It’s that time of year again, Valentine’s Day, when half of us flaunt our significant others on social media, showing how good they have it, while the rest of us bitterly retire early into the evening, shunning the world because Valentine’s Day just reminds us of past heartbreaks, failures, and hope torn to shreds. I have a different reason to hate Valentine’s Day though. Loneliness is the least of my problems now.
I’m currently hiding under my sheets in bed, curled up next to a baseball bat, curtains drawn tight, doors locked. I can feel my pulse throbbing against the side of my neck, blood rushing to my head. My chest feels tight, and my breathing is like a coarse whisper. I’m not in love. I’m afraid.
-–
This all started when I was a 7th grader in middle school. I was 13, an unlucky age. The year prior, there was an all-school assembly on the football field for a 9/11 memorial, and I had been feeling ill all morning. Right as the national anthem began to play out of a speaker above the field, I ran to the nearest trash can and ralphed up my morning waffles.
A school nurse came over and patted me on the back as kids erupted into laughter behind me. My name was Ralph, but from then on, all the kids called me Ralphin’ Ralphie. I was a lonely kid. I had transferred over to middle school because my dad got a new job at a factory a few towns over, so I didn’t have any friends to help me break the ice at a new school.
The kids were rough around the edges and often took pleasure in the torment of others. I learned that the hard way when a kid volunteered to show me around the school on my first day during homeroom. He didn’t do so out of the kindness of his own heart. Clayton Matthews was his name, and he told me not to forget it as he reached into my pocket and pulled out my purple plastic TMNT wallet and took all the money that was in there. It wasn’t much, $5-$10 for lunch my mom had given me, but I felt like crying all the same.
“Don’t be a snitch, Ralph,” Clayton said. “You’re lucky I didn’t choke you first. Now here is the nurse’s office. Do what you’re told and I won’t have to send you there too often.”
I tried to avoid Clayton as much as I could over my first year, but he was both the school’s sweetheart, the star football quarterback, and its biggest tormentor. He was smart. Clever. Only picked on the kids who didn’t fight back, though he sometimes scaled up when he seemed especially incensed. He was always out of sight of the teachers, or if they saw him, they pretended not to. You see, Clayton’s parents were rich and he made sure everyone knew, which made it all the more ironic that he had robbed me on my first day of school.
So, I was a lonely kid with a target on my back, and that target only got bigger when I threw up in front of the whole school. Ralphin’ Ralphie. What a wuss. I thought things couldn’t get worse. Then Valentine’s Day in the 7th grade happened.
-–
It was about to be Valentine’s Day and I knew that I was going to be alone. The middle school didn’t make everyone pass out valentine’s cards like they had at my last school, so it was more obvious than ever who was popular and who was a loser. I fell in the latter category. I got a Spider-Man valentine from a kid with thick glasses once, Chuckie. That was nice. He had tried to revive the old tradition of handing one out to everyone, but I saw lots of kids just snicker and throw them in the trash. After that, he didn’t bother. For what it was worth, I thanked him for it and we hung out a few times. But only a few times.
Even though Valentine’s Day was the following day, everyone asked the day before because you were supposed to go on “a date” or bring a gift on the actual holiday.
I sat at my desk in homeroom next to the other kids sulking because they knew they weren’t going to get picked by anyone. If we had been smarter, we probably would have banded together and formed our own little clique, but I think we had the stuffing sufficiently beaten out of us, like deflated teddy bears, and so none of us saw much point in trying.
I was fine with being alone, I reasoned. I was young, but I was also building up walls from an early age. Can’t get your heart broken if you build a wall in front of it. At least that’s what I told myself.
There was a girl in class I liked, Harper, but she was really popular and of course, Clayton’s girlfriend. I could just imagine how many fingers of mine would have been broken if I had the audacity to hand Harper a valentine.
I was doodling in my notebook when a girl from the back of the room approached me. We had never talked before, but I recognized her from her unusual attire. Her name was Grace. She dressed like a mortician’s daughter from the 1900s, so that’s what everyone figured her parents did.
She was wearing a blouse with a black lace collar and a black skirt with heavy, black clogs. She always had thick bags under her eyes and looked to me like someone that had never had a good night’s sleep in their life. She usually sat hunched over at her desk with her dirty blonde hair hanging over her face so that no one could see her eyes. More than a few teachers would pause to ask if she was sleeping, only for her head to creepily tilt up and to the side, a slight smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. The teachers would be afraid they asked.
She had transferred over a few months ago and seemed to be having a worse time than I had when I first arrived. The girls and boys ridiculed her clothes, and some of the kids would ask if she got a good night’s rest in her coffin, or they would ask if she had fun in the cemetery last night. Grace didn’t seem to get sad or mad. She would just look up at them and stare, her face expressionless, which tended to unnerve people.
