Iris
CHAPTER 1
Don’t blame me, blame John Green. The Fault In Our Stars was undoubtedly the way I fell in love with romance novels. The start of my inability to take my nose out of To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before until I’d turned the last page. The reason Five Feet Apart caught my eye on the shelf of the library, why I bought You Should See Me In A Crown and The Kissing Booth.
And maybe reading so many good love stories is what turned my whole life into one. A very confusing one at that. One that starts and ends with Nico Thrace.
---
“EMMAEMMAEMMAEMMAEMMAEMMA!”
The end of the school year starts the same as always, with me bouncing on my sister’s bed, screaming for her to wake up. And her not waking up until my legs get tired, so I flop down next to her and throw pillows at her until I’m met with blue eyes staring at me and a slight smile tugging at the corners of Emma’s cheeks.
“Hi Lizzy”
“PANCAKESPANCAKESPANCAKESPANCAKESPANCAKESPANCAKES.”
“So that's why you got me up,” Emma smirks
I roll off the bed and run in circles around her “Well yes… and the fact that I do this every year AND I ALWAYS WILLLLLLLLLL UNTIL THE LAST DAY OF GRADE 12!”
“Okay, okay, okay! Give me a sec to get dressed and I’ll come down.”
That’s Emma. My awesome amazing wonderful BIG SISTER (by five and a half minutes). We’re basically identical, the only difference is that my hair is auburn, whereas hers is silky black. Other than that, you can’t tell us apart. We have the same heart-shaped birthmark on our right temple, and the same tiny feet. (Like seriously tiny. Size 4 and we’re finishing grade eight.) But on the inside we are completely and totally different. She’s more of an artistic introvert. I’m the athletic talkative energetic ‘fake a smile until it becomes real’ kind of kid. But we still get along really well. We fight of course, all siblings do, and we have other friends of our own. Still, we spend tons of time together and know each other really well. I trust her a lot.
I’m sitting at the table when Emma comes downstairs wearing black jean shorts, the exact same style as the leafy-green ones that I’m wearing today, a white crop top with a black heart near her collarbone, and a black baseball cap. We tend to always look matching to some extent, but my style is much more bright and colorful. Today my t-shirt is a blue tank top with a triangle cut into it’s back, and my hair matches Emma’s; two french braids covered by a baseball cap that matches my shorts.
Emma sits down next to me, and mom brings out two HUGE stacks of pancakes with maple syrup and whipped cream. And peanut butter (for me). I have an obsession with peanut butter because it is, one, an inside joke with my best friend and crush for three years, Nico, and two, just THE GREATEST FOOD EVER INVENTED IN THE MULTIVERSE!!!!!!
“Morning Em, morning Liz,” Mom comes into the room and kisses us both on the forehead “Ready for summer?”
“YESYESYESYESYESYESYES!!!!!!”
“Wow, someone’s hyper today,” mom smiles. She says this to me practically every day, given my average energy level of a thousand.
“Yep, I’m really excited for the beach!” Emma is much more calm, as usual. How she can be calm about SUMMER, I don’t know.
I, on the other hand, have more to be sad about. Nico is moving. Across the country. I’m the only person he told, he didn’t want to make a huge deal out of it, which I get. Neither of us are very emotional. Still, I’m super sad about it, since he is closer to me than my sister, and that's saying something. But more about him later.
Emma and I tend to bike to school, and there’s no difference today. I hop on my mint green mountain bike to see a familiar blonde riding down the main street perpendicular to ours.
“Neeeeeeeeeeeeecooooooooooooo”
He pulls to a stop and turns around to see me: “Eeeeeeeeeeeliiiiiiiiiie.”
Most people use Liz or Lizzy as a nickname for me. However, four years ago, when I met him, Nico decided that various ways of saying ‘El’ were a much better name. So if I ever hear an ‘ELIEEEEE’, I always know who’s calling for me.
I throw myself onto my mint green mountain bike, leaving Emma behind, (generally we ride to school with our separate friends) and meet him at the curb.
