Chapter 1

The peach finally rotted on a Monday.

First period hadn’t started yet when a boy in the back suddenly pinched his nose.

“What the hell smells rotten?”

Everyone immediately started looking around.

I searched too.

It took me a while before Nina Walker, the girl who sat beside me, gently poked me with her pen and whispered,

“Mia, I think it’s coming from beside Julian’s desk.”

My heart sank.

I crouched down.

Sure enough, there it was.

The peach I’d left on the corner of Julian Waterson’s desk last Friday.

Back then, it had been pale pink and perfectly plump. Even through its thin skin, I could smell how sweet it was.

Now one side had caved in.

Clear juice leaked from a split in the skin, soaking the pale blue note underneath.

I had originally written:

'It’s ripe now. Make sure you eat it today.'

Now only a few blurred words were still legible:

'Today... eat it.'

Like the peach’s dying message.

“Found it!”

The boy in the back leaned over for a look, then immediately dragged his chair away.

“Mia Ander, is that something you gave him again?

“It’s completely rotten. It stinks!”

A few people in the classroom laughed.

I stayed crouched on the floor as my ears slowly began to burn.

But I didn’t throw the peach straight into the trash.

Instead, I grabbed a couple of tissues and carefully picked it up.

It was so rotten that the moment my fingertips touched it, the delicate skin collapsed beneath them, coating my hand in sticky, sour-sweet juice.

“That’s disgusting. Just throw it away.”

Someone said it again.

I pressed my lips together.

For some reason, I couldn’t help defending it.

“It’s not trash.

“The peach was perfectly good. It only rotted because no one bothered to appreciate it while it was still good.”

The people who had been laughing went quiet for a second.

Then it hit me.

The peach couldn’t hear me.

My face grew even hotter.

Beside me, Nina was trying so hard not to laugh that her shoulders were shaking.

She pulled out a few wet wipes and handed them to me.

“It’s okay. The peach knows you stood up for it. It can rest in peace now.”

That only made me sadder.

“It cost $4.99.”

Nina immediately stopped laughing.

She placed a hand over her heart and looked solemnly at the peach.

“My apologies, Mr. Peach. I was disrespectful.”

I was just about to drop it into the trash when the classroom door opened.

Julian walked in.

He was tall, and even in a plain school uniform, he somehow managed to look effortlessly cool.

Morning sunlight fell across his shoulders, but it didn’t make him look any warmer.

His eyes landed on me first, crouched beside his desk.

Then his gaze shifted to the rotten peach in my hands.

He paused for the briefest moment.

“Julian.”

Madeline Pierce, the prettiest girl in our class, followed him in and held out a carton of strawberry milk.

“Thanks for letting me borrow your competition notes.”

“No problem.”

He took the milk from her, unwrapped the straw, and pushed it through the carton.

Madeline smiled.

A few people nearby immediately started teasing them.

I stood there holding the rotten peach and suddenly became painfully aware of how sticky my fingers felt.

Juice was still dripping from it.

If I didn’t throw it away soon, it was going to get all over my white sneakers.

Mom had just bought them for me.

They were really pretty.

I wasn’t about to ruin a brand-new pair of shoes over a peach that had already gone bad.

—

By the time I finally dropped the peach into the trash, Julian had already finished almost half the carton of strawberry milk.

He held the pink carton loosely in one hand.

The straw rested against his thin lips, the carton denting slightly each time he took a sip.

Madeline stood beside him and smiled.

“Is it too sweet?”

Julian shook his head.

“It’s fine.”

I lowered my gaze and wiped my hands.

The peach juice had left my fingers sticky.

Nina handed me another wet wipe, then followed my gaze across the classroom.

“So Julian does drink sweet stuff.”

I immediately corrected her.

“He’s always liked sweet things.”

Especially peaches.

When we were eight, Julian’s parents got into another fight, and he hid out at my family’s store.

Back then, it wasn’t the large upscale grocery store it was now.

It was tiny.

The shelves were packed so closely together that there was barely enough room for two people to walk side by side.

Julian sat on a little stool beside the register with his backpack still on, staring down at an ant dragging a cookie crumb across the floor.

Mom told me to bring him something to eat.

So I hauled over my entire snack box.

Jell-O cups, chips, chocolate bars.

I lined them all up in front of him one by one.

Julian shook his head at every single thing.

Eventually, the only thing left was the white peach I had just washed.

It was huge.

Pale pink and white, with a rosy tip that looked like someone had secretly kissed it.

I’d been planning to save it for when my cartoon came on.

But Julian looked even more miserable than I felt about giving it up.

So I reluctantly held it out to him.

