“Any plans this week?” says my mom at the breakfast table.

We’re eating quinoa and boiled kale for breakfast. Not your usual breakfast food, but my parents aren’t exactly normal parents.

They’re hippies. Big time hippies.

I shrug my shoulders, not meeting my mom’s gaze. “I might be going to a party tonight.”

Normal parents would be worried if their daughter were to say she’s going to some wild party with a football star.

But my parents? They’ve been wanting me to go to parties for as long as I can remember. They’ve encouraged me to socialize, and not to spend so much time studying. “You can’t learn everything you need in those school books,” was my dad’s constant refrain.

“Oh, honey,” says my mom, cooing. “That’s wonderful! Are you going with anyone? A boy, maybe?”

I shrug. “Yeah,” I say. “Someone asked me out at the pharmacy.”

“Harold! Did you hear that? Hana’s going to a party with a boy.” My mom shouts this to my dad, who’s in the study by the kitchen, working on one of his neverending art projects.

“That’s great,” calls out my dad.

“So who’s the lucky guy?” says my mom, leaning down and peering at me, her hands cupped under her chin.

“Just some guy I met,” I say.

“Do you think you’ll get lucky?”

“Mom!” I say, exasperated. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“I don’t see why not,” says my mom. “Back in my day, love was free, and we talked about it fine. Your generation has so many hang-ups.”

“It’s not my generation,” I say. “It’s just that I’m normal. And you’re not talking about your whole generation… other parents aren’t like you guys…”

“We’re just a little more… liberated,” says my mom.

I grunt vaguely.

“You’re an adult, Hana,” says my mom. “It’s only healthy that you’d be sexually active.”

I almost spit out my quinoa and kale.

“Mom!” I say again.

“Oh come on, dear,” says my mom. “It’d do you some good to get laid.”

“Come on!” I say. “Why can’t you just be like other moms?”

My mom laughs.

We’ve had this conversation countless times before, about why she can’t be like other moms.

“I’m going up to my room,” I say, leaving my bowl of quinoa on the table.

I walk up the stairs and slam the door behind me.

Flopping on my bed, I look at the ceiling. I can’t wait to get out of here and get to college. I’ll be living in a dorm, living my own life, the way I want to live it.

It’s not that my parents are that weird. They’re not crazy or anything. They’re just a little different.

My dad’s an artist, and he sells some sculptures here and there. But my mom makes the majority of the money. She’s actually a professor of sociology at a local two-year college. She knows her stuff, too. She’s written books. Most of them are about the hippie culture of the ‘60s and ‘70s, especially compared to youth culture today.

Like I said, she knows her stuff. But that’s why I don’t understand why she’ll occasionally bring up stuff that I clearly don’t want to talk about.

My parents are more open than other parents, and I think that in a way I’ve reacted against them. I’ve become more closed off because of them. It’s sort of like typical teenage rebellion, but in reverse.

My mom, as a sociology professor, says it’s completely normal.

About what we were talking about… Hell, I’m actually dying to lose my virginity. It’s just that only recently have any guys even looked at me admiringly, let alone asked me out, and I’m still getting used to that.

It’s not that I don’t want to have sex. It’s just that I don’t want to talk about it with my mom. That’s pretty normal, right?

I mean, I know it’s not like she wants to hear the details or anything. Nothing weird like that.

My parents have a bit of a reputation around town. I mean, how can they not? My dad drives an old VW camper van that he fixed up himself in the driveway. He uses it to cart around pieces for his sculptures. The van is painted just like all those vans in the ‘70s, with a huge peace sign on it.

I always hated being dropped off at school in that thing. I always cringed.

If I’d known or talked to more people at school, I’m sure I would have gotten a lot of questions about them. But since the only person I talked to much was Leah, she’s the only one who really asked me about them.

“So do they like smoke pot all the time and stuff?” she’d say.

