“Patrick better send me a rose,” Lindsay says as she shoots through one stop sign and nearly breaks my neck slamming on the brakes at the next one. Patrick is Lindsay’s on-again, off-again boyfriend. They’ve broken up a record thirteen times since the start of the school year.

“I had to sit next to Rob while he filled out the request form,” I say, rolling my eyes. “It was like forced labor.”

Rob Cokran and I have been going out since October, but I’ve been in love with him since sixth grade, when he was too cool to talk to me. Rob was my first crush, or at least my first real crush. I did once kiss Kent McFuller in third grade, but that obviously doesn’t count since we’d just exchanged dandelion rings and were pretending to be husband and wife.

“Last year I got twenty-two roses.” Lindsay flicks her cigarette butt out of the window and leans over for a slurp of coffee. “I’m going for twenty-five this year.”

Each year before Cupid Day the student council sets up a booth outside the gym. For two dollars each, you can buy your friends Valograms—roses with little notes attached to them—and then they get delivered by Cupids (usually freshman or sophomore girls trying to get in good with the upperclassmen) throughout the day.

“I’d be happy with fifteen,” I say. It’s a big deal how many roses you get. You can tell who’s popular and who isn’t by the number of roses they’re holding. It’s bad if you get under ten and humiliating if you don’t get more than five—it basically means that you’re either ugly or unknown. Probably both. Sometimes people scavenge for dropped roses to add to their bouquets, but you can always tell.

“So.” Lindsay shoots me a sideways glance. “Are you excited? The big day. Opening night.” She laughs. “No pun intended.”

I shrug and turn toward the window, watching my breath frost the pane. “It’s no big deal.” Rob’s parents are away this weekend, and a couple of weeks ago he asked me if I could spend the whole night at his house. I knew he was really asking if I wanted to have sex. We’ve gotten semi-close a few times, but it’s always been in the back of his dad’s BMW or in somebody’s basement or in my den with my parents asleep upstairs, and it’s always felt wrong.