I panicked. I’d been waiting all my life for that kiss, and now?

I yanked free and ran back to my table, and when I sat down Jon whispered, “Did he just try to kiss you?”

I turned my chair away from Bryce and whispered, “Can we please talk about something else? Anything else?”

People were whispering and looking my way, and when Shelly Stalls came back from cleaning up in the washroom, everyone fell quiet. Her hair looked awful. It was sort of oiled to her scalp and still had little chunks of food in it. She glared at me so hard it looked like she was trying to get laser beams to shoot from her eyes.

A couple of adults steered her back to her seat, and then everyone started whispering double-speed. And Bryce didn’t even seem to care! He kept trying to come over and talk to me, but either he’d get intercepted by a teacher or I’d dash away from him before he had a chance to say anything.

When the dismissal bell finally rang, I said a quick goodbye to Jon and bolted out the door. I couldn’t reach my bike fast enough! I was the first one off campus, and I pedaled home so hard it felt as though my lungs would burst.

Mrs. Stueby was out front watering her flower bed and she tried to say something to me, but I just dropped my bike in the driveway and escaped into the house. I certainly didn’t want to talk about roosters!

My mother heard me slamming doors and came to check on me in my room. “Julianna! What’s wrong?”

I flipped over on my bed to face her and wailed, “I am so confused! I don’t know what to think or feel or do…!”

She sat down beside me on the bed and stroked my hair. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart.”

I hesitated, then threw my hands up in the air. “He tried to kiss me!”

My mother struggled not to let it show, but underneath her composed expression was a growing smile. She leaned in a little and asked, “Who did?”

“Bryce!”

She hesitated. “But you’ve always liked him….”

The doorbell rang. And rang again. My mom started to get up, but I grabbed her arm and said, “Don’t get that!” The bell rang again, and almost right after that there was a loud knocking at the door. “Mom, please! Don’t get it. That’s probably him!”

“But sweetheart… ”

“I was over him! Completely over him!”

“Since when?”

“Since last Friday. After the dinner. If he had vanished from the face of the earth after our dinner at the Loskis’, I wouldn’t have cared!”

“Why? Did something happen at the dinner that I don’t know about?”

I threw myself back onto my pillow and said, “It’s too complicated, Mom! I… I just can’t talk about it.”

“My,” she said after a moment. “Don’t you sound like a teenager.”

“I’m sorry,” I whimpered, because I knew I was hurting her feelings. I sat up and said, “Mom, all those years I liked him? I never really knew him. All I knew was that he had the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen and that his smile melted my heart like the sun melts butter. But now I know that inside he’s a coward and a sneak, so I’ve got to get over what he’s like on the outside!”

My mother leaned back and crossed her arms. “Well,” she said. “Isn’t this something.”

“What do you mean?”

She chewed the side of one cheek, then moved over to chew the other. At last she said, “I shouldn’t really discuss it.”

“Why not?”

“Because… I just shouldn’t. Besides, I can tell there are things you don’t feel comfortable discussing with me….”

We stared at each other a moment, neither of us saying a word. Finally I looked down and whispered, “When Chet and I were fixing up the yard, I told him how we didn’t own the house and about Uncle David. He must have told the rest of the family, because the day before the Loskis’ dinner party I overheard Bryce and his friend making cracks about Uncle David at school. I was furious, but I didn’t want you to know because you’d think they were only inviting us over because they felt sorry for us.” I looked at her and said, “You just seemed so happy about being invited for dinner.” Then I realized something. “And you know, you’ve seemed happier ever since.”

She held my hand and smiled. “I have a lot to be happy about.” Then she sighed and said, “And I already knew they knew about Uncle David. It was fine that you talked about him. He’s not a secret or anything.”

I sat up a little. “Wait… how did you know?”

“Patsy told me.”

I blinked at her. “She did? Before the dinner?”

“No, no. After.” She hesitated, then said, “Patsy’s been over several times this week. She’s… she’s going through a very rough time.”

“How come?”

Mom let out a deep breath and said, “I think you’re mature enough to keep this inside these four walls, and I’m only telling you because… because I think it’s relevant.”

I held my breath and waited.

“Patsy and Rick have been having ferocious fights lately.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Loski? What about?”

Mom sighed. “About everything, it seems.”

“I don’t understand.”

Very quietly my mother said, “For the first time in her life, Patsy is seeing her husband for what he is. It’s twenty years and two children late, but that’s what she’s doing.” She gave me a sad smile. “Patsy seems to be going through the same thing you are.”

The phone rang and Mom said, “Let me get that, okay? Your dad said he’d call if he was working overtime, and that’s probably him.”

