught in years past. Mrs. Meacham made a little speech about not hurting anyone’s feelings.

Everyone must give a valentine to everyone else in the class. Ramona had heard this speech from previous teachers and knew the problem could be solved by buying kits that held enough valentines for an entire class, silly valentines with words such as “Bee my valentine” with a picture of a bee, or “I choo-choose you for my valentine” with a bear driving a locomotive. For special friends some people might enclose a candy heart with “Be my valentine” or “I love you” printed on it.

For extraspecial friends fourth graders, usually girls, made valentines decorated with heart stickers and paper lace. This was the part of Valentine’s Day Ramona liked best.

That week after dinner Ramona worked on her valentines. Of course she made Daisy’s first, with a big pink heart surrounded by yellow daisies, which she drew with the colored pencils her father had bought her. She made another with pink and red hearts for Janet and another, a plain valentine with just one heart, for Howie. It looked too plain, so she drew a hammer, a saw, and some nails around the heart. Howie would like that.

The evening before Valentine’s Day she addressed her store-bought valentines, leaving Yard Ape to the last because she wasn’t sure she should even give him one, no matter what Mrs. Meacham said.Then she discovered she had no more valentines left. Would Mrs. Meacham notice if she skipped Yard Ape?

Yes. Mrs. Meacham never missed a thing.

Eagle-eyed Mrs. Meacham might even stay after school, open the box, and go through the valentines to make sure everyone remembered everyone else.

Ramona tapped her nose with her red pencil while she tried to think. Roses are red, violets blue—no, that wouldn’t do. Everyone said that. Roses are pink, you sti— No. She was cross with Yard Ape but not that cross.

“Bedtime, Ramona,” said Mr. Quimby.

The third time her father spoke to her, Ramona was still trying to think of a valentine for Yard Ape, something not too icky-sweet but not really mean. She found Beezus propped up on her bed studying.

Ramona sat down on her bed, kicked off her shoes, and began to pull off her socks by the toes. She sighed noisily to get her sister’s attention, which was not the same as interrupting her when she was studying.

Beezus looked up from her book.“Something bothering you?” she asked.

Ramona explained her dilemma, which Beezus did not see as a problem. “Just give him one of your school pictures with the funny face you made. That way he won’t know if you gave it to him because you like him or because you don’t like him.” Sensible Beezus. Ramona wished she had thought of this herself. She found a picture, stuffed it in an envelope, printed DANNY on the front, brushed her teeth, and went to bed hoping the class would have chocolate-chip cookies at the Valentine’s Day party the next day.

The next afternoon, after the bell rang for the last period, the room mother of Mrs. Meacham’s class arrived with a tray of cookies (peanut-butter, Ramona’s next-to-favorite) and cartons of pink punch. Mrs. Meacham opened the valentine box and asked the valentine monitors to distribute the envelopes.

As Ramona ate her cookies, she sorted through her valentines. Several looked interesting and a couple were lumpy, which meant they had candy hearts inside. Then she found the one she had been looking for, an envelope addressed in Yard Ape’s uphill scrawl. She felt uneasy. Had she made a mistake in giving him her picture? She bit into a cookie and glanced across the aisle in time to see Yard Ape pull her photograph out of the envelope. She stopped chewing. He looked at her picture, grinned, and put the picture in his shirt pocket.

Ramona quickly looked away and tore open his envelope. She pulled out, not a valentine, but a sheet of tablet paper without a single heart. Printed in big letters that ignored lines were the words: IF YOU ARE EATING PEAS

THINK OF ME BEFORE YOU

SNEEZE

Signed,

Yard Ape

PRESIDENT

An original poem! A poem Mrs. Meacham didn’t have a chance to read. Ramona looked at Yard Ape and smiled. He smiled back.

Then she carefully folded his valentine smaller and smaller until it was small enough to fit into the little box in which she kept her baby teeth at home. She would keep it forever.