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I wonder if this is how Jeremy always feels.
Sometimes I feel all tight and itchy and breathless too, but it’s usually only later, when I’m by myself, thinking about things. Not when I’m around people.
Izzy tears through the wrapping paper, letting it fall to the ground. I smile a bit at that—at her excitement.
She stares at the small square box for a long beat, then pops it open.
She gasps when she sees what’s inside—a thin silver chain with a treble clef pendant and a small pink diamond heart in the center.
Someone oohs, and I feel like I’m on fire.
Izzy snaps her head up, frizzy brown hair flying all over the place, and then she’s throwing her arms around me. She smells like her soap and the lotion she likes—cherry blossom, I think she called it. She has a body spray too with that name on her dresser.
“Thankyouthankyouthankyou,” she rushes out. “I love it!”
When she pulls back, grinning up at me with pink cheeks and sparkling brown eyes that look reddish in the light, I can’t help but think how pretty she is. Nose scrunched, eyes big and bright in the lights, hair hanging all around her face in frizzy waves.
I swallow tightly, and nod.
“It’s my favorite thing ever,” she says, and I inhale deeply, feeling relieved.
Whirling around, she shows her dad. “Look!”
He smiles and shoots me a wink. “It’s perfect.”
She then rushes off to show the girls, and I head over to where Will and Waylon are.
Waylon gives me a funny look.
“What?”
He rolls his eyes, just as Will starts singing, “Mason and Izzy, sittin’ in a tre?—”
I shove him and he laughs, shoving me back.
I feel all hot and fluttery inside when I sit back down. But in a good way, I think.
Mrs. Montgomery has joined us, and is ushering Izzy toward the rest of her gifts, shaking her head and smiling in that way she does when Izzy’s gone off the rails about something.
I twist my head, looking through the window on the garage door in the direction of the house, like I could see inside.
I wonder if he showed his mom the ring.
I wonder why I hope he didn’t.
I wonder why it feels different, more special, that he kept it to himself.
And I wonder why I suddenly feel like I did something wrong.
CHAPTER TWELVE
AGE 11, APRIL
She kissed me.
Izzy. Kissed. Me.
Right in the middle of math class, in front of everyone.
