There's a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in.

—from Anthem, by Leonard Cohen, songwriter

The best part about living on Twenty-fifth Avenue in Flushing, Queens, is that Bobby Kaufman is three blocks away on Twenty-seventh. Three blocks, not two, because there is also Twenty-fifth Road, then Twenty-sixth Avenue and Twenty-seventh. By some wonderful fluke of nature, Twenty-seventh Avenue is where the cutest boys from P.S. 79 ended up. About a half a dozen girls around my age—twelve—live on mine, including Elana Michaels. Everyone calls her Lainie. She wears fluffy vintage angora sweaters from the sixties that she found in thrift stores in the East Village, pretends that the rhinestone heart around her neck is real diamonds, and has been modeling since she was in diapers. The fancy photograph of her face hanging over the white upright piano in her living room—a piano that is rarely played—is called a head shot. Only her first name, Elana, and her agent's phone number are on the bottom. (Her agent is really her mother.) Nobody in their right mind needs a Lainie living on their block.

My two best friends since the fourth grade are Sandy Doyle and Gina Deluca. Sandy and I ride our bikes every weekend. We pick up Gina along the way and head toward Twenty-seventh Avenue, which we call the block. Going there is more exciting than going to any other part of the neighborhood, even Carmine's Ices, where Gina's uncle gives us free samples of Lemon Zest and Tutti Frutti.

Just as we get to the beginning of the block, my head and chest begin to throb, half hoping the boys will be outside, the other half praying they're not. I always do this Zen thing—take a deep breath and say to myself, Krista Harris, stay cool—but it never works. If we see any of them, instead of slowing down we pedal faster. What if one of them waved? Or actually talked to us? Still, that doesn't stop us from going over there. Pretending we don't notice them has become a game.

In the second half of third grade, Bobby K. noticed me. Well, maybe. On Valentine's Day, when I came back from recess, a giant heart-shaped box of chocolates was on my chair. Bobby didn't actually hand it to me. He stood off to the side, smiling, as if he had a secret. So how could I be 100 percent sure? It had the name Kaufman's Fine Handmade Chocolates glimmering in gold script across the red silk lid. Bobby Kaufman's grandfather owns a candy store on Northern Boulevard where he hand-dips chocolates as well as fruit, nuts, and almost anything else edible that doesn't squirm. He'd probably hand-dip my little brother, Matt, if he stayed in one spot long enough.

Matt and I went through the entire two layers, biting most of them in half and putting the uneaten halves back in their little silver foil cups. We fought over the last mocha marshmallow covered in bittersweet chocolate, but I got it and didn't split it with him. Matt was stuck with the cherry cordial, syrup oozing down his chubby chin. Even he knew at age four that kind was as disgusting as marzipan. And I knew that Bobby was as smooth as that creamy mocha one.

I saved the candy box, lining it with scrap fabric left over from a quilt my mother had been making. In it I put all my jewelry, my grandfather's engraved pocket watch Grandma had given me after he died, and the precious note I had found hidden under the candy box lid. It was an unsigned valentine written on a piece of paper ripped from a notebook, part of a math problem scribbled at the top, folded into a small square. On a single blue line in the center, written in pencil, was one sentence: Do you love me? Next to the question were two tiny boxes. I added an x in the yes box. Was it Bobby's handwriting? We had just learned script. What if it wasn't? What if it was Harry Peters, who wore his retainer in school with neon rubber bands on his front teeth, slurping his s's? And anyone who sat next to him needed heavy-duty rain gear good enough for the Amazon rain forest. Or worse, Jeremy Wainraff, who smelled like blue cheese from the lotion he applied on his dry, reptilian skin. I kept the note in the candy box where I found it, the answer undelivered, so I never discovered for sure who my true secret admirer really was. If it turns out to be Bobby, I will die. I never told anyone. Not even Sandy or Gina. And I tell them everything.

Now, two and a half years later, I still have this big crush on Bobby that I can't make go away no matter how hard I try, and trust me, I've tried. Big-time. If Daniel and I were still close, I might have stuffed the note in his face. I'd have asked, Is this from your best friend? But I can't.

Since Daniel and I stopped being friends, there are images of him I can't get out of my head. Daniel is sitting next to me in the sandbox on our first day of kindergarten. Someone spills sand on me and I begin to cry. Daniel leans over, flicks the grains away from my eyelids with his finger, finds a used tissue in the pocket of his overalls, and wipes the tears streaming down my cheeks. I'm impressed even at five years old. So we become inseparable. We eat lunch together. Have play dates. Pick each other for teams. By fourth grade, though, the boys began to tease him about his best friend being a girl. And the last thing Daniel wanted was to be called a sissy.

