Written in celebration (/sarcasm) of Valentine's Day. Eustace, Peterson and Tate are 16; Jill will be soon.
Disclaimer: I don't own Eustace or Jill, or Experiment House; I don't own Valentine's Day, or even a Valentine (well-meaning but ultimately patronising family members don't count); I do own James Peterson and Sarah Tate, however, so play nicely :D
Also, I use a tiny bit of French in this. It's pretty easy French (I remembered it from my GCSE years) but a translation can be found at the bottom if you're unsure.
Summary: In which Jill Pole doesn't like Valentine's Day. At all.
On February 14th, 1949, Jill Pole awoke from a very pleasant dream. She poked her nose out from under her blankets, looked at the baby calender on her bedside table, and promptly buried her head in her pillow, upon which she made every attempt to go back to sleep.
Valentine's Day is an ordeal even at an all-girls' school (though I have heard that boys view the subject differently), with the popular girls flaunting the cards and flowers that have arrived from smitten sweethearts back home. At a mixed school, it is infinitely worse. At a mixed school, almost everyone has a Valentine from someone, making those that don't even more conspicuous. Jill Pole was one of Those Who Didn't. In fact, she was the only person who had been at Experiment House for the full ten years, and was yet Valentine-less. Enid Ackby hadn't received one two years ago, and Mace (Jill could never remember his first name) had gone three full years without one, but she herself had obviously been singled out to be particularly ignored. Eustace was in the first eleven and he was, Jill grudgingly admitted, reasonably handsome, so he always got one. Last year, he had received three.
"Pole!" Someone was tugging irritatedly at the blankets cuddled around her feet. "We're going to be late for breakfast! The bell went a positive ageago, and you should be glad I came back from the loos to make sure you were awake." Tate managed to get hold of her friend's ankles beneath the covers, and began trying to pull her out of bed.
"I'm not getting up," Jill mumbled. "Not today. Would you believe measles, scarlet fever and scurvy all at once?"
Tate rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't be silly. You're overreacting. They're just cards."
"As if you know what it feels like," Jill growled. "You got six last year! You look exactly like Bette Davis. Andyou have a sweetheart." It is never easy to have beautiful friends, especially when those friends are stronger than you. With one final heave, Tate dragged Jill out of bed, and the two of them landed tangled on the floor.
"Now get dressed," Tate instructed. She glanced into the mirror to see if her hair was astray, and her smile when she discovered it was not was, admittedly, a trifle smug. "And hurry up!"
Five frantic minutes later, Jill made her rumpled way into the dining room with Tate. Miss Phillips, their somewhat elderly form mistress, glared at them both, but Jill was intelligent enough to be a favourite. They escaped with no further reprimand.
This was always the worst part of Valentine's Day. Always. Miss Phillips was distributing the day's post amongst her form, both from home and from the intra-school mail system. Two red envelopes and a pink one landed near Tate's porridge. Jill saw them on her peripheral vision, and scowled into her toast.
"Nothing this year, Pole?" Jackle asked, from across the table. "Never mind. After all, it's hardly your fault you're unattractive."
Jill muttered something. She didn't want to give Jackle the satisfaction of looking up, but- but- and there it was, as soon as she lifted her head, that mockingly sparkly card propped against Jackle's glass. Jill bit the inside of her cheek to keep from saying something unkind. Hard.
"Probably got your own handwriting in." Tate, with less kindness, said it for her. "Pole might not have any cards yettoday, but I'd put money on more people loving her than you. It's sad for you that, in order to feel special, you have to partake in a stupid ritual, but please don't assume we're all on that level."
Jackle blinked, before turning to Miss Phillips. "Miss! Tate just said I was stupid!"
"Tate, apologise to Jackle," that teacher said, not looking up from her own letter.
Jill thought darkly that it was probably a valentine.
"I mean it," Tate encouraged her, ignoring everyone else at their table. "You might get a card later in the day."
Jill snorted. She was acutely aware that others on their table were starting to look in her direction. Tate occasionally lacked tact. "Thanks," she replied sarcastically, "but I haven't seen any pigs flying lately."
Tate patted her friend's arm. "Maybe Scrubb will send you one."
Jill raised her eyebrows. "Am I supposed to find that reassuring?"
Jill's lessons had been dragging that day. It seemed that her pen kept running out, the exercises were all mind-numbingly pointless and she had been forced to endure an hour of gym lessons, during which she had fallen off the vaulting horse and whacked her head. It was pounding. She just wanted to make it through the rest of the day unscathed, and tumble into bed, but, having endured until French, Mam'zelle Goutier seemed to have it in for her.
"Alors, Jillian," she asked. (Jill had never been entirely convinced that her teacher's accent wasn't an elaborate ploy). "'Ow do you conjugate in ze pluperfect?"
"Er," Jill didn't see that the pluperfect was any different to any other kind of perfect. Could you even conjugate in it? She pressed a hand to the bruise on her forehead, and instantly regretted it. "Ouch. Um, you..." she thought. She had known this yesterday. "You need the... perfect ofavoir?"
"Non." Mam'zelle Goutier looked at her expectantly, and a trifle angrily.
"Um..." Jill looked at her hands. "You... you..."
"Vite."
"I don't know," Jill replied helplessly. "Sorry, Mam'zelle." She touched her bruise again, more gingerly this time, with cold fingers. Mam'zelle seemed to be ranting about something. She caught things about the imperfect. Oh yes. Today seemed to be going from bad to worse.
"Jillian? Jillian? Ecoutes-tu?"
