The first day I met Bryce Loski, I flipped.
It was those eyes, something in those dazzling eyes.
You wanna push this one together?
His family had just moved into the neighborhood and I'd gone over to help them.
I'd been in the van all of two minutes when his dad sent him off to help his mom.
I could see he didn't wanna go. So I chased after him to see if we could play a while before he got
trapped inside.
The next thing I know, he's holding my hand and looking right into my eyes.
My heart stopped. Was this it? Would this be my first kiss?
But then his mother came out.
Well, hello.
And he was so embarrassed, his cheeks turned completely red.
I went to bed that night thinking of the kiss that might have been.
I mean, it was clear he had feelings for me, but he was just too shy to show them. My mother said
boys were like that. So I decided to help him out.
Bryce? You're here.
I would give him plenty of opportunity to get over his shyness.
By the sixth grade, I'd learned to control myself. Then Sherry Stalls entered the picture.
Sherry Stalls was nothing but a whiny, gossipy, backstabbing flirt. All hair and no substance.
And there she was holding hands with Bryce. My Bryce. The one who was walking around with my first
kiss.
My solution was to ignore. I knew a boy of Bryce's caliber would eventually see through a shallow
conniver like Sherry Stalls.
It took all of a week. They broke up at recess. She didn't take it well.
Now that Bryce was out of Sherry's evil clutches, he started being nicer to me.
Hi, Juli.
Hi, Bryce.
He was so shy and so cute and his hair, it smelled like watermelon. I couldn't get enough of it. I
spent the whole year secretly sniffing watermelon and wondering if I was ever going to get my kiss.
Seventh grade brought changes, all right. But the biggest one didn't happen at school. It happened
at home.
My grandfather came to live with us.
Mom said he stared like that because he missed Grandma. That was not something Grandpa would ever
talk about with me. As a matter of fact, he never talked about much of anything with me. Thatis,
until Juli appeared in the local newspaper.
Bryce, may I speak with you?
What?
Have a seat, son. Tell me about your friend Juli Baker.
Juli, she's not exactly my friend.
Why's that?
Why do you wanna know?
Now, Juli Baker did not wind up in The Mayfield Times for being an eighth-grade Einstein. No, she
got front-page coverage because she refused to climb out of a sycamore tree.
Juli Baker and that stupid sycamore tree. She always thought it was God's gift to our little corner
of the universe.
Hey, Bryce. Wanna come climb the tree with me and my brothers?
No, thanks.
Bryce. Come up here. It's fun. You cansee everything.
I can't. My dad needs me to help him fix a thing.
That's all I needed. Climb up a tree with Juli Baker. I'd be dragged right back into the second
grade. Bryce and Juli sitting in a tree....
Why don't you just make me eat lima beans for the rest of my life.
It's three blocks away. Two blocks. One block away.
Like that's invaluable piece of information. I hate it when she does that. I like to think there's
at least a chance the bus won't show.
I think the tree looks particularly beautiful in this light. Don't you?
If by "beautiful" you mean "unbelievably ugly", then, yes, I would agree.
You're just visually challenged. I feel sorry for you.
Visually challenged? And this from the girl who lived in a house that was the joke of the
neighborhood? They had bushes growing over windows and weeds all over the place.
It bugged my dad bigtime.
Oh, there he is. The bricklayer who think he's a painter. That truck's not ugly enough in real life?
He's gotta make a painting of it?
No, he does landscapes. Sells them at the country fair. People say they're beautiful.
Landscapes? Let me tell you something. The world would have a lot more beauty in it if he'd do a
little landscaping on that piece of crap he calls a yard. I feel bad for his wife. She married a
dreamer.
Because of that, one of the two of them will always be unhappy. Yeah, fine. But why do we have to
be unhappy?
As annoying as the yard was to my dad it was nothing compared to how annoying Juli Baker was in
that tree.