To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before

THIS IS HOW WE MET Josh. We were having a teddy-bear, tea-party picnic on the back lawn with real tea and muffins. It had to be in the backyard so no one would see. I was eleven, way too old for it, and Margot was thirteen, way, way too old. I got the idea in my head because I read about it in a book. Because of Kitty I could pretend it was for her and persuade Margot into playing with us. Mommy had died the year before and ever since, Margot rarely said no to anything if it was for Kitty.

We had everything spread out on Margot’s old baby blanket, which was blue and nubby with a squirrel print. I laid out a chipped tea set of Margot’s, mini muffins studded with blueberries and granules of sugar that I made Daddy buy at the grocery store, and a teddy bear for each of us. We were all wearing hats, because I insisted. “You have to wear a hat to a tea party,” I kept saying until Margot finally put hers on just so I’d stop. She had on Mommy’s straw gardening hat, and Kitty was wearing a tennis visor, and I’d fancied up an old fur hat of Grandma’s by pinning a few plastic flowers on top.

I was pouring lukewarm tea out of the thermos and into cups when Josh climbed up on the fence and watched us. The month before, from the upstairs playroom, we’d watched Josh’s family move in. We’d hoped for girls, but then we saw the movers unload a boy bike and we went back to playing.

Josh sat up on the fence, not saying anything, and Margot was really stiff and embarrassed; her cheeks were red, but she kept her hat on. Kitty was the one to call out to him. “Hello, boy,” she said.

“Hi,” he said. His hair was shaggy, and he kept shaking it out of his eyes. He was wearing a red T-shirt with a hole in the shoulder.

Kitty asked him, “What’s your name?”

“Josh.”

“You should play with us, Josh,” Kitty commanded.

So he did.

I didn’t know it then, how important this boy would become to me and to the people I love the most. But even if I had known, what could I have done differently? It was never going to be me and him. Even though.