Satisfaction fills me to the brim as I watch my brother jog across the street to our house. Holden can be such a whiny butthead sometimes, but Fox likes him anyway. I do too, because he’s my brother, and he’s not always a jerk. The three of us have grown up on this street since before I can remember. Our mom and his parents work together and they’re close friends.
“Maise, come look.”
Fox has wandered over to the grassy field at the end of the block. The tree the three of us challenge each other to climb every week sits in the middle. Beyond the tall grass and wildflowers, the woods stretch up into the hills at the base of the Rocky Mountains. I walk over, automatically reaching up to catch one of the lower branches of the tree and swing back and forth like a gymnast.
“What’s up?” I try to get higher, but the bark bites into my hands.
He pops up from the tall grass and reaches for me, tickling my stomach, making me shriek and wriggle until I’m forced to let go of the branch or keep suffering his attack.
Once I’m on the ground, I curl into a protective crouch so he can’t mess with me. “What the heck?”
Fox snorts. “You make it too easy.”
“There are rules, Fox,” I point out, standing up. We have them written down and everything in a notebook with Pokémon stickers on the front. I huff importantly and recite the sacred rule: “No tickling when a climber is in the tree.”
The corners of his mouth lift and his eyes are bright. “Yeah, you’re right.” He taps my nose. “Sorry.”
“What did you want me to see?”
“I found this.”
Fox holds up a wildflower he picked, his crooked smile turning proud. It’s dainty with thin light purple petals, not like the white daisies we usually see. A small gasp escapes me as I take it.
“It’s so pretty.” I touch a soft petal carefully. “What’s it for?”
“You’re my daisy.”
Fox waits until I tear my attention from the flower to look at him in surprise. He’s serious, his eyebrows wrinkled as he stares at me. Reaching out, he circles his fingers around my wrist. I watch, wide-eyed as he leans down and places a kiss on the wildflower clutched in my hands.
“I’m going to marry you someday,” he promises.
A feeling like butterflies fills my chest as I stare back at him.
“Okay,” I whisper.
He grins and tugs on my wrist. “Come on. There’s something else I want to show you. It’s in my dad’s garage. I wasn’t supposed to find it, but I did when Dad went to answer a call and left me alone.” We walk a few steps, then he stops us. “You have to promise not to tell anyone. Even Holden. Got it?”
I nod. “Promise.”
Flying on the giddiness making me dizzy, I follow Fox, like I always do.
A week later my world feels crushed.
I sit outside my house with my knees tucked against my chest and my arms wrapped around my skinny legs. Holden is at the end of the block throwing a football at our favorite climbing tree over and over. Across the street, the crooked for sale sign stuck in the Wilder’s front lawn mocks me.
The someday he promised me won’t come.
Fox Wilder is gone.
One
Maisy
There are less than two months until graduation and Fox picks now to start messing with me again.
Well, no. He actually chose a couple weeks ago, but I slam down hard on that memory before it can assault me.
I squeeze Sam’s hand tight as we descend the steps from Silver Lake High School to the student parking lot at the base of the hill where our classmates hoot and call to each other while revving the engines of their expensive cars. The warm breeze moving through the pine trees carries the seniors’ rowdiness high above the school’s sprawling mountainside campus.