Valentine Cupid
VALENTINE CUPID – February 12, 2025 – Pensacola, Florida, USA
Two days before Valentine’s Day, Cyrus Crockett found a pink envelope in his school backpack. Inside the envelope was a handwritten note signed by a secret admirer with the initials P.C.
After reading the note, Cyrus quickly shoved it back into his backpack before anyone in his fifth-grade class might see. He went over the words in his head. They made him giddy because he had a hopeful idea who wrote them. Priscilla Crabtree. She sat two desks up from him and two rows to the left. He had a good view of the back of her head and spent plenty of time admiring her hair, neck, and jawline. She wore trendy shoes and was almost always in a good mood.
When he got home, Cyrus needed to talk about the note with someone. His available choices were his mom and his older sister, Penelope. His mom was a lot less cringy than other parents he knew, but telling her about a love note felt weird. His sister definitely had more recent experience with school crushes and relationships. Cyrus suddenly regretted teasing her so much about liking every boy she knew.
“Penelope, if I tell you about something, will you promise not to laugh or tell anyone else?” Cyrus asked reluctantly after finding his sister alone in her room.
“Are you in trouble or something?”
“No. It’s nothing to do with trouble. It’s about Valentine’s Day.”
Penelope perked up and moved to the edge of her bed. “Don’t worry. I won’t laugh or tell anyone else.”
“I got a secret admirer note today and I need your help figuring out what to do.”
Penelope studied her brother carefully and suppressed the tiniest of smiles. “Oooo, a note. Not many people write those anymore. Who gave it to you?”
“It was in my school backpack so I think it’s someone in my class. And I think I might know who.”
“What did it say?”
“I’m not telling. It’s embarrassing. But there’s stuff about me being cute and smart and how she wants to be my Valentine.”
“Sounds like somebody likes you,” Penelope said, no longer able to hide a smile. “What do you need my help for?”
“She signed her initials P.C. There’s a girl in my class named Priscilla Crabtree. It’s got to be her.”
Penelope slowly nodded her head. “Priscilla Crabtree. Yeah, sounds like it could be her.”
“What am I supposed to do? She wouldn’t have put down her initials if she didn’t want me figuring out it was her. And since she wants to be my Valentine, she’s probably expecting me to answer.”
Penelope’s face slyly brightened. “Yeah, you’re right. Letting her know is probably the right thing to do. That’s what a gentleman would do.”
Cyrus’s face curled into a frightened expression. “I’ve never written a note before. Maybe you could help me.”
“Sure. Do you like this Priscilla girl? Do you want her to be your Valentine?” Then Penelope added in a teasing voice, “Do you think she’s pretty?”
“I don’t know. It’s none of your business,” Cyrus replied as he blushed. “But I don’t want to write a bunch of mushy stuff.”
“How about you agree to be her Valentine for one day? It won’t be like you’re asking her to marry you.”
“I guess I can do that. Like you said, it’s probably the right thing to do after she wrote that letter to me.”
“Start out like this, ‘Dear Priscilla,’”
“Are you sure I should use ‘Dear’? How about just ‘Priscilla’? Hold on, let me get some paper.”
Cyrus and Penelope spent an hour working on the letter. They thought hard about each word because Cyrus did not want to sound too eager or too in love. The final version read like this:
“To Priscilla Crabtree,
I got your secret letter in my backpack. If you still want, we can be Valentines tomorrow. You are really nice and I always like your shoes. If you do still want to be Valentines, just wear something pink tomorrow.”
From Cyrus Crockett”
“Now put it in an envelope. That shows class,” Penelope said after the note was written in pen. “How are you going to give it to her?”
“I’ll try to drop in on her desk when no one’s looking. I’m already nervous.”
The next day, Cyrus slid the Priscilla letter and envelope into one of his notebooks and waited for a chance to deliver it without any of the other kids noticing. When the class was released for morning recess, everyone seemed to want to hang around the classroom instead of going outside. Cyrus did not dare drop off the note.
It was the same story during lunch. The teacher had to shoo everyone out and down the hallway to the lunchroom. Cyrus spent the next half hour plotting how he could return to class early, but then he worried about how obvious the envelope would look on top of Priscilla’s desk. Other students would see it and want to know what it said.
