"Miss Maddox, come in, come in," exclaimed Sam's mother. "Is something wrong at school?" she asked.

"Not a thing," I smiled and extended the box. "These are Sam's. This morning at school he put them on my desk and said, 'These are All For You!'"

"Really!"

"We had a little talk. I told him I could keep only one. His friends would be so disappointed and he would feel bad too when he got valentines from them and had not given any to anyone else. So he picked out the prettiest one for me. Then he promised me he'd take the box home and write the names on them before our party tomorrow. Somehow the box slipped out of his backpack at the bus stop and one of the older kids brought it to my room."

"Thank you so much for bringing them here." Sam's Mother took the box. "He would have been frantic to find them missing."

"You're welcome," I smiled. "Boys with crushes on their teachers are one of the hazards of teaching first grade." I grinned all the way home.

© 2007 Alice Marks. Original for CCF (Marks grants CCF first electronic rights for one month; CCF may archive the material indefinitely and include it in an eBook anthology).