While she was gone, I remembered what Chet had said about someone he knew who had never learned to look beneath the surface. Had he been talking about his own daughter? And how could this happen to her after twenty years of marriage?

When my mother came back, I absently asked, “Is Dad working late?”

“That wasn’t Dad, sweetheart. It was Bryce.”

I sat straight up. “Now he’s calling? I have lived across the street from him for six years and he’s never once called me! Is he doing this because he’s jealous?”

“Jealous? Of whom?”

So I gave her the blow-by-blow, beginning with Mrs. Stueby, going clear through Darla, the auction, the furball fight, and ending with Bryce trying to kiss me in front of everybody.

She clapped her hands and positively giggled.

“Mom, it’s not funny!”

She tried to straighten up. “I know, sweetheart, I know.”

“I don’t want to wind up like Mrs. Loski!”

“You don’t have to marry the boy, Julianna. Why don’t you just listen to what he has to say? He sounded desperate to talk to you.”

“What could he possibly have to say? He’s already tried to blame Garrett for what he said about Uncle David, and I’m sorry, but I don’t buy it. He’s lied to me, he hasn’t stood up for me… he’s… he’s nobody that I want to like. I just need some time to get over all those years of having liked him.”

Mom sat there for the longest time, biting her cheek. Then she said, “People do change, you know. Maybe he’s had some revelations lately, too. And frankly, any boy who tries to kiss a girl in front of a room full of other kids does not sound like a coward to me.” She stroked my hair and whispered, “Maybe there’s more to Bryce Loski than you know.”

Then she left me alone with my thoughts.

My mother knew I needed time to think, but Bryce wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept calling on the phone and knocking on the door. He even snuck around the house and tapped on my window! Every time I turned around, there he was, pestering me.

I wanted to be able to water the yard in peace. I wanted not to have to avoid him at school or have Darla run block for me. Why didn’t he understand that I wasn’t interested in what he had to say? What could he possibly have to say?

Was it so much to ask just to be left alone?

Then this afternoon I was reading a book in the front room with the curtains drawn, hiding from him as I had all week, when I heard a noise in the yard. I peeked outside and there was Bryce, walking across my grass. Stomping all over my grass! And he was carrying a spade! What was he planning to do with that?

I flew off the couch and yanked open the door and ran right into my father. “Stop him!” I cried.

“Calm down, Julianna,” he said, and eased me back inside. “I gave him permission.”

“Permission! Permission to do what?” I flew back to the window. “He’s digging a hole.”

“That’s right. I told him he could.”

“But why?”

“I think the boy has a very good idea, that’s why.”

“But—”

“It’s not going to kill your grass, Julianna. Just let him do what he’s come to do.”

“But what is it? What’s he doing?”

“Watch. You’ll figure it out.”

It was torture seeing him dig up my grass. The hole he was making was enormous! How could my father let him do this to my yard?

Bryce knew I was there, too, because he looked at me once and nodded. No smile, no wave, just a nod.

He dragged over some potting soil, pierced the bag with the spade, and shoveled dirt into the hole. Then he disappeared. And when he came back, he wrestled a big burlapped root ball across the lawn, the branches of a plant rustling back and forth as he moved.

My dad joined me on the couch and peeked out the window, too.

“A tree?” I whispered. “He’s planting a tree?”

“I’d help him, but he says he has to do this himself.”

“Is it a… ” The words stuck in my throat.

I didn’t really need to ask, though, and he knew he didn’t need to answer. I could tell from the shape of the leaves, from the texture of the trunk. This was a sycamore tree.

I flipped around on the couch and just sat.

A sycamore tree.

Bryce finished planting the tree, watered it, cleaned everything up, and then went home. And I just sat there, not knowing what to do.

I’ve been sitting here for hours now, just staring out the window at the tree. It may be little now, but it’ll grow, day by day. And a hundred years from now it’ll reach clear over the rooftops. It’ll be miles in the air! Already I can tell—it’s going to be an amazing, magnificent tree.

And I can’t help wondering, a hundred years from now will a kid climb it the way I climbed the one up on Collier Street? Will she see the things I did? Will she feel the way I did?

Will it change her life the way it changed mine?

I also can’t stop wondering about Bryce. What has he been trying to tell me? What’s he thinking about?

I know he’s home because he looks out his window from time to time. A little while ago he put his hand up and waved. And I couldn’t help it—I gave a little wave back.

So maybe I should go over there and thank him for the tree. Maybe we could sit on the porch and talk. It just occurred to me that in all the years we’ve known each other, we’ve never done that. Never really talked.

Maybe my mother’s right. Maybe there is more to Bryce Loski than I know.

Maybe it’s time to meet him in the proper light.

A CONVERSATION WITH WENDELIN VAN DRAANEN ABOUT FLIPPED