They shouted in the schoolyard, Are you getting any? Is she your girlfriend?

At the bus stop they poked each other in the side. Do you do it? I didn't think they even knew what it was.

So when Coach told Daniel in gym, Pick someone to be on your soccer team, and Daniel walked straight past me—like I didn't even exist, as if I were a bug to be flung off someone's arm—and said, Bobby, simply because he was a boy, that was the beginning of our end. I cried myself to sleep that night. Who would I take turns with buying the next number in the mystery series we had been collecting? Match backpacks with each fall? Who would be my swim buddy at the pool club under the Whitestone Bridge? Who would be honest enough to tell me when my breath smelled like a dog? Or that I had a poppy seed from a bagel stuck in a front tooth?

The final picture I have in my mind of Daniel is a few weeks before fifth-grade graduation. It's three o'clock. He's surrounded by friends. His long black hair—silken as a raven's wing—tosses in front of his eyes as he zooms past Jack's Stationery Store on his skateboard. Daniel's whirling, wearing his iPod. The sun is shining. Blazing on the pavement.

The next day there were the phone calls, parents trying to find out details as the news spread. With more and more calls, the story got gorier and changed from call to call.

What happened? Is it true? Is Daniel going to be okay? My mother cried after she found out. At the dinner table. Stacking the dishes in the dishwasher. Staring out the window as she tried to draw or paint or sew.

That night as I lay in bed pretending to be asleep, I overheard my parents talking.

He's so talented. And bright. He had everything going for him.

Well, he still does, doesn't he? It's not like Daniel's dead or something.

A few minutes later Mom tiptoed into my room, waiting to hear me breathe like she did when I was little. Finally I said, Ma, it's not like it happened to me or Matt.

I know, she sobbed as she sat down on the edge of my bed. A soaked handkerchief was balled up in the palm of her hand. A single moment, and a person's whole life can turn around.

She held me and wouldn't let go. That was when I felt her fear. For me, not Daniel.

And I knew I had to do something.

Top Ten List

Help Daniel (without taking sides and pissing Bobby off).

Discover who gave me the love note—this century.

Find out who Bobby likes. (Keep your fingers crossed!)

Try to stop the B obsession (see numbers 1 through 3).

Learn to be a nicer person. (Lain rhymes with pain.)

Lose at least five pounds. (Even though the magazines claim #9, they say how to do #6.)

Kiss a boy on the lips. (Spin the Bottle at camp doesn't count.)

Find out what I want most in life. Who am I? (Simple question? Not!)

Accept what is. (Yeah, right. Who came up with that big idea?)

Delete #9. Change. (Easier said than done.)

Life is what happens to you while

you're busy making other plans.

—John Lennon, musician

You know how life goes along and you don't always stop to think, Is it okay? You're just too busy doing everyday stuff: homework, hanging out, watching TV, going to the movies. Well, life caused me to grow up fast. Real fast. Like overnight.

Almost everyone I knew was heading for sleepaway camp the weekend of July 4. We had long graduated from Y day camps and the pool club where Krista and I had been buddies in the Barracudas growing up. Bobby was going off to train with some hotshot coach. A lot of the girls were going to Girl Scout camp somewhere in upstate New York for a couple of weeks. Their trunks were probably packed, like ours, and sent.

A month before, my mother had taken me for a camp physical. I also had a routine dental exam. An X-ray picked up by our family dentist showed there was an extra tooth in the roof of my mouth, called an odontoma. One little tooth under the skin that no one could even see. A tooth so tiny, the Tooth Fairy would pass it up.

My dad yanks out things like that all the time in his office. Or you could go to the aquarium. Don't sharks have multiple rows of teeth? Bobby had teased.

When we went in for a consultation, Dr. Robert Kaufman, oral surgeon, told my parents, Simple operation. With general anesthesia. He'll be sedated with an IV in his arm. Like a deep sleep. Then he turned to me, smiling, When you wake up, you'll feel some discomfort, but you'll be off and running in no time. No big deal.

But it was a big deal. I had a bad allergic reaction while I was put out. My lungs started filling up with mucus like I was having an asthma attack. They said my throat closed up so I couldn't breathe and the bronchial spasms got worse and worse. And wouldn't stop. The spot where they took the tooth out started bleeding, like in one of those horror movies—spurting blood all over the place. I started choking. No one had ever heard of such a thing in an office visit for removing a measly baby tooth. Until now. They rushed me by ambulance to the emergency room at the hospital. I don't remember a thing. The dictionary says that an accident is a misfortune that happens unintentionally. Tell that to my parents.

