And Lilly was like, “Valentine’s Day? Are you on crack?”

“Um.” I wish Lilly wouldn’t ask me if I’m on crack in front of her brother. I mean, I know Michael knows I don’t use drugs. But it’s, like, totally rude. “No. It’s coming up, you know. Friday.”

I thought this was kind of sly, how I threw in that Valentine’s Day was on Friday, to kind of remind Michael? Only I didn’t say it TO Michael. I said it to Lilly. So that was cool.

“I know when the fourteenth day of February falls, Mia,” Lilly said, all sarcastically. “What I meant was, since when do you celebrate a holiday that is essentially an invention of the greeting card and floral industries, who got together one day and decided to devise yet another holiday to make the loveless feel bad?”

“Um,” I said again. “Actually, Saint Valentine was a real priest who kept marrying soldiers even after the Roman emperor instructed him not to, because the emperor felt single men made better fighters. So the emperor had Valentine thrown in jail, where he fell in love with the prison keeper’s daughter, and wrote her love notes signed ‘Your Valentine,’ which is why today we send Valentines to our loved ones.”

“Um,” Lilly said, imitating me—and not in a very nice way—“actually, Valentine was just a man who helped hide Christians from the Romans, a crime for which he was discovered and then clubbed to death on February fourteenth.”

“Actually, you’re both wrong,” Michael said, looking amused. “Ancient Romans celebrated the goddess Juno on February fourteenth, and Lupercalia—a popular feast starting in the third century that honored the god Lupercus, protector of sheep from wolves—the next day. On the eve of the fifteenth, the names of boys and girls would be drawn, and they were supposed to be linked for the year.”

My boyfriend is so smart!!!!!!!!!! Also, his neck smells good. Not that I got to smell it until later, when we got out of the car. But when I did, it smelled good. REALLY good. I realize it’s just the pheromones Michael gives off that elevate the serotonin levels in my brain, thus making me feel all nice and relaxed when he’s around, like we learned in Bio.

But I really, really like Michael’s pheromones. They are WAY better than some Leo Boy’s pheromones. I’m sure of it.

“Later,” Michael went on, “Christian priests, in an attempt to rid the land of heathen practices, changed the name of the feast from Lupercalia to Valentine’s Day, and matched children’s names to saints, so they could try to emulate the life of the saint whose name they were paired with. But being paired up with a member of the opposite sex proved more popular.”

“God,” Lilly said. “I guess so. Would you want to have to go around emulating some guy who got clubbed and beheaded?”

“WHATEVER.” I couldn’t believe how the conversation had gotten sidetracked. “What are you and Boris doing to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Lilly?”