Cyrus slipped back to the classroom alone with a new plan. He would put the note in Priscilla’s backpack instead of on her desk. He scanned the row of backpacks hanging from hooks on the wall. Which one was hers? They all looked the same lined up like that. He was pretty sure hers was the gray one right in the middle, but he did not see any kind of name on it. He did not have much time. If he was going to do it, he had to act fast. He unzipped the gray backpack and dropped the note inside only seconds before a trio of classmates walked in.
Cyrus retreated to his desk feeling relieved and a little clever. When Priscilla walked in, he imagined her excitedly finding the note after school and choosing something pink to wear for Valentine’s Day. She sat down in front of him and he continued to daydream as he stared at her ponytail.
The teacher was about to call for attention when the last two girls in the class finally returned. One of them, named Delilah, headed to the row of backpacks instead of her desk. To Cyrus’s horror, she stopped at the gray one he thought belonged to Priscilla. She unzipped it, fished around inside, and looked surprised when she pulled out the Valentine note.
Delilah loved attention. “What’s this?” she called in her high-pitched, high-volume voice. She held out the envelope and said, “This wasn’t in here this morning.”
Cyrus cringed and shrunk in his desk as Delilah tore through the envelope’s seal. Then she read the whole thing out loud. Twenty-four students in the class laughed louder with every word. Two others, Cyrus and Priscilla, flushed crimson red.
“Cyrus must have mixed up our backpacks,” Delilah cried in delight. “Priscilla, did you really give him a note?”
Priscilla was too flustered and embarrassed to answer.
“Read it again!” someone shouted.
“No, that’s enough,” the teacher warned. “I think we’ve had enough silliness already.”
Cyrus did not look around the room for the rest of the day. He stared straight ahead at his reading book, even during afternoon recess. When the final bell rang, he ran straight home and hid under his bed in humiliation. He moped through dinner and refused to tell anyone in his family what was wrong. When Penelope asked about the note, he growled and did not answer. He complained of a stomachache the next morning but his mom made him go to school anyway. He kept his head down and trudged into his class with his ears burning.
When Priscilla arrived, Cyrus glanced up from his desk for just a moment. She was wearing pink from head to toe. Even her shoes were pink. Then Cyrus noticed that all of the girls in his class were wearing something pink. After Priscilla sat down, she turned around to steal a look at Cyrus and flashed a smile.
At first, Cyrus thought to himself that all the girls felt sorry for him. He assumed that Priscilla had convinced them to wear pink just to be nice and make up for the humiliation he felt the day before. But as he kept seeing sweet smiles from Priscilla and the other girls, his head raised higher and higher off his desk. By the time school ended, Cyrus felt more confused than pouty. He found Penelope in her room and humbly asked for her advice.
“Priscilla heard about the note.”
“What do you mean she heard about it?”
Cyrus dropped his head and explained how he had confused the backpacks and Delilah read it out loud. Penelope smiled sympathetically and suppressed a laugh.
“So anyway, today Priscilla wore pink but so did all the other girls. I don’t know if they all want to be my Valentine or if they’re just being nice. Or maybe they’re all making fun of me.”
Penelope paused for a few seconds before deciding how to answer. She thought of all the obnoxious things Cyrus had said and done to her. Just last week he had hidden her phone in the refrigerator. But he had also confided to her about the note. Her heart softened.
“What do you want all the girls wearing pink to mean?”
Cyrus blushed and said quietly, “Well, I guess I want Priscilla to like me. And maybe she told all the other girls to be nice.”
“I’m sure that’s what happened.”
“You really think so?”
“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Cyrus left feeling happy and appreciative that Penelope could be smart when she wanted to be. Left alone, Penelope giggled to herself. When she had slipped the original note into Cyrus’s backpack as a joke, she was sure he would realize the P.C. initials stood for Penelope Crockett. Little did she know her brother had a crush on a Priscilla Crabtree in his class and he would see in the note what he wanted to see.
Penelope laughed to herself again. She enjoyed being Cupid. She would keep the secret.
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