I looked up at Grace and she slowly slid an incredibly old-looking valentine over my desk. There was a bear on the card’s cover holding a lump of flesh that must have been a heart. It seemed a bit too realistic for what should have been a whimsical Valentine’s card. The art style seemed retro, like the bear was an old cartoon character from something I had never seen. The card was water-damaged and some of the edges were frayed and ripped. Inside the card Grace had doodled “VALENTINE? YES/NO”.
I’ll be honest – it was definitely the shittiest Valentine’s Day card I’ve ever received. Grace continued to stare at me, searching for a response. It was then that I noticed she actually had really pretty eyes, large brown ones that seemed to catch all the light in the room. Or maybe her pupils were just unnaturally big.
I looked over at Chuckie who was watching a few rows over. He seemed to shrug, as if this wasn’t good news or bad news, just news.
“Well?” Grace asked, hair hanging lank over her face. Voice quiet.
I wanted to say “no” because honestly… Grace scared me. But it was maybe because of that fear that after a few pensive moments, I took my pencil and circled “YES”. Screw it, I thought. Why not? What had being alone and miserable on Valentine’s Day ever gotten me in the past? Chuckie got it – this was at least something new. Different.
Grace picked up the card and stared at it. “Nnnnice,” she whispered. “Ralphin’ Ralphie is my valentine.”
I couldn’t tell if she was trying to be funny or not. She looked at me and gave me that weird, off-putting smile again, like she didn’t know how to smile. Maybe it was sort of charming? I sort of smiled back, then Grace smiled a bit more, trying to model what I was doing. Again, it was a bit off-putting to have someone copying your movements almost like an alien, but it was a sort of moment… right?
My mind wandered for a minute, and I imagined this leading to a longer relationship where Grace and I got married in a funeral home. All the flowers were dead, and there was no one in attendance. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
For the rest of the day, Grace sat next to me in the classes we shared together, which to my surprise, was more than I thought. Instead of sitting slumped over at her desk like a zombie, she seemed more attentive and lively. She would pass me a note every so often asking a random question – favorite color, food, animal. It was nice… legitimately nice. I realized then that we were supposed to get a gift for each other, as per Valentine’s Day tradition. I asked her what her favorite kind of flower was – she said violets. She must have been trying to think of something for me. It was then that she asked me something weird.
“How many teeth are in the human mouth?”
-–
I was swapping my books out at my locker when I noticed Harper at her locker next to mine. I suppose I could have mentioned it earlier, but we were locker mates. Hence the starting point of the whole crush. She always ignored me though.
“So,” she said.
Wait. Was she talking to me??
“Heard Grace gave you a valentine. That’s sort of weird, right?”
Was this really happening? Harper had never given me the time of day before, much less acknowledged anything going on in my life.
“Uhhh, yeah. Surprising, right?” I tried not to look at her. My heart was hammering too fast. I felt a book slip out of my hands and clatter to the floor.
Harper leaned down to pick it up at the same time that I did. Our hands touched. She looked at me with an expression I had trouble reading. Then handed the book to me. “Well, don’t let her embalm you,” she said. She smiled, then closed her locker and disappeared into the crowd of students. I looked at the spot where our hands touched, as if it had been blessed by the pope. I wasn’t even religious. Huh.
It was turning out to be a very, very strange February 13th, I concluded.
-–
I was walking home after school when something beamed me in the back of the head. I didn’t live very far so I didn’t take the bus home. I turned around and saw a rock clatter on the sidewalk.
“Hey fuckwad,” said Clayton. “What’s this I hear about you and Harper? Did you try and slip her a valentine at your locker, you fucking RAT?”
I put my hands up defensively. This was new. Clayton had never followed me home before. His parents usually picked him up in a beamer. A BMW. Clayton wasn’t alone either, there were two other kids that I recognized - Fred and Nick, his buddies.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. “I dropped a book. She handed it back. I sw-“
Clayton grabbed me by the collar and dragged me off the sidewalk into a nearby field. My feet dragged through the grass.
“Ralphie Ralph thinks he’s hot shit now, huh? Then what’s this, fucko? You think you’re reaaaally smart, don’t you?” I could see a valentine card clutched in Clayton’s hand. If I had to guess, some other kid had maybe tried to hand it to Harper or maybe Clayton had intercepted it somehow. I had no clue.
“It’s not mine,” I said. “I didn’t make anyone a card this year. I promise.”
A fist went into my stomach and the wind was knocked out of me. I fell over, gasping for air.
“Man…” said Fred, obviously not wanting to be there, but probably not having much choice.
Clayton grabbed me again and threw me into a tree off the side of the field. “I can FUCK-ING READ, Ralphie. It says ‘To Harper, from Ralph – I love you’.”