Nico. Jeez, how do you describe Nico? It's kind of hard to get an unbiased description from me, but I’ll give you my best shot: Nico is average height, sandy blonde, and has hazel brown eyes. He’s extremely tanned, given the fact that we tend to spend all of our free time hanging out outside. Nico is absolutely hilarious and very good at writing and reading. He’s average at most sports, but still in shape from, like I said, spending tons of time outside running around and climbing trees with me and sometimes our squad of friends. Today he’s wearing swim trunks (we’re having a water fight at school) and a blue tank top with an eagle. Under the surface though, Nico’s quite a confusing person. He doesn’t like getting emotional in front of people who he’s not extremely close with, which is one reason he didn’t tell many people about him moving. He’s still very hard to talk to about emotions, whether they’re his own or someone else’s. But that doesn’t make it any less hard to come to him with your problems if you know him as well as I do.
“So. How’s life?” This is my general conversation starter.
“It's…. ya. No, life is decent, just complicated with moving and stuff.”
I don’t press. With Nico, he’ll just back himself further into a corner of not talking to you.
“Anyway, want to hang out at the park after school?”
“Sure. Ice cream?”
We both burst out in giggles at the mention of ice cream. Maybe a year or two ago, we were climbing trees with one hand while holding ice creams in the other, and complaining about how girls can’t have friends who are boys, and vice-versa, without getting ‘shipped’. We were laughing about how ironic it was having this conversation while sitting in a tree, so we made up our own song; ‘Nico and Elie sitting in a tree. Eating I-C-E Cream. First comes falling, then comes pain, then you wake up in a hospital bed’. Dark for eleven-year-olds, yes. But we were in the middle of a Dystopia phase.
Taking advantage of Nico being reduced to a mess of laughter, I call “Race you” and stand up to pedal with my full strength. There isn’t really any need for the effort, I haven’t lost any of these races since the beginning of grade five. We’re nearing school when I can see two of our other friends, Rex and Pressley, in a building’s window. Pressley has had a crush on Rex for this whole year. And Nico told me that recently Rex started liking Pressley back. Their relationship is slow moving, but when they finally get together, it will be worth the wait. I see Rex opening his mouth to call out to us, but Pressley smacks him in the chest. Like 95% of the grade, they ship me and Nico, and have for forever. So, obviously, Pressley didn’t want to interrupt what she would call a ‘couple moment’. I’m not complaining.
Turning back to the race at hand, I can see Nico gaining on me. I only have fifty or so more feet to go before the school gate.
“And……. Another easy win for Eliza Faye!” I announce as I wheel my bike into the school’s bike racks. Nico practically sprints to catch up with me, and I can hear the security guard laughing from the gate. He’s probably seen this same interaction happen over a hundred times. Yet it still brings a smile to his face. It's the little things like that that make me able to jump out of bed every morning, and keep me going through the day.
“You ready to face the last day of MIDDLE SCHOOL?!” I’m talking more to the general universe than to Nico, but it's him who laughs and responds
“Last HALF DAY of middle school!”
We skip into school, linking arms.
-----
After a gruelling speech from the principal that was much longer than it needed to be, we’re allowed to grab our water guns from our lockers for the free for all water fight. We had all cleaned out our lockers yesterday, so we weren’t stuck in a building without any AC for longer than an hour. And we are THANKFUL for it. It's ninety five degrees out, so most of the boys are playing with their shirts off, and most of the girls (including me) are just running around in sports bras and shorts, since we’re all going to get soaked.
“Lizzy!” I look around for the source of the voice, and I get ambushed by Pressley, Rex, Nico, Peyton (Pressley’s sixth grade sister), Emma, Katie (one of my best friends), and Nico.
“Hey, no fair! Seven versus 1!” I pause for a second as an idea comes into my head “GUYS! WATER ZOMBIE TAG!”
“OH MY GOSH YES!” Nico immediately understands my idea.
Rex and Pressley are just confused. “Wait what?”
“So you know how we used to play Zombie Tag as kids” Nico starts, and I can see Rex and Pressley nodding
“Well we play that”
“But to tag people, you spray them”
“We could get a ton of people to play”
“The whole grade”
“The whole MIDDLE SCHOOL!” I finish with my arms wide open and a huge smile on my face. I’m met with five identical shrugs. But that's as good as you can get from some non-enthusiastic people.
Using our favorite teacher, Ms. Kendra, to get a mic, in no time, we’ve organized nearly everyone out on the football field, and created boundaries, gotten someone (Michael, arguably the fastest person in the middle school,) to be ‘it’.