“You probably don’t want this either, right?”

For the first time, he looked up.

He took the peach and bit into it.

Juice ran down his wrist and into his sleeve, but he didn’t let go.

Before long, the entire peach was gone.

All that remained was a bare pit.

I crouched beside him, staring in amazement.

Julian licked the juice from the corner of his mouth and said quietly,

“I like peaches.”

Then he looked at me.

“Next time you have some, can you save one for me?”

So I did.

For ten years.

Every year, when the first batch of white peaches arrived at the store, Dad picked out the best ones for me.

Then, from my share, I chose the reddest, softest, sweetest-smelling one and saved it for Julian.

When we were little, he would sit behind the register at my family’s store and eat it.

I would lean over beside him and ask,

“Is it sweet?”

After we started high school, Julian stopped coming to my house.

So I started bringing the peaches to school instead.

The one I had just thrown away was actually the seventeenth peach I’d given him since starting high school.

The first sixteen hadn’t exactly met happy endings either.

He gave two of them away.

Three sat in his desk until they shriveled up.

One rolled under the teacher’s desk and eventually got tossed out during cleanup.

As for the rest, I never saw what happened to them.

I had always chosen to be optimistic.

Maybe he had eaten them.

Then one day, I found a peach covered in mold at the very back of his desk.

That was when I finally started wondering if maybe he didn’t like peaches anymore.

So I tried giving him other things.

A croissant ended up crushed beneath one of his workbooks, turning into a very trendy flat croissant.

He passed the peach gummies around to the guys behind him without eating a single one himself.

Then there was the breakfast sandwich I got up half an hour early to make.

It went from piping hot to completely cold.

And eventually, still wrapped in its bag, straight into the trash.

Nina had asked me once,

“Mia, has it ever occurred to you that maybe he just doesn’t want anything you give him?”

At the time, I was carefully sliding a protective foam sleeve around another peach.

My fingers paused.

“I’ve thought about it.”

“And?”

I smoothed the sleeve back into place.

“But he used to love them.”

The Julian who had once asked me to save him a peach and the Julian standing in front of me now were still the same person.

I had always believed that the first one was still somewhere inside the second.

Just buried a little deeper.

And that one day, he would come back.

But now Julian had finished the strawberry milk Madeline gave him right in front of me.

He set the empty pink carton on the corner of his desk.

Exactly where I always left my peaches.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Then I looked down and carefully folded the wet wipe in my hands.

So he hadn’t been hiding in there after all.

I had just mistaken him for someone who was no longer there.

—

That afternoon in PE, our teacher had the girls run half a mile.

By the second lap, Madeline passed me from behind.

She glanced back with a smile.

“Mia, did your legs get thicker again?”

I looked down too.

My school track pants hugged two solid, sturdy legs.

They definitely weren’t skinny.

“I think so.”

She clearly hadn’t expected me to agree.

I was still catching my breath as I added,

“But they’re stronger too.”

“Remember last time when you couldn’t carry all those workbooks? I carried them up to the fourth floor for you.”

Her smile stiffened.

Worried she had misunderstood me, I quickly added,

“You can ask me again next time.”

That shut her up completely.

I kept running.

A few seconds later, I passed her again.

The wind rushed past my ears.

My two thick legs carried me all the way to the finish.

I didn’t come in first, but I was twelve seconds faster than last time.

I was very pleased.

After bending over to catch my breath for a moment, I patted my left thigh.

Then my right.

“Good job.”

Someone nearby burst out laughing.

Lucas Reed was leaning against the basketball hoop, drinking water.

He was Julian’s biggest academic rival.

They had been competing since sophomore year.

On every exam, either Lucas beat Julian by a point, or Julian beat Lucas by two.

Apparently, they disliked each other so much they barely even said each other’s names.

Lucas screwed the cap back onto his bottle and walked over.

“Mia, who are you talking to?”

“My legs.”

“Can they understand you?”

I shook my head.

“No idea.”

“Then why are you praising them?”

“What if they can?”

Lucas stared at me for a few seconds.

Then he suddenly turned his head away, his shoulders shaking.

I stepped around him to look at his face.

“Are you laughing?”

“No.”

“Your teeth are showing.”

He gave up trying to hide it and dropped his head, laughing even harder.

Once he finally stopped, he grabbed another bottle of water from the vending machine and tossed it to me.

“A reward for those hardworking legs of yours.”

I hurriedly threw out both hands and barely caught it against my chest.

The bottle was ice-cold, numbing my palms.

I was just about to thank him when a hand reached in from the side and took it away.

Julian twisted the cap open, then set the bottle aside.