He threw the card at my feet. With shaky hands, I grabbed the card and tried to read it. He wasn’t lying, but it definitely wasn’t my handwriting. I suddenly realized that someone was playing a cruel prank on me, though I couldn’t remember ever telling a single soul that I liked Harper. I noticed the edges of the card were frayed, like-
“Found it tucked in the corner of her locker door shortly before school ended. Thought you were being sneaky getting it in at the last minute, weren’t you? You know what Ralphie, I’ve been easy on you because I knew you were weak. The very fist day you showed up here, I knew I could do whatever I wanted to you and you wouldn’t fight back, because you’re a fucking pussy. Just like your whole family, a whole bunch of fucking pussies. Heard my old man talking about possibly laying your dad off the other night, but he said he didn’t want to because he felt bad for him. Can you imagine that? A shitty worker is a shitty worker.”
Clayton’s dad ran the factory that my dad worked at, though my father was just a lowly assembler on the factory floor. I felt my fist tighten. I didn’t really care what happened to me, but someone insulting my dad when I knew he worked 60-80 hours to provide for our family…
“Don’t talk about my dad like that,” I said, getting upset.
Clayton smiled. “Oh, Ralphie gonna cry? I see your fist shaking, little man. You want to hit me? I bet you want to fucking slug me right now, don’t you? I bet your plan is to take me out and then go swoop in on Harper, like she would give a shit about a worthless piece of shit like you.”
I finally had enough. I ran at Clayton, not sure what I was about to do, but angry enough that it didn’t matter. With my fist curled up at my side, coursing with rage, I imagined a world where I fought back against Clayton and maybe knocked him down a peg or ten. That someone finally stood up to him. But then my fist relaxed. I knew what would happen. I would fight back and the story would become that I was the aggressor. Wasn’t that why Fred and Nick were there? As witnesses?
Clayton’s parents were rich and would probably throw a fit until I was suspended or worse, expelled. I could just imagine the whole situation spiraling where even my dad lost his job. It wasn’t worth it. That was the last thought in my head as I ran headstrong at Clayton. He grabbed me by the collar once more, my feet kicking against his, then punched me square in the face as hard as he could. Everything went black as I crashed to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut loose.
When I came to, it was drizzling outside. I was lying flat on my back in the wet grass. My face felt raw and inflamed. I could taste copper on my tongue. Blood. My sinuses were packed with it.
A figure was standing over me, and through the swelling of my eye, I saw it was a girl. Harper? The dirty blonde hair came into focus. Grace.
“You didn’t fight back,” she said, not judgmentally, but with a casual disinterest, like she was hoping I would have done more. She was kneeling down next to my head.
-–
I winced as I propped myself up with my elbows. “Is it bad?” I asked.
She nodded, then swiped her finger under my lip where the blood was trailing. She looked at my blood on her finger, and to my revulsion, licked it.
“Ew,” I said. “Why did you do that?”
“It tastes sweet!” she said, smiling. “You have nice blood.”
“Thanks,” I said, not knowing how to respond.
I fell back to the ground, wondering how things had gotten so out of hand. Maybe I really was better off alone.
“You know,” Grace said. “I think someone should really teach Clayton a lesson. Do you think so?”
Her brown eyes looked at me, then through me. She was searching for something. I realized what it was later – approval.
“I wish that Clayton was never able to talk again,” I said, wiping at some tears. I hated that I was crying in front of her. That I felt weak and pitiful, like a lost puppy. “I’m sorry. You must think I’m a giant wuss.”
Grace swept the hair off my forehead. “You’re okay,” she said gingerly. “You’re okay.”
I sniffled and let the rain wash the blood off my face.
“Hey Ralph?” she asked. “Promise me that I’ll be your one and only Valentine. Pinky promise.”
“Okay,” I said weakly. “Pinky promise.” I hooked my finger against hers which felt cold to the touch.
I turned my head to the side and saw some flowers, purple with a golden center. I reached over and picked one, then handed it to Grace. Violets. Her favorite.
“Happy Valentine’s Day” I mumbled through my cracked and bloodied lip.
-–
Though my face had been beat to shit, and my parents were fuming (I told them the kid that started the fight at school was being dealt with. I lied, sue me), I woke up the next morning in good spirits and thought about Grace.
I had been so focused on building walls around myself that I didn’t anticipate what would happen when someone broke through one of them. Break through? That wasn’t accurate. I had let her in, given her a ladder. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t going to be alone on Valentine’s Day, and the thought thrilled me as much as it scared me, because nothing went right in my life.
Was it wrong to hope?
