The classroom door squeaks slightly as the small girl pushes it open. She pauses, waiting, checking for the teacher, seeing that the room was empty, before opening it a little further and slipping into the room. She’s about seven years old, short for her age, with long dark blonde hair parted on the side. Her hair is swept out of her face with a blue headband, but in the excitement of the moment it’s come loose and the hair is sliding slowly out from under it, hiding her face.

She pauses again inside the room, looking around. She knows her teacher always takes morning recess to go make coffee in the teachers’ lounge. She has no idea what she would’ve done if she’d peeked in and the room wasn’t empty. There it is! The thing she was looking for. Heart pounding in her throat, palms slippery with sweat, she crosses the room toward it.

Sitting on one of the tables, the object is a box. It’s made of blue construction paper, and decorated in just such a way with stickers and markers that an observer could be fairly confident in assuming that a young boy had decorated it, probably around the same age as the little girl.

Reaching the box, the girl looks around again. Still she is alone in the room. She reaches into her pocket, and pulls out a hand made, carefully decorated, valentine. The observer from earlier would estimate it took her at least an hour the night before, agonizing over color choices, what kind of stickers, to use a doily or not, and of course, the message itself.

The girl is still for a long moment, looking down at the valentine. Her head comes up a little and her eyes focus on the box in front of her. She takes a deep breath and pushes the little offering into the slot, her fingers lingering on the final edge, then she lets the breath out and allows the paper to slip out of her grasp.

She had done it. Legs shaking with relief, and nervous anticipation of his reaction when he got it, she slipped back out the classroom door and onto the playground for the end of recess. She was pretty sure she had guessed right that his favorite color was blue.

After recess, the class sits down to open their boxes. From across the room, she waits with bated breath as he slowly begins to sort through his cards, looking for candy. Then he sees something different among the small piles of paper on the table in front of him. He lifts it up, impressed by the obvious amount of work put into such a small thing as a class valentine. As he reads the message, a smile spreads across his face.

Across the room, startlingly blue eyes light up as the young girl beams, matching his smile in happiness, confident he liked her little gift. And maybe, just maybe, he’ll notice her a little more now.