It was June, and the world smelled of roses. The sunshine was like powdered gold over the grassy hillside.

I cannot remember back to a year in which I did not consider myself to be a writer, and the younger I was the bigger that capital 'W.

Isn't it mysterious to begin a new journal like this? I can run my fingers through the fresh clean pages but I cannot guess what the writing on them will be.

Good things come, but they're never perfect; are they? You have to twist them into something perfect.

We'll just have to find more flowers in the spring. That's when they bloom, tra la.

Then he kissed her. Betsy didn't believe in letting boys kiss you. She thought it was silly to be letting first this boy and then that one kiss you, when it didn't mean a thing. But it was wonderful when Joe Willard kissed her. And it did mean a thing.

Was life always like that? she wondered. A game of hide and seek in which you only occasionally found the person you wanted to be?