"You are excited aren't you?" Lexi asked me.
We were sitting in our clubhouse wrapped in fleece blankets. I pulled another piece of tape form the dispenser and stuck a lollipop to a valentine, trying to ignore her question.
"You are! You can't wait to give Luke a valentine, can you?" Lexi asked smiling playfully.
I grinned and shook my head, unwrapping a spare piece of candy and popping it into my mouth. Lexi rolled her eyes.
"Such a bad liar," she mumbled, still grinning to herself.
I shook my head again and ran my hands through the fuzzy carpet. A cold wind blew through the cracks in the walls. I shivered, and watched the goosebumps pop up all over my arms.
"You think I will get something from him?" I asked.
Lexi smiled.
"I might be able to arrange something..." she said.
I smiled, knowing that she would never let me down.
On Valentine's Day, I walked into the classroom, the anticipation of a valentine from Luke making butterflies fly frantically in my stomach. Sure enough, on my desk was a card and som chocolate. I practically sprinted over. I tore open the card and read it.
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Sugar is sweet
and so are you!
My eyes skipped to the bottom and I saw that it was from... Jacob? I looked over at the boy that I rarely spoke to, and I saw him staring at me. Not wanting to hurt his feelings, I smiled and looked down. I glanced over at Lexi, and I saw her quickly shove something into her desk. Then, she met my eyes, and her face read a sad expression, as if she knew that I hadn't gotten what I wanted.
"I'm sure he likes you," she said to me at recess.
"I don't know..."
"I'll be right back, I have to go to the bathroom," she said starting to walk towards the building.
After she left, I looked over to see what Luke was doing. He was sitting on top of the monkey bars, staring off towards Lexi. Not that I could blame him, maybe he liked her instead. I sighed, and pulled my jacket tightly around me, waiting for her to get back. It just kept getting colder and colder here in Georgia, but we still hadn't had any snow. I know that if I were in North Carolina right now, I would be standing with all my friends, eating our valentine candy and talking about who likes who. I kind of missed that, but Lexi gave me a different kind of friendship. It seemed more real, something that would probably last longer. And I liked that about her.
When Lexi returned, a smile danced on her lips, and her eyes were lit up with excitement.
"You will never guess what I just saw!" she screeched. I looked over to the monkey bars to find Luke again, but he wasn't there anymore.
"What?" I said.
"I saw a valentine on your desk! And Luke just went inside, so I am thinking it was from him!" she said excitedly.
Suddenly I was shaking, but not from the cold.
"Yay! Can we go see!?"
"Well..." Lexi said glancing down at her pink watch, "recess ends in 2 minutes, so we will see then!"
Man, that was the slowest two minutes of my life.
When we finally got inside, I didn't even bother to take my jacket off. I went straight to my desk to see who the valentine was from.
A girl like you makes me smile everyday
So I wanted to say
Happy Valentine's Day!
From,
Luke
I felt my cheeks flush, but at that moment I was so happy. I gave Lexi a thumbs up across the room. And she smiled, but then turned away quickly as if she was hiding something.
I read over that valentine a million times at the least. But it was the 1,000,001 time that I noticed the scratch out at the top of the card. It was where a name would have been. Curious, I flipped the card over and tried to see what the name was.
What it said made me stunned.
The name that was crossed out clearly spelled Lexi.
"Lexi?" I said into the walkie- talkie that night.
"Yeah? Over," she said.
"Did you cross out your name from the valentine I got from Luke and give it to me to make me feel better?" I asked.
I heard silence at the other end, and I saw the lights in her room flicker on and off, our new signal for emergency clubhouse meeting. I silently crept out the back door and went into the clubhouse, saddened by what my best friend was probably about to tell me.
"Anne, I'm so sorry, I just know you really like him and when I saw that he gave a valentine to me and not you, I decided that I was going to give it to you and say it was from him. I didn't want you to be upset that he didn't like you, and I didn't want you to be mad that he liked me," she said.
"It's okay, I know you were just being nice," I said. But deep down, I was hurt. Not by Lexi, but by Luke.
YOU ARE READING
The Cherry Trees
Teen Fiction"It was then that I heard it. The small, quiet, click. I couldn't turn my head fast enough. When I finally saw her, she had the gun to her head. "I'm sorry," she mouthed. And then the whole forest went silent when the sound of her life being taken e...
