Katherine Patterson

People began to join in, quietly at first to match her mood, but as the song built up at the end, their voices did as well, so that by the time they got to the final __ree to be you and me,_ the whole school could hear them. Caught in the pure delight of it, Jess turned and his eyes met Leslie__. He smiled at her. What the heck? There wasn__ any reason he couldn__. What was he scared of anyhow? Lord. Sometimes he acted like the original yellow-bellied sapsucker. He nodded and smiled again. She smiled back. He felt there in the teachers_ room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so.He did not have to make any announcement to Leslie that he had changed his mind about her. She already knew it. She plunked herself down beside him on the bus and squeezed over closer to him to make room for May Belle on the same seat. She talked about Arlington, about the huge suburban school she used to go to with its gorgeous music room but not a single teacher in it as beautiful or as nice as Miss Edmunds.

Once the tugboat takes you out to the ocean liner, you got to get all the way on board. Can't straddle both decks.