When I was in 8th grade I developed a crush on this girl named Amy the last week of school. She was always pretty, smart, sporty, and cool but it wasn't until our final week of junior high school that I developed major feelings for her.
We didn't have much to do the last week of school so our teacher let us go outside one day to have a free period and just chill out and sign each other's yearbooks and stuff like that. My friend and I were going around getting ours signed and our last stop was with Amy and her friend who were sitting on this little hill on the side of one of our school's soccer fields. We sat and talked to the girls and it was just a great day to be alive. It was this perfect overcast day where it wasn't hot and there was just enough of a breeze and sunshine poking through the clouds and it actually felt like a perfect day in Spring even though it was June. While we all talked, Amy made this daisy chain for me and put it around my wrist and smiled at me. Well, that was one of the best moments of my young life because I was in love at that very moment. The four of us then laid down on our backs on the hill and talked some more until it was the end of the period and the end of the school day. It was a moment that I never wanted to end and that school year was the best one of my life up until that point.
I spent the Summer hanging with my friends at the township pool and spent those days and nights thinking about Amy and whether or not I would see her before high school started. That summer was the best summer of my life and I had a blast living out the type of days that we all know from movies like The Sandlot and Stand by Me. All the while, I was thinking about Amy. The way that she made me feel all through that Summer was the same way that I felt that day when she made me the daisy chain on that hill.
It was the last week of August before high school started and my friends and I were all at the annual township open pool night where people who weren't pool members could come to swim and enjoy a cookout if they were invited by a friend. I was hoping that one of Amy's friends would invite her to come since she always swam at her best friend's pool at her house and didn't have a pool membership.
With about an hour or so left before the pool closed that night, Amy showed up with a friend of hers and they met up with all her other friends and my friends who were hanging out by the tennis courts and mini golf course. I was panicked and excited all at once and both emotions made my heart start beating rapidly in a way that I hadn't felt before that night. It took me a half an hour to somehow get her attention and when I did she smiled at me and we started talking about our Summer vacations and how they went for us both in addition to talking about what classes we were taking in high school and who our teachers were. It was so great talking to her and just having her happy and smiling in front of me that I didn't realize how much time had passed while we all stood around and talked among our friends. It was dusk when we said goodbye for the night and for that Summer and it was a beautiful night for me with my friends. The sky was orange and blue, the lightning bugs were out and shining, and the weather was perfect with the Summer wind blowing around. If I could have stayed in that moment forever then I would have at the time. That night was the end of the best year of my life and it was capped off in a way that made me hopeful and excited for the future as a high school kid in love.
Years later, Amy turned out to be a bitch, that hill that we both sat on was demolished and made way for a new school building, and the township pool endured financial difficulties and dwindling membership after one of the managers was caught stealing money from the place.
Despite all that, I still hold onto those memories from that year and from middle school as some of the happiest of my childhood. Whenever I see daisies growing in the grass anywhere I remember those times and the daisy chain that Amy made that made me fall in love with her for a time when I was a kid.
The daisy chain still hangs on a corner of my desk in my old room.