Flipped

by Wendelin Van Draanen

She didn’t just barge into my life. She barged and shoved and wedged her way into my life.

I still had enough sense at age seven and a half to know that Juli Baker was dangerous. Unavoidably dangerous, as it turns out.

The first day I met Bryce Loski, I flipped. Honestly, one look at him and I became a lunatic. It’s his eyes. Something in his eyes. They’re blue, and framed in the blackness of his lashes, they’re dazzling. Absolutely breathtaking.

And for the first time in my life, I had that feeling. You know, like the world is moving all around you, all beneath you, all inside you, and you’re floating. Floating in midair. And the only thing keeping you from drifting away is the other person’s eyes. They’re connected to yours by some invisible physical force, and they hold you fast while the rest of the world swirls and twirls and falls completely away.

embarrassed over holding my hand two days before the second grade. The one who was still too shy to say much more than hello to me. The one who was still walking around with my first kiss.

all of a sudden my stomach completely bailed on me. Juli loved that tree. Stupid as it was, she loved that tree, and cutting it down would be like cutting out her heart.

I even caught myself looking for her. Not on the lookout, just looking.

“One’s character is set at an early age, son. The choices you make now will affect you for the rest of your life.”

“Some of us get dipped in flat, some in satin, some in gloss….” He turned to me. “But every once in a while you find someone who’s iridescent, and when you do, nothing will ever compare.”

“To be held above the earth and brushed by the wind,” she said, “it’s like your heart has been kissed by beauty.”

parts it took to make it, and why people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.

“There’s nothing like a head-strong woman to make you happy to be alive.”

I remembered how my mother had called the sycamore a testimony to endurance. It had survived being damaged as a sapling. It had grown. Other people thought it was ugly, but I never had. Maybe it was all how you looked at it. Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful.

Like all of a sudden I didn’t fit in anywhere. Not at school, not at home … and every time I turned around, another person I’d known forever felt like a stranger to me. Even I felt like a stranger to me.

about? What were they talking about? How could she sit there and look so… beautiful?

And I’ve got her hand in mine, and I just can’t think. So I stop right there in the middle of the room and look at her. At that face. I want to touch her cheek and see what it feels like. I want to touch her hair, it looks so incredibly soft.

I just wanted to be with her. To talk to her. To hold her hand again. To kiss her.

“Dude, you have flipped, you know that?”

Juli was different, but after all these years that didn’t bother me anymore. I liked it. I liked her. And every time I saw her, she seemed more beautiful. She just seemed to glow. I’m not talking like a hundred-watt bulb; she just had this warmth to her.

— I had flipped. Completely.

“She’s the same as she’s always been; you’re the one who’s changed.” He clapped his hand on my shoulder and whispered, “And, son, from here on out, you’ll never be the same again.”

I can’t stop kicking myself for what an idiot I’ve been all these years.

I’d scale that monster sycamore if I could. Right to the top. And I’d yell her name across the rooftops for the whole world to hear. And since you know what a tree-climbing weenie I am, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m willing to do anything to get her to talk to me. Man, I’ll dive after her into a chicken coop full of poop if that’s what it takes. I’ll ride my bike all the stinkin’ way to school for the rest of eternity if it means being with her.

But if I’ve learned one thing from Juli Baker, it’s that I’ve got to put my whole heart and soul into it and try. Whatever happens, I know that my grandfather’s right about one thing. I’ll never be the same again.

I realized that to me, there had only ever been one boy. To me, there had only been Bryce.

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.

“Maybe there’s more to Bryce Loski than you know.”