While the rest of his third-grade class had been anxiously tearing apart envelopes and yanking out cards, Ben had been busy arranging his valentines in neat stacks, organizing them according to envelope shape and contents. He was quite pleased with the results. The stack on the right side of his desk was the largest, and it was made up of valentines that kids had gotten in packs from the drugstore or the grocery store. The envelope on the bottom of this stack was the biggest, and the one on top, the smallest. On the left side of his desk sat the littlest stack, the one that had been easiest for him to arrange. It was made up of just three cards, each from a fancy stationary store downtown. Two of the cards were from the set of twins in his class, whose mother owned the stationary store, and the third was from the twins’ best friend, who never wanted to be outdone. In the middle of his desk was Ben’s favorite stack of valentines, despite the trouble he’d had assembling it. It was made up of all the envelopes that had candy stuck to them or in them, and the cards looked a little more unsteady than Ben felt comfortable with. Ben looked at his three miniature towers of valentines and decided he was ready to begin.
He felt he had earned a treat for all of his hard work. He grabbed the very top envelope from his middle stack and slowly untaped the heart-shaped chocolate, then unwrapped the foil, being very careful not to rip the wrapper. He placed the chocolate on his tongue and wiped his fingers clean on one of the napkins he kept in his desk. The card had snakes on it and was from the new boy in his class, Jim. Ben put the card, the envelope, and the foil wrapper back on his desk, getting ready for his next set of collections. He had just decided it was time to take an envelope from the right side of his desk when he looked up and saw Maggie standing in front of his desk. Maggie was nicer to him than a lot of his other classmates, and when she was team captain in gym class she always picked him first. Maggie smiled at Ben and held up a valentine. She tossed it on the middle lopsided mountain. The momentum of the card and the slight breeze that Maggie created when she turned around were too much for the delicate stack, and as the valentines fell, they brought with them all the envelopes from Ben’s desk. Maggie was already back at her seat and didn’t even notice.
