Ashley Davenport is today’s objective.

Also: it’s Valentine’s Day. Which sucks.

Last year on the dreaded V-Day I discovered a white paper daisy slipped between the upper slats of my locker when I arrived at school. It was paper, but I still stood there holding its green wire stem between my fingers, smiling stupidly, before I bent my head to smell the petals. It smelled like books, a heady mix of paper and ink and glue, a sweet knowledge.

There was no note on the flower. No card. No name.

A mystery.

We weren’t dating yet—we didn’t officially start dating until June—but I knew the flower was from Steven. He never confessed to leaving it there for me, but I knew. Because of something I’d said once when we were wandering around in a grocery store together that year, trying to find a last-minute gift for Mrs. Seidel, our chemistry teacher, who was in the hospital with cancer. “I don’t get the point, really,” I’d said as we contemplated the plastic-wrapped roses. “Why give a girl something that’s supposed to represent love that’s only going to wilt and die in a matter of hours?”

Steven laughed and said that was a pretty pessimistic way to view life, and I shrugged.

Then he said, “All the best things are like that, though, Lex, the most beautiful things. Part of the beauty comes from the fact that they’re short-lived.” He picked up a bouquet of deep-red roses, held it out to me. “These will never be as beautiful as they are at this moment, so we have to enjoy them now.”

I stared at him. He scratched the back of his neck, a little red-faced, then gave me a sheepish grin. “Just call me a romantic,” he said.

I wanted to say that there were some things in this world, some rare things, that were beautiful and stayed that way. But instead I took the bouquet out of his hand. “Okay. Flowers it is,” I said, and we laughed and bought the roses for Mrs. Seidel.

Then, just a few weeks later, the paper daisy. A flower that would never die. I still have it, pinned to the edge of my corkboard above my desk at home.

Today when I go to my locker, there’s no flower waiting. I knew there wouldn’t be. I get out my books for first period and slam my locker closed. I tell myself that it was never going to work, Steven and me, and it was for the best to cut it off when I did. Still, I can’t help but look for him in the flux of incoming students in the hallway. So many of them are smiling, wearing red and pink and lugging boxes of candies to their oh-so-significant others, and finally I see Steven, walking with his head down, his backpack slung over one shoulder. He glances up. He sees me. He lifts his hand in a faint wave.

I look away. I don’t have time for this, I tell myself. I have a task to accomplish here. An objective. So I turn and wander toward the section of sophomore lockers, scrutinizing the blond girls.

One of them is Ashley Davenport, I’m pretty sure.

I just don’t know which one.

I spot a group of Ty’s old friends, the jock squad, off in a corner laughing at something. They always seem to be laughing, like they’re at a frat party already. I look at their faces and try to summon names, but I don’t know Ty’s high school friends the way I knew his friends from middle school, and I’m not good with names, so all I get is: the guy with the fauxhawk; the kid with the multiple gold medals sewn to his letterman’s jacket; Tall Guy from the basketball team; Grayson, although I don’t know if this is his first or last name; and a guy who’s a swimmer or wrestler or something that makes his body ridiculously triangle-shaped.

One of them, Tall Guy, looks up and notices me staring. This is the part where I should go over and ask them, Hey, do you know an Ashley? The girl Ty took to homecoming? What’s her last name? Is it Davenport?

But as I stand there looking at them, suddenly I’m thinking, There should be a space. Where Ty used to stand with them. But there isn’t. They’re arranged in a half circle with the requisite twelve inches between them, guy spacing, and there’s no room for anyone else. The space where Ty used to be, they’ve closed it in.

Which makes the freaking grief hole open up in my chest. I wait for it to pass, but it doesn’t, not for what feels like much longer than the normal thirty seconds. As usual I start to feel like there’s something physically wrong with my body—I can’t breathe, my heart is beating too fast, I can’t breathe I can’t breathe. And Tall Guy has definitely said something about me to Triangle Man, because the members of the jock squad are all looking at me now with the same slightly wary expressions.

Then somebody jostles me from behind, hard enough to knock one of my books to the floor, and all of a sudden my lungs work again.

“Hey,” I gasp to no one in particular. “Watch where you’re going.” Stiffly I bend to retrieve the book, but someone grabs it before I can.

“I got it,” he says.

I inhale and exhale a couple of times to prove to myself that I can do it, then look up. “Oh, hi, Damian,” I say.

My book rescuer is Damian Whittaker: sophomore, one of those skin-and-bones types who hasn’t grown into himself yet, all baggy shirt and greasy hair falling in his eyes and acne dotting his chin. He’s a shy kid, inconspicuous, the kind who keeps to himself and doesn’t seem to be interested in anything or anyone. A loner, according to the school’s social strata.

But these days Damian is trying to be my friend.

He and Ty were best buds a couple years back, the summer my dad took off for Megan’s house. Damian and this other boy, Patrick, and Ty were like the three musketeers that year. They spent every available afternoon playing Halo and Guitar Hero and lounging around in our old playhouse listening to Led Zeppelin and the Doors. They thought they were being so classic and cool. But that was a long time ago. Damian hasn’t darkened our doorstep since Ty started high school and sports and vying for Mr. Popularity. But Damian always makes an effort to smile and say hello when he sees me. As if he were my friend, instead of my brother’s. Which means that lately he’s been popping up all around school and trying to engage me in conversation.