To All the Boys I've Loved Before

“It definitely sounds like something’s wrong.” Margot yawns. “Tell me.”

“Go back to sleep, Gogo.”

“Okay,” she says, yawning again.

We hang up and I make myself an ice cream sundae right in the carton: chocolate sauce, whipped cream, chopped nuts. The works. I take it back up to my room and eat it lying down. I feed it to myself like medicine, until I’ve eaten the whole thing, every last bite.

18

A LITTLE WHILE LATER I wake up to kitty standing at the foot of my bed. “You’ve got ice cream on your sheets,” she informs me.

I groan and turn over to my side. “Kitty, that’s the least of my problems today.”

“Daddy wants to know if you want chicken for di

I sit straight up. Daddy’s home! Maybe he knows something. He was on that cleaning binge, throwing things away. Maybe he’s spirited my hatbox away somewhere safe, and the Peter letter was just an unfortunate fluke!

I jump out of bed and run downstairs, my heart thumping hard in my chest. My dad’s in his study, wearing his glasses and reading a thick book on Audubon paintings.

All in one breath I ask, “Daddy-have-you-seen-my-hatbox?”

He looks up; his face is hazy and I can tell he is still with Audubon’s birds and not at all focused on my frenzied state. “What box?”

“My teal hatbox Mommy gave me!”

“Oh, that . . . ,” he says, still looking confused. He takes off his glasses. “I don’t know. It might have gone the way of your roller skates.”

“What does that mean? What are you even saying?”

“Goodwill. There’s a slight possibility I took them to Goodwill.”

When I gasp, my dad says defensively, “Those roller skates don’t even fit you anymore. They were just taking up space!”

I sink to the floor. “They were pink and they were vintage and I was saving them for Kitty . . . and that’s not even the point. I don’t care about the roller skates. I care about my hatbox! Daddy, you don’t even know what you’ve done.” My dad gets up and tries to pull me off the floor. I resist him and flop onto my back like a goldfish.

“Lara Jean, I don’t even know that I got rid of it. Come on, let’s have a look around the house, all right? Don’t let’s panic yet.”

“There’s only one place it could be, and it’s not there. It’s gone.”

“Then I’ll check Goodwill tomorrow on my way to work,” he says, squatting down next to me. He’s giving me that look—sympathetic but also exasperated and mystified, like How is it possible that my sane and reasonable DNA created such a crazy daughter?

“It’s too late. It’s too late. There’s no point.”

“What was in that box that’s so important?”

I can feel my ice cream sundae curdling in my stomach. For the second time today I feel like I’m going to be sick. “Only everything.”

He grimaces. “I really didn’t realize your mother had given it to you or that it was so important.” As he retreats off to the kitchen, he says, “Hey, how about an ice cream sundae before di

As if dessert before di

I don’t even want to think about Josh reading that letter. I don’t even want to think it. It’s too terrible.

* * *

After di

Oh, no. No no no no. I can’t see Josh. I know I have to at some point, but not today. Not right this second. I can’t. I just can’t.

I drop the plate back into the sink and make a run for it, out the back door, down the porch steps, across the backyard to the Pearces’ yard. I scramble up the wooden ladder and into Carolyn Pearce’s old tree house. I haven’t been in this tree house since middle school. We used to hang out up here sometimes, at night—Chris and Genevieve and Allie and me, the boys a couple of times.

I peek through the wooden slats, crouched in a ball, waiting until I see Josh walk back to his house. When I’m sure he’s inside, I climb down the ladder and run back to mine. I sure have been doing a lot of ru

19

I WAKE UP THE NEXT morning renewed. I am a girl with a plan. I’m just going to have to avoid Josh forever. It’s as simple as that. And if not forever, then at least until this dies down and he forgets about my letter. There’s still the tiny chance he never even got it. Perhaps whoever mailed Peter’s only sent the one! You never know.

My mom always said optimism was my best trait. Both Chris and Margot have said it’s a

When I get downstairs, Daddy and Kitty are already at the table eating toast. I make myself a bowl of cereal and sit down with them.

“I’m going to stop by Goodwill on my way to work,” my dad says, crunching on his toast from behind his newspaper. “I’m sure the hatbox will turn up there.”

“Your hatbox is missing?” Kitty asks me. “The one Mommy gave you?”

I nod and shovel cereal into my mouth. I have to leave soon or else I’ll risk ru

“What was in the box, anyway?” Kitty asks.

“That’s private,” I say. “All you need to know is the contents are precious to me.”

“Will you be mad at Daddy if you never get the hatbox back?” Kitty answers her own question before I can. “I doubt it. You never stay mad for long.”

This is true. I never can stay mad for long.

Peering over his newspaper, he asks Kitty, “What in the world was in that hatbox?”

Kitty shrugs. Her mouth full of toast, she says, “Probably more French berets?”

“No, not more berets.” I give them both a mean look. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I don’t want to be late for school.”

“Aren’t you leaving a little early?”

“I’m taking the bus today,” I say. And probably every day until Margot’s car is fixed, but they don’t need to know that.

20

THE WAY IT HAPPENS IS a strange sort of serendipity. A slow-motion train wreck. For something to go this colossally wrong, everything must intersect and collide at the exact right, or in this case, wrong, moment.

If the bus driver hadn’t had trouble backing out of the cul-de-sac, taking four extra minutes to get to school, I never would have run into Josh.

If Josh’s car had started up and he hadn’t had to get a jump from his dad, he wouldn’t have been walking by my locker.

And if Peter hadn’t had to meet Ms. Wooten in the guidance office, he would not have been walking down the hallway ten seconds later. And maybe this whole thing would not have happened. But it did.

* * *

I’m at my locker; the door is jammed, and I’m trying to yank it open. I finally get the door loose and there’s Josh, standing right there.

“Lara Jean . . .” He has this shell-shocked, confused expression on his face. “I’ve been trying to talk to you since last night. I came by, and nobody could find you. . . .” He holds out my letter. “I don’t understand. What is this?”

“I don’t know . . . ,” I hear myself say. My voice feels far away. It’s like I’m floating above myself, watching it all unfold.

“I mean, it’s from you, right?”

“Oh, wow.” I take a breath and accept the letter. I fight the urge to tear it up. “Where did you even get this?”

“It got sent to me in the mail.” Josh jams his hands into his pockets. “When did you write this?”