The Stolen Hearts

A Story for All Ages

By Aaron McEmrys

Jeremy was in second grade, and so far second grade had been no fun at all. Things were okay at his old school. He had some friends and got along okay. But his mom and dad argued a lot. They tried not to fight so much when he was around, but sometimes at night he would lay in bed and all he could hear was arguing. It was hard to sleep on nights like that.

One day, all the fighting stopped. His parents sat down with him and explained that they were going to get divorced, and not live together anymore. They hugged him and told him over and over again that they both loved him so much, more than anything. Jeremy knew it was true. He knew they loved him, but he still felt very sad inside.

A week or so later, Jeremy and his mom moved to a new town, just the twp of them, and Jeremy had to start going to a new school.

It was winter when Jeremy joined Mrs. Watson’s class. Mrs. Watson was okay, but everything else was terrible. Jeremy had never been very outgoing; he was a quiet, shy sort of person – and because he was still so sad about his parents getting separated he was even more quiet than usual. The other kids mostly ignored him. At lunch he mostly sat by himself, and at recess he would sit on the swing set and watch the rest of the kids play. More than anything he hoped that one day they would ask him to play kickball with them or something, but nobody ever did.

And Jeremy got sadder and sadder and sadder.

That’s how things stood when Valentine’s Day rolled around. Jeremy had no way of knowing this, but in Mrs. Watson’s class everybody brought Valentine’s Day cards and candy hearts to give away on Valentine’s Day. So when Jeremy got to school in the morning there were kids running all around the classroom exchanging cards with little hearts or Harry Potter designs or whatever printed on them. The cards said things like, “Be My Valentine!” or “Best Friends Forever!” It seemed like everybody was munching on little candy hearts, and some kids had so many Valentine’s that they had to put them in piles on their desks.

But none of the cards were for Jeremy. His desk was empty.

Eventually Mrs. Watson made everyone settle down and get to work, and Jeremy spent the rest of the morning feeling so lonely and sad that he wished he could just disappear. It was extra cold outside at recess that day, and after his ears started to tingle with cold on his lonely swing set, he remembered he had left his hat in the classroom and went back in to get it.

He got his hat off the peg by the door, put it on his head and then stood looking at all the desks with their little piles of Valentines and candy hearts. Suddenly, without even understanding what he was doing or why he was doing it, Jeremy started snatching the candy hearts off the desks and shoving them in his mouth. He couldn’t help himself. When his mouth was full, he filled his hands with the little yellow and pink and blue candies and ran down the hallway to the boy’s bathroom. He went into a stall and sat there by himself, half-choking on too many candy hearts. And finally he started to cry.

When the other kids came in from recess they noticed right away that all the candy hearts were gone. They were really mad that someone had stolen their candy, and soon they realized that only one kid was missing – Jeremy. Mrs. Watson had the kids sit and do some math problems while she went to look for Jeremy.

After looking high and low, she heard some muffled crying sounds coming from the bathroom. She went in, and there he was, just sitting there crying with all the missing candy hearts still clutched in his hands.

“Jeremy?” she asked. “Are you okay, honey?”

Jeremy looked up at her with his eyes wide and full of hurt, but he couldn’t speak. He just cried harder. Mrs. Watson softly put her hand on Jeremy’s shoulder and hugged him. His body began to relax and his hands began to relax and all the candy hearts spilled out of his hands onto the floor.

After a while, Mrs. Watson asked, “Why did you take all the hearts, Jeremy?” “It’s okay, you can tell me.”

“I don’t know why I did it…I don’t know. I just forgot my hat and then I saw all the cards and stuff on everyone’s desk and my desk was the only empty one…and it made me so sad. Nobody likes me and I don’t have any friends and that’s how it will always be! I just wanted some hearts. I just wanted to pretend that I was popular and that I had friends like everybody else. I know I shouldn’t steal. It was bad and I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I just want to go home! I want to go home and never come back here ever again!”

Mrs. Watson hugged Jeremy some more, and she felt really bad, because she had been so busy that she had never noticed how lonely he was. Jeremy was very upset, and kept saying he wanted to go home, so she decided to call his mother to take him home for the rest of the day. As Jeremy waited for his mother in the school office, Mrs. Watson walked back to her classroom with a wrinkled brow.

Back in the classroom she explained what had happened. At first the kids were angry, but Mrs. Watson asked, “How would you feel if you were new here, and didn’t know anyone, and didn’t have any friends yet or anyone to play with?”

The kids were silent, they hadn’t thought about that before.

“And we didn’t give him a card or anything” said one of the girls. “Yeah – he was just sitting there looking down at his desk” said one of the boys.

“Yes, that’s right”, said Mrs. Watson.

The kids really got it then. They felt really sad about how they had treated Jeremy, and even though he had stolen their candy hearts they weren’t mad any more. So instead of continuing with regular class, Mrs. Watson and the kids got to work on something else.

The next day, Jeremy didn’t want to go to school. He tried playing sick, but his mom didn’t buy it. She said, “Jeremy, I know you feel really bad right now, but you’re going to have to go back there and face them sometime. You have to say you’re sorry. Now you get on that school bus. I love you.” She kissed him on the head and off he went to school.

Jeremy was very scared when he walked into Mrs. Watson’s room. He shuffled over to his desk, looking at his feet because he was afraid of making eye contact with any of the other kids, who he was sure were still mad at him. But then he stopped. There, on his desk was an enormous Valentine’s Day card! It was made of fancy paper and decorated with sparkles and glitter and it was signed by every single person in the whole class! And in big red letters on the top of the page it said, “To Our New Friend, Jeremy.”

He didn’t know what to do, but when he looked up everyone was smiling at him, and a couple of the boys came up to his desk with a big plate full of cupcakes with red frosting on them that said, “Friends” written on them in very shaky white-frosting handwriting. Very quietly, but with a smiling red face, Jeremy took on of the cupcakes and said, so quietly you could barely hear him, “Thanks.” Then he passed the plate onto the girl, Peg, sitting next to him, and she took one and passed it on, and soon all the kids were eating the best cupcakes Jeremy had ever tasted.

After that, they still didn’t all become friends right away, but it was a good beginning, and before long Jeremy fit right in in his own special way. Jeremy gradually came to understand that he wasn’t all alone, and his heart hurt a little less all the time. And from then on, whenever any new kids would join their classroom or were going to move away, Jeremy and the rest of the kids would always make some special kind of surprise to welcome or to say goodbye – and they would always always eat cupcakes together that said, simply – “Friends.”