I tried to be helpful. "On the riverbank, actually."

            Eriol saved Tomoyo from more teeth gnashing. "I'm Eriol Hiragizawa. This is Tomoyo Daidouji."

            I smiled at the boy. "And I'm Sakura Kinomoto."

            "A cherry blossom? Now, why didn't I guess that?" His smile was warm, amused, and very interested in me. I did not mind. I was interested right back.

Tomoyo interrupted our eye-lock. "That's your cue. Now you say, 'My name is …' "

            "Syaoran, Syaoran Li."

            It was five in the afternoon, and the sun was shining hard enough to require sunblock, glinting off water; but I felt as if I had been plunged into an ice bath.

            My face stiffened, my smile ironing out. "Li? L-i instead of L-e-e?" I looked more closely at his eyes. They had small flecks of gold. A dead give-away if I had been paying attention.

           Tomoyo looked merely curious, Eriol calm as always, but something shifted beneath Syaoran's smile. "Why yes. Have we met before?"

            "No." Flatly.

            "Then how do you know how to spell my name? It's rather unusual." He was still smiling pleasantly, but the light flirtation had evaporated.

            "I saw it on a trophy."

            Before anyone could say another word, I descended rapidly, practically running away, although I never ran from anything.

            I was so agitated that I almost forgot the whole purpose of the game I had instigated: to check out the view of the river that was normally hidden by the curve in the riverbank.

            As I had expected, the river was another dead end.

*Later*

            Syaoran Li.

            The name kept whispering through my mind that night, throwing me into turmoil.

            Syaoran Li was here. In town.

I punched my pillow and remembered the first time I had ever heard his name.

            I was in the first grade at the time, a student of the terrible Miss Dotson. She and I had become enemies on the first day of school.

            I set out to be a little devil. I do not know why. There was just something about the woman that got to me. I pretended to snore when she lectured us. I waved my hand wildly in the air, begging to be called on to give the answer, and then said, "Can I go to the bathroom?" I brought frogs to school and shot rubber bands at the ceiling.

            On this particular afternoon, Miss Dotson handed around a worksheet with the words, "When I grow up I want to be a ______." Three were pictures of a police officer, a firefighter, a doctor, a carpenter, and a teacher, and then there was space for us to draw our own if it was not on the list.

            She went around the classroom, stopping at each desk, complimenting Ashley on her coloring, correcting Peters' spelling of "movie star", telling Jamie that she would have to study hard to become an astronaut…until she got to my desk.

            "And what do you want to be Sakura?"

            "A tree." I showed her the picture I had drawn.

            She laughed. "You can't be a tree. You were supposed to draw what you want to be when you grow up."

            "I want to be a tree," I said stubbornly." The tree had been a trick, but I did not like being laughed at.

            "Well you can't be one," she said crossly.

            "Why not?"

            "You're a person, not a tree."

            "So?"

            "So you can't turn into a tree." She was tiring of the game.

            "But you told we could be anything we wanted if we worked hard enough."

            She did not like that reminder. "Don't be difficult. Pick something else." She moved onto examine Davy's scribble.

            But I did not pick something else. I sat there and remembered everything I could about trees. While the other children opened their math workbooks, I cut out paper leaves and put them in my hair. When I stood up, I shed them like the fall trees outside.

            Miss Dotson took the leaves away from me, but the minute her back was turned, I colored my arms and face green with a marker. Bright green. Frog Green. When she tried to make me go to the bathroom to wash it off, I clung to my desk with hands, screaming, "Stop! You will tear up my roots and kill me! Help!"

            For the rest of the day I wilted as if I had not been watered, and I refused to answer questions. "Trees don't know math."

            At the end of the day, worn to a frazzle, Miss Dotson "transplanted" me to the Quiet Corner. "I swear, Sakura, you're almost as bad as Syaoran Li."

            If she had meant to intimidate me, she failed. I immediately aspired to behave worse than Syaoran Li. Fortunately for Miss Dotson, halfway through the school year my father was transferred to another town, and we moved.

            We moved frequently, Five times in the nest ten years, and in every town, I lived in there were signs of Syaoran Li presence.

            "That's a good idea, Sakura," my teachers would say, "but Syaoran Li had the same idea and we did it last year".

