“I think doesn’t sound very confident,” I said. “I should walk you, just to make sure you’re not late for your first high school class. This isn’t kindergarten-through-ninth-grade anymore.”

I smiled a confident smile. She, on the other hand, stared at me with two impatient eyes, then turned and started walking in the opposite direction.

I shuffled to catch up to her.

“So, I really did recognize you,” I said.

She looked a little irritated, but she smiled anyway.

“You do look a little different from the last time I saw you, though,” I said.

She looked me up and down once.

“So do you,” she said.

“It’s the muscles, isn’t it?” I asked.

I watched her eyes follow a path from my shoes to my eyes again.

“What muscles?” she asked.

I grabbed my heart and pretended to shrink in pain.

“Ouch,” I said.

She smiled a satisfied grin.

“Don’t you have to be getting to your own class?” she asked. “What’s your first one anyway?”

“Oh, I’m not worried about that,” I said. “The teacher’s my neighbor. Plus, I already know my way around a kitchen.”

She stopped in the history classroom’s doorway and faced me.

“Kitchen?” she repeated.

I cringed on the inside, and my smile faded.

“Did I say kitchen?” I asked. “I meant woodshop.”

“No, you didn’t,” she said, accusingly.

“Okay, look, I promise you I can build a coffee table, but home economics is a guaranteed A,” I said. “I couldn’t pass it up.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Quite the scholar,” she said, while shaking her head and stepping into the classroom.

“We’ll see who’s laughing when you’re eating my lasagna for dinner one night,” I said.

She glanced up at me and smiled that sideways smile that I was already starting to crave.

“You know, I just can’t see that happening,” she said.

“Me cooking lasagna?” I asked.

“No,” she said.

I could only see the side of her face now, but I could see that her lips were slowly turning up. I was thinking about how I could trick her into letting me hold her hand again some time.

“I don’t see me eating it,” she continued, taking a seat in a desk near the front of the small room.

“But there’s still hope for the dinner — well, minus the eating part?” I asked, hopeful.

She gave me an impatient look again. And suddenly, a loud ring made me jump, and my eyes darted to a clanging bell right above my head.

Julia giggled, and at the same time, opened a notebook to its first page. I stood there watching her for a second longer. She did look different, as if she had grown up overnight or something, but then she looked exactly the same too. Her hair was down, and it was wavy or curly or whatever girls call it — that about her hadn’t changed. Even at eight years old, she had had that same pretty, long, blond hair, that same perfect nose and those same pretty, green eyes.

A thought suddenly came to me then, and I quickly tore off a piece of my own notebook paper and scribbled a sentence onto its tiny surface.

“Jules,” I said, getting her attention one, last time.

She looked up at me, kind of startled, as if I had called her by a secret alias or something. She looked cute the way she always tried to act impatient with me.

“Hey,” I said, tapping a kid I had known since kindergarten on the shoulder. “Pass this to Julia, that girl in the black shirt, would ya?”

The boy dutifully followed my request and reached across a row to hand Julia the piece of scrap paper. I watched her open the folded note, and then, I watched her eyes follow over the words. But before she had a chance to look up again, I disappeared back into the hallway.

I figured I would give her some time to think about her answer. The last thing I wanted was a rash decision based on a somewhat rocky childhood. God, if I knew then what I know now, I probably still would have thrown rocks at her. It was fun hearing her scream. But I also would have kissed her — knowing that I probably could have gotten away with it then. I could have easily blamed it on being a stupid kid.

And come to think of it, there is actually a quote by George Bernard Shaw that has hung in my grandpa’s store for God only knows how long. I never really paid attention to it. It hung on a plaque in the corner, probably had a couple of layers of dust on it. I thought about it now, as I made my short journey to the home economics room. And I thought of all of the years I had wasted not chasing after Julia Lang — well, at least not chasing after her in a more productive manner. Youth is wasted on the young, the old quote said. I didn’t know much of anything about this Shaw guy, but he did get at least one thing right — I should have kissed her when I had the chance. God only knows how long I’ve got to chase this girl.

“Are you looking for something, Jules?” I asked as I watched her push aside the heavy stage curtain.

Her face turned back toward me and then quickly went back to the stage. She didn’t look startled this time, and I wondered for a second if she had already gotten used to me calling her Jules.

“My volleyball,” she said, annoyed. “I left it here after P.E., and now it’s gone, and I promised Jeff I’d meet him after class and help him with algebra…”

“Jeff?” I blurted out, as I twisted the features of my face into a puzzled expression.

She stopped and glanced back at me again before returning her attention to a box of rubber balls.

“Yeah, he’s having a hard time, and we’ve got a test coming up,” she casually said. “He asked me to help him figure it out, and I’m supposed to meet him in ten minutes, and I can’t find…”

“Figure out algebra?” I interrupted again.

She caught my stare, furrowed her eyebrows and then went back to doing whatever it was she was doing.

“Yeah,” she said.

I shook my head.

“Jeff doesn’t need help with algebra,” I exclaimed. “He was the smar…”

I stopped myself, having just added up the math mid-sentence, and allowed my eyes to rest on her.

She was searching on the stage now, probably not even paying attention to me. I smiled as I watched her turn over sweaty, hockey jerseys just before scrunching up her nose and flinging them back down.

“I’m not leaving here until I find that ball,” she said.

I took a second to think, and after a quick moment, I had a plan.

“I’ll help you find it,” I blurted out.

I anxiously looked around the gym. I knew I had to find that ball before she did or my plan would be foiled, and she would be out the door to help Jeff, who, by the way, has had an A in math since the first grade. In fact, he was the reason I had passed algebra in junior high. That little weasel.

Suddenly, my eye caught a white, round object out of its corner. I looked closer and spotted a ball tucked away behind a set of bleachers on the other side of the gym. I glanced back at Julia. She was rooting through the ball closet near the stage. I slowly started to mosey my way over toward the ball, trying not to bring any attention to my find.

“We’ll find it,” I reassured her.

I eventually planted my feet in front of the ball and acted as if I hadn’t seen it.

“Hey, why don’t you go look out in the hallway, in case it bounced out there or something,” I said. “I’ll look for it under these bleachers.”

She looked my way with a disheveled face, almost as if she had just noticed that I was still there. But then, without a word, she sauntered off into the hallway. I watched her disappear behind the glass-paned doors, and then I quickly reached for the volleyball and scooped it up. I turned it over. It was her ball all right. Her name was etched in its stretched material in black, permanent marker, right above her volleyball number. I spun it around in my hands as my eyes darted toward the glass-paned doors again. Then, my mind in auto pilot, I scanned the room, thinking. I saw bleachers, some exercise machines and a couple of wooden blocks — none of which would work. I let my head fall back in desperation. And then I saw it — the rafters high above me. There was already a ball stuck up there, and this one would give it some company. I took the volleyball in one hand and arched it behind my head. Then, I lobbed it up into the air. It hit a beam in the rafters and came colliding back to the hardwood floor. The ball bounced only once before I scurried over to it, scooped it up and glanced again toward the doors. There was still no sign of her. I retook my place and tried it once more. This time, the ball hit the inside of one of the beams, slightly knocked the other ball and then wedged itself in between the ball already there and the beam. Success.