After school Isaac asks, “Want to come with me to Felipe’s Art Shop?”

In my head, I say no, since spending Valentine’s Day at an art supply store is not what any of us had in mind. “Sure,” I tell him. Then I think how both Chelsea and Nadine are going to be disappointed, because neither of them have won their bet.

Felipe’s is Isaac’s favorite art supply store. Partly because of the range of materials he can choose from but also because it’s in Washington Heights, not too far from school. He comes here so much, the people who work here know him by name. The last time we came here together, Isaac said he just needed to stop in for one thing and we stayed for two hours. Today, when we step inside, the man behind the counter smiles and nods. “Isaac, my man. What’s good?”

“Hey, Felipe.” Isaac stands in the middle of the aisle.

Felipe moves his head slightly to the left, as if to tell Isaac, “Go over there.”

Isaac takes a deep breath, and I’m beginning to feel like maybe they just passed some kind of secret code to each other. I smile at Felipe, and he smiles too. In a familiar way, like he knows me. Isaac walks over to the aisle where the sketchbooks are. “Help me pick something out,” he says.

“Don’t you always use these?” I pull the black spiral book up and open it. It has blank pages, and at the back, the last pages are perforated along the spine so they can be torn out easily.

“Yeah,” Isaac says. “But I want to try something new. Maybe one of those.” He points.

I pick up a sketchbook that has graph paper in it, flip through it, and pass it to him.

“No, I hate this kind,” he says. “Maybe something over there?” He points just above my head.

And that’s when I see it.

A sketchbook sitting on the shelf, face-out, with my name in the middle surrounded by jasmine flowers that are drawn in Isaac’s style.

“What—what is that? What—”

“Open it.”

I take the sketchbook off the shelf and rub my hands along the cover before opening it. I open the book, and the first page is a drawing of me with my poem “This Body” written in the background of my silhouette. I turn the page and see that the next six pages each have one of the poems we chose for the Alternative Valentine’s Day Reading List. The poems are illustrated, and each have their own bold colors and style of the words but somehow look uniform, like one whole book of art. “This is—I don’t even know what to say, Isaac.”

“Happy Valentine’s Day,” he says. “The blank pages are for you to fill up with more of your poems and monologues.”

Felipe is still at the counter, smiling even more now. “Enjoy your sketchbook. Happy Valentine’s Day,” he says.

“Thank you.”

We leave the store and on our way to the train, I say, “I feel so bad. I didn’t get you anything.”

Isaac says, “You’ve been giving me your friendship since we were nine years old. That’s all I need.”