Flipped

by Wendelin Van Draanen

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.

Juli loved that tree. Stupid as it was, she loved that tree, and cutting it down would be like cutting out her heart.

“A painting is more than the sum of its parts,”

That’s when the fear of being up so high began to lift, and in its place came the most amazing feeling that I was flying. Just soaring above the earth, sailing among the clouds.

I looked up, too, and noticed for the first time that night that you could see the stars. “Did you ever see her up there?” I asked him.

I leaned closer to the window and looked up into the sky, but I couldn’t see the stars anymore. I wondered if Juli had ever been in the sycamore at night. Among the stars.

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.

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?

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