Chapter Text
Phoebe Caulfield was armed with a bottle of rubber cement, a pair of blunt-nosed scissors, and a felt-tip pen that was bleeding slightly onto her fingers. The enemy was a box of store-bought Valentine’s Day cards. They said things like “Be Mine” or “You’re Sweet!” in bubbly, insincere letters. “I Couldn’t Bear to be Without You!” said one, featuring a bear that looked like he’d had a few too many drinks. Atrocious. You wouldn’t say that to somebody in real life, not unless you were a real moron. You certainly wouldn’t say it to twenty-six different people. So Phoebe made some edits. She was improving them.
For most of the kids, she kept it simple, and more important, she kept it true. This was a serious business. If you were going to give someone a card on Valentine’s Day, it ought to at least be true. She pulled a card from the stack her mother had brought home from the drugstore. It had a squirrel with too-large eyes, the kind of thing that adults thought children liked. She glued a strip of white paper over the “I’m Nuts About You!” and replaced it with a kinder “I’m Aware of You!”. She also replaced the dopey squirrel with a single, carefully drawn five-pointed star. Not a shiny one. Just a regular one.
On another card, she did her best to replicate the block text on a space-themed card saying “You’re Out of This World!”, changing certain words to get the phrase “You’re A Kid in This Class!”. Phoebe actually found the picture on the card quite nice, with pretty stars scattered in space, but she did change the uncanny face on the planet in the corner.
Her friends, of course, got the good stuff. Her best friend in the entire universe, Alice Holmborg, got a card with a big, lopsided heart. Inside, Phoebe wrote in big, confident letters, “YOU ARE COOL”. It was the highest compliment she could think of.
And then there was Jack Merridew. He pulled hair and said things that were supposed to be jokes but were really just mean. He was also the one who’d told everyone Holden was a screwball. Jack got a special card. He didn't just get words. For Jack, words weren’t enough. Phoebe took a blank card and drew a picture of a big, old-fashioned meat grinder. Fed into the grinder’s funnel was a stick figure labeled “Jack M.”, complete with bright orange hair, and his mouth in a shocked ‘O’ shape. She labeled it, "A Thing I Thought Of."
Just as Phoebe was sliding her new, improved cards into their envelopes, her mother drifted into the room, a cloud of perfume around her. "Oh, Phoebe, this is lovely. So creative." She picked up the card for Alice. "That's sweet, dear." Then she picked up the one for Jack Merridew. Her mother’s face went pale. “Phoebe Josephine Caulfield. What on earth is this?”
“That’s Jack Merridew,” Phoebe said, proud of the likeness. “And that’s me.”
“You can’t give this to him! Heavens, Phoebe,” her mother said, her voice getting tight with that worry Phoebe knew so well. She sank into a chair, rubbing her temples. “I couldn’t use any of the ones you bought,” Phoebe explained patiently. "Those ones are too phony." She felt a hint of pride at using a word that Holden had taught her about, but it only made her mother more concerned.
“This is Holden, isn’t it? He’s been home for a month, and suddenly everything’s phony and everyone’s going into a meat grinder. ” Phoebe was personally offended. She sat up straighter. “No. Holden didn’t think of that. This is my own intellectual property,” she said, using a phrase she’d heard her father say on the phone.
“I will not have you getting sent off to some… rest home like he was. Not over Valentine’s cards.” Her mother swept up her meticulously crafted cards and unceremoniously dumped them into the wastebin under the kitchen sink. Phoebe resisted the strong urge to cry out, knowing that it might land her in more trouble. Her mother grabbed the remaining pile of untouched cards and placed them in front of Phoebe. “Now, you will sign these cards with your name and nothing else, and you will be a normal little girl for just this one day. Understood?”
Phoebe’s shoulders slumped. Under her mother’s eagle eye, she signed her name on a few lousy cards. From, Phoebe Caulfield. From, Phoebe Caulfield. From, Phoebe Caulfield. The moment she heard the laundry room door click shut, however, Phoebe was off her chair. She rushed to the wastebin, carefully extracting her cards from the discarded newspapers and apple cores. She dusted off any crumbs on them, and straightened out the slight wrinkles in the meat grinder drawing. She slipped them into her backpack, with one of the phony cards she signed on the top of the stack, as a decoy.