“No!” I’d say. “They’ve never done anything like that in front of me. I mean, they’ve told me they used drugs as kids. They were pretty open about it, and told me if I wanted to experiment, that it was up to me. They said they never want to tell me what to do.”

There’s a knock at my door.

“Honey?” says my mom, opening the door a crack.

“Come in,” I say.

My mom enters. Her hair, a big mess of blonde dreadlocks, enters first.

“Honey,” she says, sitting down on the edge of my bed. “That last thing I wanted to do was make you feel uncomfortable. You know that, right?”

I nod.

“When you decide to… you know… that’s up to you. If you don’t want to talk about guys with me, that’s fine.”

“OK,” I say.

There’s a pause.

I start to feel guilty about making her possibly feel bad.

“Thanks, Mom,” I say.

“Sure. Oh, one more thing. There’s a… delivery for you.”

“A delivery?”

“Hang on, let me get it. It just came.”

My mom leaves the room. She comes back holding a rose with a fancy looking envelope.

“I won’t ask,” says my mom, putting the rose and the envelope on my bed. She gives me a wink and leaves the room, closing the door behind her.

A rose? I’ve never gotten a rose before in my life. Or any flowers, for that matter.

I didn’t go to prom, or any of the school dances.

I sit up in bed and grab the rose. I hold it to my nose, inhaling deeply, savoring the scent. It’s been a long time since I’ve smelled a rose, and it’s amazing how incredible the scent is.

I open the card quickly. Perhaps too quickly.

I have a hunch who it’s from… Noah.

But could it really be? The guy that I secretly drooled over this last year? The guy that I might have… possibly fantasized about. The guy who never looked my way, not once.

He’s really writing me a card, accompanied by a rose?

“Looking forward to tonight,” reads the card.

Noah signed his name.

That’s it, that’s all the card says, but it sends a warm feeling rushing through my body.

I have to tell someone about this. I can’t believe Noah is sending me cards like this. It’s crazy, right? I mean, we just met, and we talked for, what, five minutes? Maybe even less.

Maybe he sees something special in me. Maybe he can see past this shy exterior. Maybe he sees that we’d be good together.

My mind suddenly fills with images of the two of us doing all sorts of things together—going to the movies, enjoying a romantic beach getaway vacation. Even getting married.

Now that’s taking it too far. Even I realize that. But a girl can dream, can’t she?

I mean, it’s not like I really want to marry him, but…

I have to tell someone. I grab my phone and send a text to Leah.

“You’ll never guess what just happened,” I say, tapping away at the screen, which has a big crack running through the middle of it. I tell her all about the card and the rose.

To my surprise, my phone rings.

Normally, Leah just writes me back. She usually prefers texting to speaking on the phone. Some kind of anxiety thing—I’m not sure what it is.

“What’s up?” I say. “Did you get my message?” It’s hard to contain the joy in my voice. But I never have news about guys to share with Leah, and I’m excited to do so.

“Hey,” says Leah. “Yeah, I got it…”

“What’s up?” I say, noticing the way her voice sounds. She sounds serious, rather than happy for me.

But she’s not the type to be jealous. She’s had a bunch of boyfriends over the years. And guys are always hitting on her and asking her out at the mall, at the movie theater, at all sorts of places. She’s just got one of those bodies, I suppose. And a way of looking at guys that makes them approach her.

“There’s something you should know,” says Leah.

“What?” I say. “Please don’t tell me he’s sent this same note to like a dozen other girls… Because I’m so excited right now I feel like my…”

“I hate to be the one to break it to you,” says Leah. “But, yeah… He’s well known for sending that exact same note, that exact same rose. Of course, he always gets his way. He always gets in their pants. Recently, he’s been going after college girls exclusively. Sorry to be the one to tell you.”

My heart sinks down to my knees.

“No,” I say. “Thanks for telling me.” But my voice sounds hollow and strange.

I find one guy who seems to like me, and it turns out he’s already intending to just use me? Already he’s treating me just like all the others.