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I sat up a little. “Wait …
how
did you know?”

“Patsy told me.”

I blinked at her. “She did? Before the dinner?”

“No, no. After.” She hesitated, then said, “Patsy's been over several times this week. She's … she's going through a very rough time.”

“How come?”

Mom let out a deep breath and said, “I think you're mature enough to keep this inside these four walls, and I'm only telling you because … because I think it's relevant.”

I held my breath and waited.

“Patsy and Rick have been having ferocious fights lately.”

“Mr. and Mrs. Loski? What about?”

Mom sighed. “About everything, it seems.”

“I don't understand.”

Very quietly my mother said, “For the first time in her life, Patsy is seeing her husband for what he is. It's twenty years and two children late, but that's what she's doing.” She gave me a sad smile. “Patsy seems to be going through the same thing you are.”

The phone rang and Mom said, “Let me get that, okay? Your dad said he'd call if he was working overtime, and that's probably him.”

While she was gone, I remembered what Chet had said about someone he knew who had never learned to look beneath the surface. Had he been talking about his own daughter? And how could this happen to her after twenty years of marriage?

When my mother came back, I absently asked, “Is Dad working late?”

“That wasn't Dad, sweetheart. It was Bryce.”

I sat straight up. “Now he's
calling
? I have lived across the street from him for six years and he's never once called me! Is he doing this because he's jealous?”

“Jealous? Of whom?”

So I gave her the blow-by-blow, beginning with Mrs. Stueby, going clear through Darla, the auction, the furball fight, and ending with Bryce trying to kiss me in front of everybody.

She clapped her hands and positively giggled.

“Mom, it's not funny!”

She tried to straighten up. “I know, sweetheart, I know.”

“I don't want to wind up like Mrs. Loski!”

“You don't have to marry the boy, Julianna. Why don't you just listen to what he has to say? He sounded desperate to talk to you.”

“What could he possibly have to say? He's already tried to blame Garrett for what he said about Uncle David, and I'm sorry, but I don't buy it. He's lied to me, he hasn't stood up for me … he's … he's nobody that I
want
to like. I just need some time to get over all those years of
having
liked him.”

Mom sat there for the longest time, biting her cheek. Then she said, “People do change, you know. Maybe he's had some revelations lately, too. And frankly, any boy who tries to kiss a girl in front of a room full of other kids does not sound like a coward to me.” She stroked my hair and whispered, “Maybe there's more to Bryce Loski than you know.”

Then she left me alone with my thoughts.

My mother knew I needed time to think, but Bryce wouldn't leave me alone. He kept calling on the phone and knocking on the door. He even snuck around the house and tapped on my window! Every time I turned around, there he was, pestering me.

I wanted to be able to water the yard in peace. I wanted
not to have to avoid him at school or have Darla run block for me. Why didn't he understand that I wasn't interested in what he had to say? What could he
possibly
have to say?

Was it so much to ask just to be left alone?

Then this afternoon I was reading a book in the front room with the curtains drawn, hiding from him as I had all week, when I heard a noise in the yard. I peeked outside and there was Bryce, walking across my grass. Stomping all
over
my grass! And he was carrying a spade! What was he planning to do with that?

I flew off the couch and yanked open the door and ran right into my father. “Stop him!” I cried.

“Calm down, Julianna,” he said, and eased me back inside. “I gave him permission.”

“Permission! Permission to do what?” I flew back to the window. “He's digging a
hole
.”

“That's right. I told him he could.”

“But why?”

“I think the boy has a very good idea, that's why.”

“But—”

“It's not going to kill your grass, Julianna. Just let him do what he's come to do.”

“But what is it? What's he
doing
?”

“Watch. You'll figure it out.”

It was torture seeing him dig up my grass. The hole he was making was enormous! How could my father let him do this to my yard?

Bryce knew I was there, too, because he looked at me once and nodded. No smile, no wave, just a nod.

He dragged over some potting soil, pierced the bag with
the spade, and shoveled dirt into the hole. Then he disappeared. And when he came back, he wrestled a big burlapped root ball across the lawn, the branches of a plant rustling back and forth as he moved.

My dad joined me on the couch and peeked out the window, too.

“A tree?” I whispered. “He's planting a tree?”

“I'd help him, but he says he has to do this himself.”

“Is it a …” The words stuck in my throat.

I didn't really need to ask, though, and he knew he didn't need to answer. I could tell from the shape of the leaves, from the texture of the trunk. This was a sycamore tree.

I flipped around on the couch and just sat.

A sycamore tree.

Bryce finished planting the tree, watered it, cleaned everything up, and then went home. And I just sat there, not knowing what to do.

I've
been
sitting here for hours now, just staring out the window at the tree. It may be little now, but it'll grow, day by day. And a hundred years from now it'll reach clear over the rooftops. It'll be miles in the air! Already I can tell—it's going to be an amazing, magnificent tree.

And I 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?

Will it change her life the way it changed mine?

I also can't stop wondering about Bryce. What
has
he been trying to tell me? What's
he
thinking about?

I know he's home because he looks out his window from time to time. A little while ago he put his hand up and waved.
And I couldn't help it—I gave a little wave back.

So maybe I should go over there and thank him for the tree. Maybe we could sit on the porch and talk. It just occurred to me that in all the years we've known each other, we've never done that. Never
really
talked.

Maybe my mother's right. Maybe there is more to Bryce Loski than I know.

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