When I opened my eyes and saw a bright white light I thought, This is it. I'm dead. Then I felt this tube snaking down my throat and it hurt something awful. My mother put wet cotton gauze on my dry, cracked lips and had me suck on it—doing her pushy mother thing, so I knew I was alive. She kissed my forehead, grabbed my hand, and then telephoned my father, He's waking up. You've got to leave court, now. The doctors say there might be some oxygen loss to his brain. Please hurry.

Dad raced over to the hospital faster than Superman.

I heard my mom saying, He needs a transfusion. I'm not his blood type.

While Dad gave some of his, my mother called all the people she imagined had safe blood. Then she said to my father as she stood wrapped in his arms, looking at me, What's safe anymore?

Krista's mom took off from teaching and rushed over to donate blood as soon as she heard we were both A positive. My mother and Krista's hugged, without saying a thing, and stayed like that for several moments. We had been studying the body in school the week it happened, and I thought, Her corpuscles will flow through my veins. We'll be linked. I liked that. I missed not having Krista as my best friend, and if I was connected to her mother, then in a way wasn't Krista connected to me too?

The whole class chipped in and sent a stuffed bear holding a bouquet of balloons when I was transferred to the rehab wing of the hospital. The note attached to its ear said: We all miss you, buddy. Get well soon, or else. Your old class, 5A. Even Bobby signed it.

It must have been rough on him. With his father and all. It's not like it was his fault. It wasn't anyone's, I said once I could talk in full sentences.

"Rough on him? My mother glared at me as if I had completely lost my mind. What about you?" She stroked my leg, where I had no feeling.

Greeting cards lined the walls of my hospital room. No matter how hard everyone tried to make me feel like it was home, it was what it was: a place of rehabilitation, where I'd have to learn things all over again from the beginning—like walking. I felt like a baby as my mother helped me get to the bathroom. And at almost twelve, that really sucked.

At the beginning, Krista's father visited me every day. Not because he was so friendly or had nothing else to do, but because Mr. Harris had become my physical therapist. My mother had used him years ago, when she practiced too much—especially the Kreisler cadenzas in the Beethoven violin concerto she had been rehearsing for a chamber music recital. He helped her wrists and shoulders release tension. When those nervous twitches started coming back, my father said to her, Maybe you need him as much as Daniel does now.

She glanced up at my father. I'll be okay. We need to be here for Daniel. Later, when she thought I was asleep, she put her head into her hands, her voice choking. My beautiful Daniel.

On our first visit, she started giving Mr. Harris the third degree. When do you expect him to sit up on his own? I trust your word over those doctors, she told him, wanting more, as if he had all the answers.

Hey, didn't I do that around five months old? I broke in. You called me precocious.

Mr. Harris looked at me thoughtfully, smiled, and then turned his gaze to my mother. Soon, I hope.

That's great. Dad tried to sound upbeat. Isn't that great, Emma?

My mother paused, looking like she was trying to remain together and calm, like she did before one of her concerts. His legs? When can he use them?

He will, Mrs. Rosen. Emma. Mr. Harris looked into her eyes. These things take time.

Dad put his arm around Mom. She tensed her fingers into a fist and pulled away like she did when they had a fight over something stupid. How long? she continued, her lips pursed into a thin line.

I tried to wiggle my toes under the sheet, to show everybody I was okay, but I couldn't feel them. Yeah, how long? I wanted to scream. What do you mean, these things take time?

You know, he's a swimmer, she rambled on.

Everyone knows that, Emma, replied Mr. Harris. All those races written up.

I've been taking him to the Y since he was four. She grinned in my direction, remembering, but through the smile I saw a sadness in her eyes. Daniel's dream is to be in the Olympics. Every day we'd get up at five-thirty and go for laps.

Mr. Harris looked past my mother to my father. For help? Dad bit his lower lip.

* * *

When Coach showed up during the summer, he pushed down the metal bar that held the mattress like a crib, and patted my legs. I had trouble feeling them. Now you'll have to work hard at walking instead of swimming. It's not going to be easy, but you already know about sacrificing for what you want, don't you?

For me, it was being able to have that quiet rush in my head, with my only focus skimming the water and winning. It's a different kind of winning this time, isn't it?

Sometimes when you lose something, it's possible to gain something else. Life can surprise you. Look at this as an opportunity, he said.

"How could this be an opportunity?" I was terrified.

So was Mom. But she tried not to show it. She sat by my side on the edge of the bed, on top of the Moroccan throw she'd brought in, and carefully cut stars out of metallic paper, mounting them on the hospital ceiling, forming more constellations each day. At night, they glowed in the dark, reminding me of when I was little and she'd plugged