“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.
So when he asked me to stay the night, I said yes without thinking about it.
Lindsay squeals and hits her palm against the steering wheel. “No big deal? Are you kidding? My baby’s growing up.”
“Oh, please.” I feel heat creeping up my neck and know my skin’s probably going red and splotchy. It does this whenever I’m embarrassed. All the dermatologists, creams, and powders in Connecticut don’t help. When I was younger kids used to sing, “What’s red and white and weird all over? Sam Kingston!”
I shake my head a little and rub the vapor off the window. Outside the world sparkles, like it’s been coated in varnish. “When did you and Patrick do it, anyway? Like three months ago?”
“Yeah, but we’ve been making up for lost time since then.” Lindsay rocks against her seat.
“Gross.”
“Don’t worry, kid. You’ll be fine.”
“Don’t call me kid.” This is one reason I’m happy I decided to have sex with Rob tonight: so Lindsay and Elody won’t make fun of me anymore. Thankfully, since Ally’s still a virgin it means I won’t be the very last one, either. Sometimes I feel like out of the four of us I’m always the one tagging along, just there for the ride. “I told you it was no big deal.”
“If you say so.”
Lindsay has made me nervous, so I count all the mailboxes as we go by. I wonder if by tomorrow everything will look different to me; I wonder if I’ll look different to other people. I hope so.
We pull up to Elody’s house and before Lindsay can even honk, the front door swings open and Elody starts picking her way down the icy walkway, balancing on three-inch heels, like she can’t get out of her house fast enough.
“Nipply outside much?” Lindsay says when Elody slides into the car. As usual she’s wearing only a thin leather jacket, even though the weather report said the high would be in the mid-twenties.
“What’s the point of looking cute if you can’t show it off?” Elody shimmies her boobs and we crack up. It’s impossible to stay stressed when she’s around, and the knot in my stomach loosens.
Elody makes a clawing gesture with her hand and I pass her a coffee. We all take it the same way: large hazelnut, no sugar, extra cream.
“Watch where you’re sitting. You’ll squish the bagels.” Lindsay frowns into the rearview mirror.
“You know you want a piece of this.” Elody gives her butt a smack and we all laugh again.
“Save it for Muffin, you horn dog.”
Steve Dough is Elody’s latest victim. She calls him Muffin because of his last name, and because he’s yummy (she says; he looks too greasy for me, and he always smells like pot). They have been hooking up for a month and a half now.
Elody’s the most experienced of any of us. She lost her virginity sophomore year and has already had sex with two different guys. She was the one who told me she was sore after the first couple of times she had sex, which made me ten times more nervous. It may sound crazy, but I never really thought of it as something physical, something that would make you sore, like soccer or horseback riding. I’m scared that I won’t know what to do, like when we used to play basketball in gym and I’d always forget who I was supposed to be guarding or when I should pass the ball and when I should dribble it.
“Mmm, Muffin.” Elody puts a hand on her stomach. “I’m starving.”
“There’s a bagel for you,” I say.
“Sesame?” Elody asks.