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Valentine’s card and the flowers and the teddy bear and got them ready and took them to
school. I was the happiest boy on earth.
The teachers had set aside a period before recess for everyone to exchange valentines.
There was a corridor outside our classrooms where I knew Maylene would be, and I waited
for her there. All around me, love was in bloom. Boys and girls exchanging cards and gifts,
laughing and giggling and stealing kisses. I waited and waited. Finally Maylene showed up
and walked over to me. I was about to say “Happy Valentine’s Day!” when she stopped me
and said, “Oh, hi, Trevor. Um, listen, I can’t be your girlfriend anymore. Lorenzo asked me to
be his valentine and I can’t have two valentines, so I’m his girlfriend now and not yours.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that I had no idea how to process it. This was my first time
having a girlfriend, so at first I thought, Huh, maybe this is just how it goes.
“Oh, okay,” I said. “Well, um…happy Valentine’s Day.”
I held out the card and the flowers and the teddy bear. She took them and said thanks,
and she was gone.
I felt like someone had taken a gun and shot holes in every part of me. But at the same
time some part of me said, “Well, this makes sense.” Lorenzo was everything I wasn’t. He was
popular. He was white. He’d upset the balance of everything by asking out the only colored
girl in school. Girls loved him, and he was dumb as rocks. A nice guy, but kind of a bad boy.
Girls did his homework for him; he was that guy. He was really good-looking, too. It was like
when he was creating his character he traded in all his intelligence points for beauty points. I
stood no chance.
As devastated as I was, I understood why Maylene made the choice that she did. I would
have picked Lorenzo over me, too. All the other kids were running up and down the corridors
and out on the playground, laughing and smiling with their red and pink cards and flowers,
and I went back to the classroom and sat by myself and waited for the bell to ring.