“You just finished running. Don’t drink it while it’s this cold. Let it warm up a little first.”

His voice was as calm as ever.

As though the peach hadn’t rotted that morning.

As though he hadn’t finished someone else’s strawberry milk right in front of me.

Lucas raised an eyebrow.

“Wow, Waterson. You sure like telling people what to do.”

Julian ignored him.

He only lowered his eyes to me.

“Did you wash your hands properly?”

I blinked.

Then I realized he was talking about the peach juice from that morning.

“Yeah. They’re clean.”

“Good.”

He turned to leave.

Before, one tiny gesture of concern from him would’ve kept me happy for hours.

I would’ve immediately decided that Julian was still the same Julian I had known as a kid.

But not today.

Maybe that peach had rotted too completely that morning.

And all the excuses I’d made for Julian had rotted along with it.

I took back the cold bottle of water and pressed it against my cheek.

Julian stopped.

“Didn’t I just tell you not to drink that?”

“I’m not drinking it.”

I cooled my left cheek, then switched to the right.

“My face worked hard too. It got all red from running, so I’m giving it a little ice.”

Lucas started laughing again.

Julian was the only one who didn’t.

His gaze moved between Lucas and me for a moment.

Then his expression turned cold, and he walked away.

—

That evening, Dad had just gotten home from the store when I walked in.

He was carrying a box of freshly delivered white peaches and called out to me excitedly,

“Mia, come here!”

I dropped my backpack and ran over.

The moment he opened the box, the whole room filled with the fresh, sweet scent of peaches.

Dad told me these were the earliest batch of the season.

Only ten boxes had come in.

He searched for a while before reaching all the way to the bottom and carefully lifting one out.

It was perfectly ripe, its skin so thin you could almost see the juice beneath it.

The pointed tip was the prettiest shade of red.

“Best one in the whole box.”

Dad handed it to me.

“For our little peach monster.”

I held the peach and stared at it for a long time.

There was only one.

In the past, whenever this happened, I would always ask,

“What about Julian’s?”

And if there wasn’t a second one, I would take mine to school.

I’d wait for him to finish it, then ask him if it was sweet.

But this time, I didn’t ask anything.

Dad found that strange.

“Not saving one for Julian anymore?”

I gently rubbed the soft tip of the peach.

“You gave this one to me.”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m eating it myself.”

Dad paused.

Then he laughed and ruffled my hair.

“About time.”

I didn’t really understand what he meant by that.

But for some reason, my steps felt a little lighter as I carried the peach upstairs.

The next day, I brought snacks to school like usual.

Nina took a bag of sea-salt crackers.

The girl in front of me got two gummies.

I even handed a little box of nuts to the student collecting homework.

When I passed Julian’s desk, my steps slowed instinctively.

The corner of his desk was empty.

I looked at it for a second.

Then I kept walking.

Behind me came the sharp sound of a pen scraping across paper.

A long, harsh scratch.

I didn’t take the peach out of my backpack until I was back at my seat.

The second I opened the container, Lucas followed the smell right over.

He leaned against the edge of my desk and held out a hand with a grin.

“Julian obviously doesn’t want it. Give it to me.”

The classroom suddenly grew a little quieter.

A few people secretly glanced toward Julian.

I looked over too.

He was still bent over his work.

His profile was cool and indifferent, as though he hadn’t heard a word.

Before, I had always thought I just needed to wait a little longer.

Wait until he wasn’t busy.

Wait until he was in a better mood.

Wait until he was willing to become the Julian I remembered from childhood again.

The boy who used to sit outside my family’s little store and ask me to save him a peach.

But after yesterday’s peach rotted, I suddenly didn’t feel like waiting anymore.

Lucas’s hand was still stretched out in front of me.

Instead, I lowered my head and bit into the sweetest part at the tip of the peach.

The flesh was soft.

Sweet juice spread across my tongue, and I couldn’t help smiling.

Lucas’s eyes widened.

“You’re not giving me any?”

I shook my head.

“Nope.”

“Why not?”

I protectively pulled the rest of the peach closer to my chest.

“Because starting with this one, I’m keeping the best for myself.”

Lucas went quiet for two seconds.

Then he pulled his hand back and gave a lazy smile.

“Fair enough.”

“Next time I get something good, I’ll save some for you too.”

I thought about that, then corrected him seriously.

“You should save some for yourself first.”

His smile grew wider.

“Got it, Ms. Ander.”

Suddenly, a chair scraped against the floor behind me.

Julian stood up.

He walked over to my desk, his gaze moving from the now-empty container to the peach juice glistening on my fingertips.