I left for school earlier than usual that morning. I kept thinking about what Grace would get me. When I got to my locker, I saw that she had already gotten there before me. There was a green ribbon on my locker door. I had told her green was my favorite color. I opened the door in eager anticipation. I didn’t stop to realize that the lock on my locker had been removed.
I opened the door. There was a red heart-shaped box there. She got me candy, everyone likes candy, right? I gave the box a shake and heard the contents rattle. I grinned, then pulled the lid off the box and froze, unable to understand what I was looking at. There was something lumpy in the middle of the box with a red ribbon tied around it. I thought maybe it was a big chocolate dipped strawberry, but the color was wrong, and I didn’t see any seeds on the strawberry. It was surely chocolate, right? I looked around at what was in the wrappers and felt similar confusion. Little white things… dipped in chocolate too? But they didn’t look like…
“It’s… what you wanted… isn’t it?” I heard Grace say from behind me. I slowly turned to look at her, my mind reeling. This time, it truly looked like Grace hadn’t slept all night. Her hair was ragged, face pale.
Her brown eyes pierced through me. She was searching for something again. My mouth was open but I couldn’t talk. My brain was struggling to process what was happening. Because yes, it was a box for chocolates, but all the chocolates had been replaced. There was also something in the wrappers that didn’t belong.
“He will never bother you again,” she said. I noticed then that her fingers were stained with something that almost looked black. Her nails were caked with it. As she drew closer, I noticed the smell. A faint perfume smell mixed with rust and decay. She touched my hand and I shuddered. Drew away.
There was a crowd of students gathering. Maybe they were talking amongst themselves, but I couldn’t hear them. All I heard was a ringing in my ears and the sound of my own heartbeat flooding my head with blood.
I felt my stomach churning. I was about to be sick. I couldn’t believe what was happening.
“What the fuck…” I stammered. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”
She winced. Recoiled. Like I had cut her myself. She pulled away and the heart-shaped box clattered to the floor. The gray lump of flesh rolled out of the cardboard vessel and lay motionless on the floor of the hallway for everyone to see, along with the other little gifts that rattled across the linoleum.
People drew to get a closer look, confused as I had been at the gray lump of flesh with a red ribbon tied around it. I heard the whirr of a camera shutter. Then a scream, followed by a few more screams.
“Is that… is that a fucking tongue!?” someone yelled.
Some teachers were drawing in around the crowd, trying to push their way through. My head was throbbing. I felt like I was about to pass out.
Dazed, I looked up and saw Grace disappearing into the crowd. A school security guard ran past. Then another. I remembered what she had asked me earlier when we were passing notes. I tried counting the little white things, noticed they varied in size and texture, noticed that the staining was just as random. Twenty… twenty-one…
There was something else in the box with Clayton’s tongue. All 32 of his teeth.
-–
Grace was reported to have been arrested shortly after running outside of the school. She was pulled into a cop car, screaming, and her blood-stained hands pounded on the glass of the cruiser. The night before, she had lured Clayton somewhere with some flirty texts, and then when his guard was down, she knocked him out with laughing gas, nitrous oxide. You see, her parents had nothing to do with funeral homes at all. Her father was a dentist. Then, while Clayton was knocked out and delirious, and it’s debated about whether or not he was fully unconscious, she cut out his tongue and removed all of his teeth with a pair of pliers. It had taken her hours.
I realized then that when she asked me questions, she had been asking for my approval, like she couldn’t tell right from wrong herself. Even though I knew it wasn’t my fault, I still felt horrible about what happened to Clayton. He never came back to school. Last I heard, his parents had moved him to a private school where he could have his own security detail. If I had never made that wish, would Clayton have been fine?
The tongue couldn’t be reattached because it had been sitting in my locker at room temperature for 5 hours before I walked into the building. I never used that locker again. I stopped going to class. I stopped going outside. Part of me was afraid that Grace would get out, that she might not understand how much trouble she was really in. That she would seek me out. I didn’t know what to think. When I closed my eyes, I thought of her large brown eyes that always seemed beautiful, but a bit hollow. Searching for approval, searching for cues and validation. Had there been a trail of slowly escalating behaviors at her other schools?
I also figured out that Grace had been the one to plant a card in Harper’s locker. Grace must have been watching me when I touched Harper’s hand, which possibly made her angry given that I had just accepted her valentine. That or she was bored and wanted to see what would happen when Clayton beat my ass, that maybe she was hoping I would fight back on my own.
-–
The reason I’m telling you all of this right now is because this morning, in front of the door to my apartment was a red heart shaped-box with a withered, dead violet poking out from under the ribbon. It had been so long. I went on one date, one FRICKIN’ date for Valentine’s Day with someone I barely knew, and everything’s coming back to haunt me.
There was a note attached to the box. Handwritten. In big dark letters, it said – “YOU PINKY PROMISED.”