Well this is cheesy.

Val Rogers was woken, as usual, first by his alarm, then by his mother. When this was unsuccessful, his mother sent his little sister in to wake him, much like a drug lord would send a menacing henchman to collect debts. Despite her small stature and lack of firearm, this was a job that Lola carried out with considerable efficiency, usually by throwing her whole body onto his bed with as much force as she could muster. One day she would break his kneecaps, he was certain of it. This time she landed, mercifully, on his abdomen. It must be my lucky day, he thought. It was.

“HAAPPYYY BIIIIRTHDAYYYYYYYYY LOOOOSERRR!”

He groaned. His birthday. Not entirely awful in itself, but…

“HAPPY VALENTINE’S’ DAAYYY, VAAALENTIIIIIINE!”

Why. Why. WHY did he have to be born on the 14^th of February? And why oh why did his parents imagine that naming him Valentine would be a good thing to do? What kind of sick individuals were they? Today would be irredeemably awful, just like every other birthday had been. A decidedly ungrateful, pessimistic world view, one might stipulate. Well one might be right. Val’s family were well-intentioned and well-off, and he had always been showered with gifts and attention. He was a very lucky boy, in many senses. But there is only so much heart-shaped chocolate a teenage boy can take. There were only so many jovial pink cards and wilting red roses Val Rogers could handle before it became all very tiring, an old joke that people just couldn’t let go of – they carried it around year after year like a dog with a torn old  slobbery plushie that no one could prise from its jaws. He didn’t even like chocolate for chrissake. He moaned again, and, shoving Lola off him, swung his legs over the edge of his bed and dropped his head into his hands. He was not ready for today. Nothing could get him through it. He ran it through in his head like a movie, envisaging every awful moment occurring as he knew it would occur.

He would go downstairs and his mother would have decorated the table with red heart-shaped doilies and red roses and red heart-shaped balloons and little red heart sequins scattered all over it. There would be presents wrapped in shiny red paper with big kitsch bows. The overall effect, he imagined, was not unlike a brothel, although he for one had never set foot inside one. For breakfast, there would be heart-shaped pancakes or heart-shaped eggs (his mother had purposefully purchased a heart-shaped frying pan from a catalogue) followed by little heart shaped chocolates.  He would be expected to smile and laugh along as his father and brothers mocked him and his mother and sister fawned over him and scrutinised his face for gratitude.

He felt sick, a deep, heady nausea. School would be worse; the mockery descended from light hearted family in-jokes to full on, gritty comprehensive ridicule. His locker would be jammed with Valentine’s cards, none of them genuine, all of them comprised of clichéd poetic parodies:

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

U R a faggot

I hate u.

His friends were little help.  They, too, thought it was incredibly witty to buy him chocolate plaques from Thornton’s with personalised messages on them (one of them somehow managed to coerce the woman behind the counter into drawing a large phallus, in impressive detail). Once or twice they had clubbed together to get him an Xbox game or something, but as they got older, they all seemed rather short on cash. This was due to the fact that it was Valentine’s day, and they were spending all their money on their love interests. This problem extended to the evening, when he could never, ever expect to have a party, or go to the cinema, or even just have friends round to watch a film, because they were all on ‘dates’ of some variety. Val never was. And that was the very worst part. We all hate Valentine’s day the most when we’re single. Valentine Rogers was turning 17 and he had still never even kissed a girl. I am a joke, he thought. I am St Valentine reincarnate and no one loves me except my mum. For this, he mostly blamed his parents, for their poor choice of conception date and atrocious name selection. But he also blamed himself for his loneliness and lack of success with the opposite sex.  His self-esteem was crushingly low; how was he to know that it was in fact Hallmark, not he, that was largely to blame?

At least there was Hester, he thought. Hester sat next to him on the bus. She was a goth (a remarkably good one, no pink stripy tights or awful fingerless gloves) and hated Valentine’s day as much as he did. She was quite pretty but she wasn’t interested in him like that, which she made very clear by talking about how much she hated men. She also hated meat, Christians and pop music, so at least the hatred was diffused a little. She was the only one who would treat him like a normal person today. She wouldn’t even acknowledge that it was his birthday, let alone Valentine’s day. Her hatred would be a blessing.

He rubbed his eyes and squinted at the room around him. Lola had cleared off; probably gone downstairs to pour pink glitter into his rucksack. He showered, got dressed, and, bracing himself for the worst, headed downstairs. He wasn’t ready for the red-light-district glow of the dining room. He should have worn his faux Raybans. But when he got to the foot of the stairs, he was greeted by a rather unconventional sight.

Lola, dancing in circles and shouting HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY HAPPY BIRTHDAY. Nothing out of the ordinary. Apart from the fact that she was wearing green face paint and a witch’s hat.

Val turned, bewildered. Lola was a strange child, but this transcended all expectations. She ran into the dining room screaming. He followed her. The dining room was strangely dark…

As he entered someone hit a switch and the room was filled with ghostly green light. There were orange faces glowing on the table. Pumpkin lanterns. Fake spiders dangled from the ceiling, tangled up in woolly strands of artificial cob webs. Plastic cauldrons overflowed with sweets.

“SURRRRPRIIIIIIIIIISE!” A chorus lead by his mother’s lilting alto, Lola’s squealing soprano and his dad and brothers’ half-hearted baritone. Val was taken aback. They were even dressed up – a werewolf, a vampire, a really rubbish mummy. His mother made a rather impressive Cleopatra. This defied belief. His birthday morning smile, for once, was genuine. He couldn’t hold it back; his cheeks were flushed with embarrassment of the chuffed variety – not at all what he was used to. His family noticed this and were smiling, too. From behind him  he heard a slight noise. He spun around.

A pale, pretty girl, with long black hair and a serious face. Hester. What was she doing here, at 7:45 on a weekday morning? How did she know where he lived? Val felt his face grow redder but hers stayed white as paper. From behind her back she drew a single rose, not red, but spray painted black. A shadow of a smile played across her face.

“Happy Birthday, Valentine.”