From the age of nine, this was Nico and my favorite game. We had different strategies and plans, each with different names, some for when we were zombified, some for when we were running away.
“There are too many of them,” Nico starts. “We have to hide away from all people, otherwise we’ll attract attention.”
“Brooklyn?” I suggest. Operation Brooklyn is a plan where we run straight into the nearest woods, climb into a tree, and don’t come down until absolutely needed. This might seem stupid, like we’re backing ourselves into a corner, but over the years we’ve mastered the ability to climb between trees, which is what makes this strategy so effective.
Nico nods.
“THREE, TWO, ONE, GO! YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS BEFORE I COME! Michael yells,”
Me and Nico sprint leftward and I grab a low branch as soon as we’re far enough into the forest that Michael won’t see us. Nico follows the second I step onto another branch. We keep climbing until we’re maybe seven feet up, and lay down on a thick branch. He sits nearby. A stick growing out of the limb jabs into my bare back and I sit up abruptly.
“Ow!”
Nico just laughs, so I punch him lightly. “Ow!”
We both laugh, but quiet down quickly when I remember that we are in the middle of a high stakes game of Zombie Tag.
---
The game ends with me and Nico winning, because no one can find us, which of course resulted in many dirty jokes.
Since it's a half day at school, we were then free to go. Nico and I went straight to the store near school where we usually buy all our candy and ice cream. Since we haven’t had lunch yet, we got something you could qualify as real food (cherry tomatoes, hummus, chips, and an ice cream each), and then headed to the park to eat.
You might think our parents are giving us too much responsibility, letting us run around on our own all around town. However, I am thirteen and Nico’s fourteen. And we don't tend to leave the neighborhood with school and our houses.
We sat down for approximately half a second when I threw a tomato at him. Which he catches in his mouth, and bites into, resulting in tomato juice staining his blue shirt. Nico just laughs and throws a Pringle at me. And soon our whole lunch has been thrown all over the grass. More food for the ducks I guess.
We hang out and talk for a little while longer. Nico hasn’t really had the chance to talk about moving yet, so I try to get him to open up a bit about what he’s excited about and also not so excited about. To an utter failure. But that's just Nico, I guess.
After sitting for a bit, I have a great idea. “You know what we HAVE to do?”
“No, what?”
“Burn some steam!”
Nico immediately knows what I’m talking about. “The Field!”
We grab our bikes and throw away the trash.
I pedal as fast as I can across the roads to the very outskirts of the city, a huge field of overgrown grass and weeds that our whole friend group (Emma, Rex, Peyton, Katie, Nico, and I) found maybe three years ago.
Nico and I leap off our bikes and leave them behind. No one ever comes by here anyway. We run across the grass screaming our lungs out. We used to do this all the time when we were fed up with life. It's extremely therapeutic.
I topple over in the grass, and Nico falls down next to me. We just lay there for a while, staring up at the clouds, and the sun that was slowly setting.
“Nico,”
“Yeah?”
I slowly sit up, hugging my knees. “We’re best friends, right?”
“Yeah” He pulls himself up so he’s also sitting.
“And we tell each other everything, right?”
“Yeah” Nico just looks confused.
“Well then why don’t we ever talk about crushes?” My stomach is flipping all around, bringing up this topic. But there’s no backing out now.
“I don’t know? We can if you want. Who do you like?”
“You,” I respond quietly with my face in my knees, not wanting to hear his response. I don’t know what I would have said if he wasn’t moving today and I’d have to live in embarrassment. But I guessed it was now or never.
Nico gently pulls my head out of my knees, and looks straight into my eyes. I’m suddenly realizing how close our bodies are.
“I like you too, Elie”
I’m not sure who made the first move. There was just this silent agreement between us, as if we leapt over the invisible chasm between flirtatious friendship and more-than-friends. And suddenly Nico’s lips are on mine and I’m kissing back, and it's the best thing I’ve ever felt, and somehow we’re laying in the grass with me on top of him, and we pull apart for air but neither of us moves, and it's wonderful and magical and I just feel like this is where I was meant to be my whole life and suddenly all the pieces fit together, and we’re kissing again and the universe just makes sense.