rising and falling under his superhero shirt. He smelled like my childhood, like cookies and the beach, but there was a spicy boy scent I’d never noticed before. I looked up into his blue eyes.
He chuckled. “I think your attempt at thwarting my totally fair victory messed up your hair.” He reached out with one hand and tucked a few strands of hair that had escaped my ponytail behind my ear.
The spot on my waist where his hand had just been tingled.
He held my gaze for a second, then stepped back and cleared his throat. “So this is the Kissing Tree.”
I gulped. “Kissing Tree?”
“Take a look.”
I turned and my mouth dropped open. “Wow.”
Every inch of the tree’s bark, from where it disappeared into the ground to taller than even Sawyer could reach, was covered in initials.
“It’s another school tradition,” Jason explained. “Couples come here to kiss and then carve their initials into the tree.”
I circled the tree, letting my fingers trail over the letters. “There are so many. How do you know which one is the first?”
“It’s this one here.” Jason pointed to a spot in front of him at eye level. It was a simple E loves L inside a heart with a date below it. “That date is from the first week the school was open. It’s the oldest one on here.”
I traced the heart with one finger, slowing when the set of initials to the heart’s left caught my eye: J + S.
“You’re killing that tree.”
Jason looked up from the base of the oak tree in front of his house. “I am not,” he said over the soft sounds of his dad’s favorite Billy Joel song wafting from the open windows.
“Then what are you doing?” I bent down and noticed the initials carved into the tree’s trunk about two feet off the ground. I smiled.
He brushed off the tiny J + S. “I’m letting everyone know that we’re going to be best friends forever.” He pushed the tip of his dad’s pocket knife into the S, making it deeper.
“You don’t have to hurt the poor tree to prove that, Jase. The whole fourth grade knows that already. Everybody knows that already.”
Jason glanced up, grinning, and the knife slipped, slicing into his left hand. He jerked his hand away. The knife dropped to the ground, covered in blood.
My heart skipped a beat. “Hold on!” I pressed the edge of my T-shirt against the bloody spot above his left thumb. Blood soaked through the shirt almost instantly.
“Mrs. Stacy!” I yelled, knowing Jason’s mom would hear me through the open windows. All the color had drained from Jason’s face. “Bet I can annoy more nurses at the hospital than you,” I whispered.
He gave me the tiniest hint of a smile.
“It’ll be okay,” I promised as his mom came rushing down the steps toward us. “We’re best friends, remember? I won’t leave you.”
“Have you ever done that? Carved your initials into a tree?” Jason asked, pulling me out of the memory. He pointed to the Kissing Tree carvings.
I hadn’t thought of that day in years. My eyes darted to his left hand, which hung at his side. Does he still have the scar by his thumb? “No,” I replied. Which was the truth. He had, not me. “Have you?”
He kicked the ground with one of his sneakers. “Yeah.”
“Let me guess. There’s a J loves L on here somewhere.” I pretended to search the tree.
“No. Livie and I aren’t... It’s not...”
I peeked around the tree at him. “I was only teasing. You don’t have to explain.”
A wrinkle appeared in between his eyebrows. “It’s...complicated.” His eyes locked on mine. “But I’m not sure it’s an immortalize-it-in-wood-forever kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Oh. “I just thought... I mean, Livie was kind of throwing off an it’s-serious vibe when she was talking about the senior trip.”
Jason’s cheeks turned pink. “Yeah. She’s got lots of ideas about the senior trip that she’ll apparently share with anyone.”
“I can be your wingman on the trip if you want,” I blurted. “If things are still complicated, just give me the secret signal and I’ll mummify her in rolls of duct tape so she can’t leave our room.”
He laughed. “You’d do that for me?”
I shrugged. “Sure. What are friends for?” Friends. Saying that word to Jason made my pulse race. I rubbed the back of my neck with one hand as I gestured to the tree with the other. “Well, hopefully friends are for taking pictures of tree carvings when their partners choose to exit the world of cell phone ownership.”
Jason pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Friends are definitely for that. Why don’t you move closer? I’ll get you too.”
I took a large step away from the tree. “Nope. I don’t do pictures.” Pictures end up in yearbooks and on the internet and other places immortalized forever where people can find them, with names I don’t want them to know. “I’m not very photogenic. I always blink or make a face. It’s a mess.”
“I highly doubt that,” Jason muttered as he captured proof of the school’s first couple.
We got pictures of the next eight items on our list in no time, including Jason’s favorite: “Ms. Benton’s agreeable band,” which turned out to be his science teacher’s collection of Beatles bobblehead dolls. “What’s the last item?” I asked as we left the chemistry room.
“‘The Z’s bees,’” Jason read aloud. He stopped walking.
“Oh,” I replied, turning toward the hall that would take us to the front office.
Jason stayed still, his eyebrows scrunched together. “Huh.” He scratched his head.
“Wait.” A slow grin spread across my face. “You don’t know what that means?”
“No.” He glanced up from the list. “Do you?”
My smile grew wider.
“Tell me.”
“Hold on.” I held my hands out to my sides. “I want to spend a moment basking in the glory of knowing something about this school you don’t. Me, the new girl. Who knows nothing about finding anything on our list.”
Jason shot me a look. “What does it mean?”
I leaned toward him. “Not yet. Still basking.”