            "The volleyball team won Zones last year, but of course, we had Syaoran Li on our team then," the coaches would say.

            "…And the winner for the most boxes of chocolate sold is Sakura Kinomoto. Congratulations, Sakura. I didn't think anyone would ever touch Syaoran Li's record, but you've come very close."

            "I wish Syaoran hadn't moved away", my girlfriends would sigh. "He was the greatest."

            I almost came to hate him.

            When I moved to Chinchaga last fall, virtually the first thing I did was examine all the trophies for the telltale brass nameplate. I was amazed and then overjoyed not to fine even one with Syaoran Li's name on it. No "Most Valuable Player 1986", no "Curling Championships", no "Intramurals". For once, I would put my name on the trophies first: "Sakura Kinomoto 1987". When he moved to town after I left, people would say, "Too bad Sakura moved. She could always come up with great ideas."

            It had never occurred to me that we would be in the same town at the same time.

            Because of the eerie way he had always moved one town ahead of me, I had assumed his dad must have the same kind of job as mine did and that their employers were rotating them on purpose.

            I got my first inkling that things might not be so simple the next evening at Tomoyo's house.

            Her pregnant stepmother was having a baby shower and Tomoyo claimed she would go nuts alone listening to a bunch of women ooh and ahh over fuzzy sleepwear with fuzzy feet. And "Raven will be so careful not to tear the wrapping paper; she'll fold it all up to reuse it. What is she going to use it for I ask you? None of her friends are pregnant; they've all had their kids." Resentment shaded Tomoyo's voice as I followed her down into the basement den.

            Tomoyo did not get along with either her stepmother or her father.

            Witness our first meeting back in January, when I would persuaded the entire social studies class to lie about their names to our new teacher. "Then tomorrow answer to your real name and the next day switch again. By Friday we should have him totally confused, all right?"

            "One small problem," Tomoyo had said, looking cool and tough in a black long-sleeved shirt and acid-wash jeans, her violet tied up in a high ponytail. "Mr. Daidouji knows me, so I'll have to go by my real name."

            I did not find out Mr. Daidouji was her father until two days later, and she never told him about out joke. Her dad still sometimes called me Naoko.

            I expected Tomoyo to ask me why I'd run off the day before, but she only referred to it obliquely. "You should have stayed longer yesterday. We had a marshmallow cook-off to see who could get the best golden tan. Then we did polka dots and stripes. We had a blast."

            My stomach tightened, "Whose idea was that?" As if I could not guess.

            "Syaoran's, He's cool. Eriol asked him to play volleyball with us on Saturday. We're always short a player." Tomoyo looked at me sideways, but I did not object.

            Inside my heart sank. In one short evening he had managed to get in tight with all my friends.

            I changed the subject, and we talked about movies clothes while listening to rock music. Loud rock music. Def Leppard and Bon Jovie. White Snake.

            "This is the only way to listen to music," Tomoyo said. "So loud you can feel it in your chest."

            Just before eight, when the guests were scheduled to arrive, Mr. Daidouji came down-stairs and asked Tomoyo to turn the music down.

            "What?" Tomoyo pretended not to hear.

            "Turn it down!"

            She turned it down one notch.

            He winced. "More"

            She turned it down two more notches. "How's that?"

            "All right", he said grudgingly, and started back up the stairs.

            "Wouldn't want to disturb the unborn child," Tomoyo said softly.

            He paused at the top, a slim neatly dressed man with thinning hair. He looked oddly helpless. "I don't understand how you can listen to this stuff. You used to love classical music. How come you never play the piano anymore?"

            "I have a tin ear," Tomoyo said.

            "You were so good at it."

            "Sometimes we outgrow things," she said between clenched teeth.

            He just shook his head and left.

            Tomoyo hugged her elbows, staring straight ahead. "He doesn't listen. I've told him a hundred times I'll never play the piano again."

            For the first time, I noticed the piano in the corner of the room. Tomoyo had done her best to bury it under stacks of paper and some clothes.

            I risked a question. "Were you a child prodigy or something?"

            "You'd think so, but no. I just took some piano lessons as a kid." Tomoyo clearly did not want to talk about it. "Which movie do you want to watch first? Police Academy 3 or Top Gun?" She held up the two tapes.