Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven

BEFORE

TOM

Today is the day I am going to kiss Daisy.

Maybe.

It's the third time I have walked her home from school. When I parted ways with Slug, he warned me not to chicken out. I'm determined to do it today.

Daisy and I are holding hands again, and I'm doing a great job of not being sweaty. I'm focusing all my energy on it. Daisy keeps smiling at me as she talks about the health fair she's volunteering at this weekend. She's always volunteering somewhere. She's so good . And I am so…

"Will you come, Tom?" she asks me.

"Come?" I say blankly.

She laughs. "To volunteer at the health fair! They can always use more hands. And you want to be a doctor, so it would look good on your college application."

"Sure." It probably would look good on my college application, but I don't care about that. If Daisy asked me to eat garbage, I would do it.

She claps her hands together. "Wonderful! What about Slug? Will he come?"

"Doubt it. Unless he thinks he can find a girlfriend there."

She giggles. "Does he still eat bugs?"

Even though he won't do it publicly, I would be very surprised if Slug didn't at least occasionally pop a beetle or two in his mouth. He seems to genuinely enjoy them. But it won't help his prospects if a rumor spreads that he's still eating bugs, so I just say, "Nah."

"Anyway," Daisy says, "let's meet outside the community center on Saturday afternoon before it starts."

"Or we could have lunch first?"

Daisy pulls a face. "Sorry, I can't. There's so much I have to do!"

Rejected . Maybe Daisy is having second thoughts about me. Maybe this will be the last time she'll ask me to walk her home. Maybe I shouldn't try to kiss her…

"How about on Sunday?" she suggests. "We could meet after church?"

I smile and nod, not bothering to mention the fact that my family doesn't attend church. My mother used to go when she was young, but my father thinks the whole church is "a bunch of swindlers," and he won't let either of us go. Not that I would go even if I were allowed. There is something about walking into a church that makes me very uneasy.

As we're walking by somebody's backyard, I spy a flower growing out of the grass with a yellow center and soft white petals. A daisy. Naturally, daisies are Daisy's absolute favorite flower. Before we can walk past, I pluck the flower from the ground and hold it out to her.

"For you," I say.

I thought she'd get a kick out of it, but instead, her face falls.

"I thought you liked daisies," I say.

"Yes, but…" She scrunches up her face as she looks down at the flower still in my hand. "You killed it. It was growing happily in the ground, and now it's going to die ."

"Oh." It never even occurred to me that she would think that way. "Is there a way to save it?"

She shakes her head sadly. "No, there isn't." She tugs the stem out of my hand. "But I'll put it in water when I get home. At least it will last a few days that way."

Great. Now I'm a flower murderer.

"It's okay, Tom." She squeezes my hand. "You didn't know."

I lay my palm on my chest. "I will never kill a flower ever again."

And I mean it. I will never kill a flower ever again.

My declaration has brought a smile to Daisy's face. She tugs on the hem of my T-shirt, bringing me closer to her. I realize now we're only about six inches apart, and she's looking up at me with her clear blue eyes. I can barely think straight, but there's one thought in my head that is very, very clear:

Kiss her!

So I do it. I dip my head down and press my lips against hers. And they are just as soft and perfect as I imagined. She's so delicate. I'm not a big guy, but she's a lot smaller than I am. If I grabbed her head and gave it a solid twist to the left, I could break her neck. It wouldn't even be hard to do.

"You are a very good kisser, Mr. Brewer," Daisy breathes, when our lips finally separate.

"Thank you," I say.

She winks at me. "Your first time?"

I hesitate for just a moment before deciding to lie. "Yes."

"Mine too." She runs a finger playfully down my chest. "I always knew you were going to be my first kiss."

And now I'm doubly glad that I lied. It's not like there's any way she could find out the truth. Nobody else but me is around to tell her.

"I'd like to do it again very soon," she tells me.

"As would I," I say awkwardly.

It's only when she pulls away from me that I realize that while we were kissing, the daisy fell from her fingers. When I look down, I see it under my sneaker, the white petals smashed into the pavement.