.:.
The morning of Valentine’s Day, Phoebe left the house wearing Holden’s red hunting hat. She had asked Holden to borrow it for the day, so that she would have something red and Valentine-y to match Alice, who was planning to wear a nice red dress with hearts all over. When she first saw Phoebe with the hat, her mother had protested, but she eventually let Phoebe keep it on.
In art, the class designed little paper envelopes to hold their cards. Phoebe’s was made of a lovely periwinkle paper—her favorite color—and she’d drawn a herd of very serious, respectable elephants marching around the sides. She thought it was very sharp.
During the Valentine’s Day party, Phoebe made the rounds and dropped her cards in her classmates’ envelopes, before returning to her seat to examine her own haul of cards. She was mostly just sifting through them for Alice’s card and the ones with candy. While shuffling through the cards, one thick gold envelope caught her eye. It was long, slim, sealed with a sticker that looked like a wax seal, and had her name scrawled on the back. The whole ordeal was as offensively slick as Jack Merridew himself, and she knew it must’ve been from him.
She opened it, and found a fancy, professional card with a knight clad in metallic foil armor, kneeling before a gushing princess that reminded Phoebe a little of an actress that would be in one of D.B.’s films. The image was captioned with some generic message that Jack had covered up with paper strips taped over it, replacing it with “This is Me and You”, and an arrow pointing to the cartoon couple. Inside, in messy boy-handwriting, Jack had meticulously written not a poem, but a list.
Reasons You Should Be My Girlfriend:
1. We would be a power couple.
2. You have nice hair that looks like mine.
3. You’re smart so you could help me with my homework.
4. You're not as annoying as the other girls.
5. Your dad is a lawyer so you're probably rich.
6. My mum thinks you’re cute.
7. I think you’re cute.
Will you be my girlfriend?
▢ YES ▢ DEFINITELY ▢ ABSOLUTELY!
Phoebe stared at it for a full minute. Everything about was as self-important as everything else about Jack. The clinical list, the rigged answer boxes, the corrected caption on the front that would’ve almost been admirable if it weren’t for the sheer… annoyingness of its creator. She almost threw it away, but the gold envelope looked nice, and Jack was clearly trying so hard, it made her curious about him. Why did he go through all this effort for her? Phoebe didn’t think she was particularly popular or pretty, and Jack had shown no signs of thinking she was more than the little sister of some screwball. She certainly hadn't shown any signs of not hating him either. She had to investigate this further, even if it ended up being some stupidly elaborate prank.
She pulled out her fountain pen and flipped over the card, writing in small, delicate script on the back.
Terms and Conditions for a Single (1) Trial Date:
Article I: The location of the aforementioned date shall be the cinema selected by the undersigned author of this contract (me, Phoebe Weatherfield Caulfield). Film selection shall be made solely by said author. No stupid war movies.
Article II: There shall be no holding of hands or any other dopey behavior. A five-inch radius of personal space is to be maintained at all times.
Article III: The contract author is entitled to a personal container of popcorn. Said popcorn shall not be shared under any circumstances. The other party (Jack Merridew) may purchase an individual container.
Article IIII: A handwritten letter of apology must be delivered to Holden Caulfield, older brother of the contract author, for the offense of referring to him as a “screwball.”
Article IIIII: A successful date does not constitute an agreement of “girlfriend” status, but may lead to a consideration of a second date, pending review.
Sign here: ___________________________
It looked like a proper contract, the kind of thing her daddy would write up for a client. Phoebe was proud of it. She folded up her masterpiece, returned it to its envelope, and slid it over to Jack’s desk. He immediately picked it up, eagerly scanning the card for her reply. She watched him read over her terms, nodding in the way she did when she pretended to understand something, before sliding it back to her, signed. He did not have a very good signature.