I Like U

I Like U

Anna Rohaly

It's Valentines Day and Valerie sits across the room from Joey. She watches him laughing with his friends about their third grade teacher over his bagged lunch of a ham and cheese sandwich and an apple. Valerie sighs.

“Joey is so cute,” She said, leaning her head on her hand. Her friend Theresa takes a sip off of the straw descending into her juice box as Valerie continues. “I wish he would ask me out for Valentine Day.” Theresa puts her drink down.

“You know,” she said, “I bet if he knew how much you liked him he would ask you out.”

Valerie's head snaps around to face Theresa, her little brown eyes bright as her pigtails flop around to catch up with her head.

“What do you have in mind?” Theresa leans over and whispers into Valerie's ear. Minutes later, both girls have abandoned their lunch and are running down the hallways together, pigtails flying, to their lockers down hall B3. Valerie stops at her locker and clicks in her combination to the door. She opens the locker. Diging past the papers topped with red letters, the calender with pictures of the Back Street Boys, and her oversized World History book, she finds the bag of candy that Mrs. Zeke gave out in their homeroom. Theresa also pulls out her bag of candy.

“Here are some of the little heart candies!” She said, pulling apart a small plastic bag filled with the pastel hearts all covered with short logos. “Open yours!”

Valerie tears her package she found open and together they sift through the random sayings. “Call me!” “You're Sweet” “Talk 2 Me” “Kiss Me” “Rising Star” and many other little phrases. The girls giggle as they look through them. They finally find the one that they are looking for. It is a pale pink heart about the size of a penny with the typed words “I Like U.” Very simple and straight forward.

“Okay, here is the plan,” Theresa says and then launches into details on how to plant the heart where Joey will find see it and know it is from her. The two girls head back towards the cafeteria working out the kinks of their plan. Entering the noisy room, Theresa stands by the door and watches as Valerie makes her move. Walking carefully between the rows of tables and people carrying trays, she walks towards Joey. He is sitting at the end of the table, right where the tables break to make space for people to walk. Gliding right past the table, she lets her hand slide over the plastic surface and drops her little pink heart by Joey's arm. She quickly walks away and back to Theresa, heart beating quickly and difficulty breathing.

“Perfect, he knows it was you!” Theresa said, “Look!”

Valerie turns and watches as Joey picks up the heart, examines it, and looks in her direction. His face turns bright red as she waves her fingers at him and his friends erupt into laughter. He jumps up from the table and comes vaulting over to her. For months now Valerie had giggled each time Joey had looked at her, followed him around between classes like a puppy, and had thought about him constantly. Now was the moment that he was going to profess his undying love for her. In her heart, she knew that was his purpose. Valerie's stomach fills with butterflies as he reaches her.

“What the heck Valerie!” He yells, holding up the heart. “Why did you give this to me?” His demand catches her off guard and she steps back away from him. “All of my friends are laughing at me cause you gave me this stupid heart. I don't want it.” With that he drops the heart to the ground, puts his heal over it, and grinds it into pink dust. Before he can say a word, Valerie turns and runs from the cafeteria, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Theresa does not catch up to Valerie until she reaches hallway C1. She grabs her shoulder, making her stop running away.

“Val, I'm so sorry! I thought he liked you too!” Theresa says, standing across from Valerie. Valerie wipes the tears from her face and nods. Just then the bell rings and the girls are forced into classes with the streams of fellow middle schoolers and teachers. Valerie walks into her first class and is met with a hale of spit wads that cling to the bows in her hair and her pink shirt. She whips up a book trying to block the spit wades but the boys only change their aim to her legs. She is only saved when Mr. Coolege comes into the room and brings the class to order. However, the moment his back is turned, another wade of paper, blessedly spit free, lands on her lap. She uncrumples it and reads the squiggly handwriting. “Val and Joey sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Joey with the baby carriage! Haha! To bad he doesn't like you.”

Valerie sets her head down on the table and tries not to cry as Mr. Coolege begins to ring out the multiplication tables. As soon as the bell rings, Valerie is out the door like a cannonball. She makes it through the hallways filled with cruel boys with even crueler jokes. She turns the last corner to her locker, thinking that the day could not get any worse.

“How could I have been so stupid?” She asks herself under her breath, “As to have a crush on that stupid Joey McClure.”

That is when she sees him, leaning against the locker right next to hers. He looks at her and waves, trying to smile.

“Hey Valerie,” He didn't look so cute anymore. “How was math?”

“None of your business,” Valerie said, drawing her shoulders back and refusing to look at Joey.

“Okay, I was just asking,” He sounded a little discouraged. “Listen, I really didn't mean what I said in the cafeteria. I really do like you I just –”

“Decided to be a complete pig when I told you?” Valerie asked, turning sharply to look at him, letting a spit ball she missed fly out of her hair hit him in the face. “You were really really mean to me and I don't like you any more, so just go away!” She slammed her locker shut. Before she could walk away though, Joey jumped away from the lockers and grabbed her arm. Before she could yell at him he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek. SMACK! Her hand flew around and found his face before either of them knew what had happened.

“How dare you!” She yelled and then stopped. “I'm sorry, I shouldn't have hit you.”

Joey rubbed his face. “It's okay, I deserved it. I'm gonna go now and – er – get my backpack.” He walked away and left her standing there staring after him. As soon as he was out of sit she went running in the opposite direction to find Theresa.

“THERESA! HE LIKES ME!” She yelled, “HE KISSED MY CHEEK!”

“Yay!” The girls jumped up and down, giggling and laughing. “So, what did you do when he kissed you?” Theresa asked.

“I kinda slapped him,” she said, grimacing. “Do you think he'll still like me?”

Theresa laughed. “I think that if he is willing to kiss you in the hallway, he will still like you.”

Valerie's smile spread across her face like sunshine. Linking arms with Theresa they headed out of the school. “I can't believe he kissed you!” echoed down the hall behind them.

Five years later and Valerie and Joey were not dating anymore and Theresa had moved away to Iowa. After Joey had kissed her in the hallway they had “dated” for thirty-six days. They had ended after Joey stole a rubber bouncy ball from Valerie's locker. Ten years later however, they ended up at the same college. That Valentine's day Joey arrived at Valerie's door and gave her a little candy heart. “I Like U.” He then leaned in and gave her a kiss. This time, she did not slap him.