We got back to the community in time for me to start at a regular high school, Pick wrote. They had to put me back a grade, but nobody here knows me so it’s not too bad. I miss you, Jessie. Write back. Your friend, Pick.

Jessie won’t lie; she loved receiving the letter from Pick and she hurried to respond. She considered telling Pick that they were, in a way, related. They were both half siblings to Blair, Kirby, and Tiger. But that was a family secret and Jessie felt a certain power in guarding it. If she were to release that secret into the world, who knew what kinds of awful dramas would unfold?

So instead, Jessie wrote to Pick about the two astonishing things that had happened since she’d started seventh grade. The first was that she had been invited to Miss Flowers’s wedding to Mr. Barstow. The invitation was printed on fine stock, ivory with black lettering, in a script so fancy it was difficult to read. The envelope was addressed to Miss Jessica Levin, and it had impressed even Jessie’s parents. Kate had scrutinized the invitation as though it contained a secret message from the Russians. “Do you suppose she invited every student in the school? That would be only fair and yet, one would think, impossible.”

Jessie did some quiet trawling to see if this was the case. She asked Doris, “What are you doing on Saturday the twentieth?”

Doris had scowled. Over the summer she had developed a bad case of acne, probably from eating so many McDonald’s French fries. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sleeping in?”

Jessie decided she would attend the service at the Church of the Advent in Beacon Hill but not the reception at the Hampshire House; that way, Kate could drop Jessie off, have a quick visit with Nonny on Mt. Vernon Street, then come back and pick Jessie up.

Jessie was seated in the middle of the church on the bride’s side among a sea of unfamiliar faces; not only was she the only kid from school there, she was the only child, period, aside from one baby who cried until the organ music started and everyone stood up as Miss Flowers walked down the aisle.

Miss Flowers as a bride was the most beautiful woman Jessie had ever seen in real life. She had her dark hair swept back in a sleek chignon and she wore a satin column dress and a long sheer silk veil. The most extraordinary thing was that when she passed by Jessie’s row, she reached out to Jessie and gave her a soulful smile; her eyes brimmed with tears as she squeezed Jessie’s hand.

Dear Pick,

This past Saturday I was invited to the wedding of my school guidance counselor and the boys’ gym teacher. Miss Flowers looked elegant in her white dress and veil. She was crying a little as she walked down the aisle. At first, I thought she was sad because Miss Flowers was meant to be married last year to a man named Rex Rothman, who was killed during the Tet Offensive. But then I realized her tears were tears of hope and of gratitude because she had been given a second chance at love with Mr. Barstow.

The second astonishing thing that happened was that Jessie found a new boyfriend, Andy Pearlstein. He was in Jessie’s English class. During roll call, their teacher, Miss Malantantas, had mispronounced Jessie’s last name as “Levin,” rhyming it with “the pin,” and Jessie had surprised herself by speaking up and saying, “It’s Levin, rhymes with ‘heaven.’”

“Levin, rhymes with ‘heaven,’” Miss Malantantas said. “Thank you, I love that.”

Andy, who sat three seats up and one row to the left, turned around and winked at Jessie.

Later that week, when they were discussing their summer reading, Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, Andy had raised his hand and said, “I think it stinks that she dies in the end. The book would have been way better if she had lived.”

Shane Harris then argued that the point of the book was that Anne had died. If she had lived, Shane said, no one would care about this diary.

“You’re only saying that because you’re not Jewish,” Andy said.

Jessie’s hand flew to her Tree of Life necklace, and Miss Malantantas jumped in to redirect the discussion.

After class, Jessie sought out Andy. He was a few inches taller than her; he must have been one of the boys who sprouted up over the summer. Jessie looked up at him and said, “I agree with you. I think it stinks that Anne died. I actually cried.”

“You did?” Andy said. He seemed on the verge of confessing that he had shed a tear too—but there wasn’t a seventh-grade boy in the world who would admit to that.

That weekend, Pammy Pope called to see if Jessie wanted to play tennis at the Chestnut Hill reservoir. (Pammy Pope had overheard Jessie telling Doris about Miss Flowers’s wedding in the girls’ locker room, and this gave Jessie a social boost she hadn’t predicted.) Jessie put on her whites and her visor and stuck her autographed Jack Kramer racket in her basket and biked to the park to meet Pammy. She saw Andy and a couple of other boys from school kicking a soccer ball. He jogged right over to Jessie and asked what she was doing and she said, “I’m playing tennis with Pammy Pope.” It wasn’t as glamorous as saying she was a fourth in a mixed-doubles match at a house party on Hilton Head, but it had had the same effect on Andy. He looked impressed and said, “I’ll wait for you, and when you’re done, let’s bike to Brigham’s for ice cream.”

He was asking her on a date.

Jessie shrugged. “Okay.”

Pammy showed up and they agreed to play one set and Jessie won, six games to two. Pammy invited Jessie to sleep over—she said she had just gotten the new Beatles album, Abbey Road, if Jessie wanted to listen to it—and Jessie said, “Let’s do it next weekend. I have plans tonight.” This was the exact right response because Pammy said, “Okay, let’s definitely do it next weekend.” She biked off and Andy loped over, soccer ball under his arm, his dark bangs sweaty at the hairline, which made him look kind of cute.

“Who won?” Andy asked.

Jessie zipped up her racket case. “We weren’t really keeping score. Pammy is a good player.”

“Really?” Andy said. “Because it looked like you were creaming her.”

“Oh,” Jessie said. “Were you watching?”

Like Miss Flowers, I’ve gotten my own second chance at love.

Jessie crosses this out. She doesn’t want Pick to know he was her first chance at love; he’ll become conceited.