Lucy's tip for surviving eighth grade:
Keep a journal and write down all the wonderful moments.
There's one moment that I replay over and over in my head. It happened in October, and sometimes I wonder if I've changed it in my mind, if I remember it differently from the way it actually happened.
I'm not sure.
Yamir and I were sitting at my kitchen table eating grapes. Green ones. My favorite. Well, eating may not be the right word. We were throwing them, trying to get them into each other's mouth. It might seem pretty gross to anyone else, but to us it was the best way to eat them.
His hair was longer than it normally was; I guess he needed a haircut. One strand on the right side of his face was hanging into his eye. I remember his eyes vividly. Golden brown, the color of slightly burnt French toast.
He was the Yamir I'd always known. But he was different. He was mine now.
It was an unseasonably warm October day, so we went outside to lie down on the lounge chairs and pretend it was still summer. The pool was closed up but we didn't mind. We soaked up the last remnants of the summer sun. I stayed sideways on my lounge chair and looked at him, and he stayed the same way on his lounge chair and faced me.
And we just stared at each other.
I'm sure we were both thinking the same thing: how perfectly we happy we were.