Flipped

by Wendelin Van Draanen

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.

“A painting is more than the sum of its parts,” he would tell me, and then go on to explain how the cow by itself is just a cow, and the meadow by itself is just grass and flowers, and the sun peeking through the trees is just a beam of light, but put them all together and you’ve got magic.

“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.”

people need things around them that lift them above their lives and make them feel the miracle of living.

I’d spent so many years avoiding Juli Baker that I’d never really looked at her, and now all of a sudden I couldn’t stop.

I felt sorry for my father. I felt sorry for my mother. But most of all I felt lucky for me that they were mine.

But if chaos is a necessary step in the organization of one’s universe, then I was well on my way.

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

being friends with her requires fanning the flames of a wildfire ego.

“Get beyond his eyes and his smile and the sheen of his hair—look at what’s really there.”

Maybe it was all how you looked at it. Maybe there were things I saw as ugly that other people thought were beautiful.

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.