Jill jerked to attention. "Pardon,Mademoiselle." French was normally one of her favourite lessons. She had topped the class four times since the start of term, five weeks ago. Shaking her head to clear it, she gave the right answer this time. Stupid St Valentine, having a stupid day that made her feel stupid. It was allhisfault.
"Votre livres," Mam'zelle snapped, still looking daggers at Jill.
Jill slipped her hand into her desk, and was sure she felt something unfamiliar brush against her fingers. Brilliant. Now she was seeing things... well, feeling things. When she pulled out the blue grammar book, however, a red envelope slipped from it.
Thatwas unexpected. Tate caught her eye across the room, and gave her an "I-told-you-so" shrug. Jill grinned. She felt very warm all of a sudden. Scrubb had had French just before her.
"Jillian! Take your books and work at the front of the classroom!" Mam'zelle's accent disappeared almost entirely. Jill decided happily that she had been right. It wasput on.
Eustace knocked gently on the door of Pole and Tate's room. He didn't really expect either of them to be in there; Tate would probably be with Peterson, and Jill had a maths lesson. When there was no response, he pushed the door open. What he saw was a surprise.
Jill was sitting on her bed, back against the wall, and her head buried in her knees. If he hadn't known her far too well, he would have said she looked like she was crying. Rather uncertainly, he made his way across the room towards her, uncomfortably aware that he was breaking about twenty unspoken rules of their friendship.
"Pole?" he asked, sitting down on the other end of her bed. "Don't you... er, have a maths' lesson?"
"My head hurts," Jill replied, without looking up.
"Let me see." She lifted her head. A purplish-green bruise had begun to spread across her right temple And he had been right. She wasn't sobbing, but those were definitely tears in her eyes. "Ouch, Pole." He shifted a bit closer, and brushed the bruise with one tentative finger. "How did you do it? Daft as a brush, I tell you. You should probably get it looked at."
"I fell off the horse in gym." She covered the bruise up hastily at the thought of Matron and her pet bottle of iodine. "It doesn't hurt that much."
"Don't you think you should go to the San.?" Eustace asked. "It looks pretty nasty."
"Looks worse than it really is," she assured him.
"Then why are you crying?" he asked suspiciously.
Jill shrugged. "Time of the month."
Eustace wrinkled his nose, but he was not to be deterred. "I don't think you would miss a lesson for that-not even maths."
Jill put her head back down. "Go away."
"If I was unsure before, I'm not now. What in Narnia is wrong?"
"Ten years."
"Excuse me?" Ten years. Well, so what? What had happened ten years ago?
"I've been at this school ten years," Jill clarified badly. It sounded as though she'd started crying again. He wished she'd look at him. "Ten Valentines. Not a single year has somebody bothered to send me one."
"Pole, that's a terribly silly thing to get upset about," Eustace said tactlessly. "Why does it matter? They're just bits of paper."
"No!" Jill snapped. She sat back up. "No, that's ten years when nobody's liked me enough to send me a stupid card. Ten years where I have been too unattractive, too boring, too tomboy to be noticed. Always passed over! I'm the only person in the ruddy school that's never had a valentine."
"I'm sure that can't be true." Eustace squirmed uncomfortably, feeling the envelope in his pocket burning a hole. "Lots of people like you. Lots of people notice you."
"Who?" Jill shot back.
Eustace ignored the voice in his head telling him to say something. Instead, he glowered at his feet.
Jill sighed. "Don't tell anyone, all right, Scrubb? But when I do get attention, it's the wrong kind of attention." She pulled an already-opened red envelope out of her blazer pocket, and handed it to him. "I was already having a bad day."
Eustace removed the card from the envelope and opened it. What he read there made him determined to go and hurt somebody.
Your eyes will be red
And your spirits most blue
When you realise this card
Was sent to mock you
The card went on to detail all the reasons that it would hardly be a real Valentine."Oh, Pole," he said, and fidgeted with his watch, trying to work out if he should hug her or not.
"I thought I'd finally got a valentine. Finally I wouldn't have to dread this day every year, where it's made abundantly clear to me that I'm plain and uninteresting. I was having a horrible day and when I found this in my desk, it cheered me up no end. All the way through French, I anticipated opening it. And I found this... Well, I shouldn't have overreacted, but really." For a split second, she had worried (irrationally) that the card had come from Eustace. It was what she had been expecting, after all.
There was far too much emotion in the room. Eustace wasn't used to it at all. In the end, he did move to sit next to Jill, and put an awkward arm around her shoulders. "Can I tell you a secret?" he asked.
Jill blinked and nodded.
"Why do you think I came to your room when I knew you had a maths lesson?" he asked. Jill opened her mouth, but didn't say anything. The thought had obviously only just occurred to her. Eustace fished inside his pocket, and pulled out the now proverbial red envelope. "People do notice you, Pole."
The school's best rugby team (though can refer to hockey, football and so on).
I'm picturing Tate as looking like the banner photo on
French
(v. sorry for any mistakes. Like I said, I pinched this all from GCSE French, which was a long long time ago).
Alors: I don't actually know if this has a direct translation. My dear Mme Ricketts use to begin every sentence she said with it, like "well then" or "so".
Avoir: the verb "to have".
Non: no.
Vite: quickly, hurry.
Ecoutes-tu?: Are you listening? (lit. "You listen?")
Pardon, mademoiselle: Sorry, ma'am. (lit. "pardon, miss" but politer.
Votre livres: This should have an accent over the "o", I think, but I can't find it. (Rubbish OpenOffice!) Anyway, it means "your books."