My mom must have read my mind. "No vegan options?"

I nodded. "It's so annoying."

"Do you ever think about not eating vegan?"

I shook my head. "I don't think I'll ever eat meat again. Eggs still gross me out, too."

"So you think about dairy?"

"Cheese," I said. "I think about cheese sometimes."

Talk about understatements! I CRAVE cheese. I LUST after cheese. I DREAM about cheese.

"You know, Mara," my mom said, "sometimes we make decisions about our life and they feel like the right decision at the time. No, they are the right decision at the time. But that doesn't mean they'll be the right decision forever. And you know what I've realized as I've gotten older? There isn't a definite right and wrong anyway. Sometimes we do what seems wrong, but we have good reasons for doing it, so it's not wrong after all."

I think she was referring to the whole vegan thing, but as she spoke, something else was flooding my brain. No, not something. Someone. Someone with a chestnut ponytail and an easy smile and a hole in the thigh of his faded jeans. Someone who would not leave my thoughts no matter how many times I tried to evict him.

Excerpted from VEGAN VIRGIN VALENTINE © Copyright 2004 by Carolyn Mackler. Reprinted with permission by Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA. All rights reserved.