Part Two

February 14th 1998

Liz's eyes snapped open as her alarm clock sounded from the table next to her bed. She reached over to turn it off and pulled herself into a sitting position. She'd set the alarm extra early this morning so that she could check the mail before anyone else. Not that she was actually expecting anything, but just in case, she didn't want the whole household knowing about it.

Carefully, she padded downstairs, a nervous feeling welling up in her chest. Luckily, the mail came early in the morning so she would be able to intercept it before her parents woke up. The feeling grew as she reached the bottom of the stairs, although it had more to do with thinking about who else would be opening Valentine's card this morning than whether she'd be getting anything herself. She'd bought and sent a card to Scott, careful to disguise her handwriting; she still wasn't ready for him to know how she felt about him. She definitely wasn't expecting anything back from him, but it was nice to hope, right?

Actually, the card to Scott wasn't the only Valentine she'd sent this year. When she was in the shop, another card had caught her eye and before she'd known it, she'd bought both of them and had mailed one to Scott and the other to…Max Evans. She still didn't know what possessed her to do it, other than the fact that her stomach did little flip-flops every time she thought about sending something to him; although it may have just been because she was considering sending a Valentine to one of the most popular, unattainable boys in school, a boy she was sure must receive dozens of Valentine's cards every year.

So now, she was sitting at the bottom of the stairs on the morning of Valentine's Day, watching the front door and waiting impatiently for the mailman to arrive. When he finally did, and the post was pushed through the letterbox and fell to the floor, Liz nearly gasped in shock. There it was, poking out from beneath some bills, a red envelope…addressed to her!

Her heart thumping, she reached for the pile of letters, sifting through them quickly, before extracting the envelope. Clutching it to her chest, she took it up to her room. It was a truly lovely card – a cute little bear, holding a heart-shaped balloon and cradling a sign saying 'Be My Valentine?' to its chest. Hands trembling, she opened it up. As she might have guessed, it was anonymous, signed only…Love, Your Secret Admirer…in unrecognisable handwriting, but Liz practically squealed with delight nonetheless.

She hadn't dared hope before, but could it really be true that Scott Wilkinson had sent her a Valentine?

"Come on, Max, get up. You'll be late for school!"

Max was woken by the sound of his mother knocking on his door and calling out to him. With a sigh, he swiped a hand across his face and struggled to sit up. Trust his mother; he was just having a great dream about being surrounded by admiring underwear models and she interrupted it!

He'd just made it out of bed, when he heard another knock at the door.

"Alright, Mom, I'm getting up!" he shouted in exasperation.

"Hey, Max," his sister's taunting voice floated through the door. "Guess who's got some mail?"

"Oh, God," he mumbled, fighting back a groan.

It was Valentine's Day. He'd almost managed to forget about it, but no such luck now. He practically stalked to the door and yanked it open, revealing Isabel standing on the other side, fanning herself with about half a dozen pink and red envelopes, all with his name on. Embarrassed in front of his sister, he quickly snatched them from her hand and shut the door.

Ignoring Isabel's cry of protest at his rudeness, he sat down on his bed, thumbing through the envelopes. Almost with a sense of dread, he slid his finger under the flap of the first, and began opening the cards, one by one. He hated that all these girls, girls he didn't even know, thought they could just send him a sappy pink card just because someone declared it Valentine's Day. It practically felt like an invasion of privacy.

The first Valentine's were from four girls in his eighth-grade class. Each one made it explicitly clear exactly who had sent it and a couple had even included their phone numbers. One of them actually felt it appropriate to make lewd suggestions about what the two of them might get up to in the janitor's closet come Monday afternoon! The fifth card was from Sacha, although it was pretty non-descript, with a big red heart on the front and a printed poem inside. She'd signed it 'Happy Valentine's Day, love Sacha'. He couldn't really complain though, Max reasoned, considering that he hadn't really spent much time or effort on her card. No, that honour had gone to Liz's Valentine, which he'd picked out with painstaking care, making sure that he chose the one that he hoped she would like the most. As he tore open the sixth and final envelope, Max's thoughts drifted briefly to Liz as he imagined her opening his card this morning. Would she like it? He hoped so.

He pulled out the last card. Of all of them, this was the by far the nicest. It wasn't too bright or garish, but instead brilliantly subtle. There was barely any pink or red in sight; no, someone had good taste; this was a definitely a card suitable for a boy. He opened it up, eager to find out who had sent it, but unlike the others, this one was unsigned, stating only that it was from his secret admirer, although it did contain a couple of lines of handwritten prose. This was definitely the one that stood out the most and for weeks, even months afterwards, he would wonder who it could have been from.

Max simply sat there and stared at the card, until his mother's annoyed voice called up again, and he knew that he had to get ready for school. Unfortunately, going to school would also mean that he'd have to face Sacha, and to be honest, he'd found her getting on his nerves this past week. She'd want to know what he had planned for them tonight and there was no way he could tell her the truth: that he still had no idea what to do. Most likely, he would end up going by his friends' suggestions of dinner and a movie, which really, could be done any night of the week, not just on Valentine's. But so far, he'd had no other ideas, so it looked like dinner and a movie was going to be the choix du jour.

Liz made her way into school excitedly, hoping that Maria would already be there. Luckily she was. Liz found her sitting on a bench, the same one they usually occupied in the mornings, her nose buried in a magazine.

"Maria, guess what?" she cried, pulling the magazine from her friend's hands.

"Hey! I was reading that!" Maria cried in protest.

Liz shook her head, "No, Maria, this is way more important."

With a roll of her eyes, Maria sighed and crossed her arms. "Okay, fine. I give up, what's so important?"

Liz leaned in closer, lowering her voice, "I got a Valentine's card this morning."

Maria frowned, "So? It's Valentine's Day; lots of people get cards."

"I think it was from Scott," she whispered.

"Scott Wilkinson? No way!"

"Yeah." Liz couldn't prevent the smile that crept onto her face.

"So, what – did he sign it, 'Love, Scott', or something?" asked Maria curiously.

"Well, no, but – "

"So, how do you know it was from him?"

"Well, who else could it be from? I've noticed Scott looking in my direction a couple of times this week; maybe he finally decided to make a move?"

Maria sighed and held in her reservations and decided to let her friend indulge in her fantasy for now, replying simply, "Maybe he did."

"Wow, I can't believe this!" Liz exclaimed happily. "Scott Wilkinson likes me! You know what Maria? I think I'm going to ask him out."

TBC...