Page 5 of Meant to Be

A couple ofyears later, on the first day of the seventh grade, Mr. Wilkes, our headmaster, summoned me to his office and informed me that I was responsible for “shepherding a new student.”

I nodded and said, “Yes, sir. What’s his name?”

Mr. Wilkes told me thathername was Berry Wainwright, and that she had just moved to New York from London. She had attended Thomas’s Battersea, he said in a tone that made it clear this was an impressive school.

“Berry as in Barry White?” I interjected. “Or like a strawberry?”

“Like a strawberry, Joseph,” Mr. Wilkes said.

“Berry good!” I said, giving him a thumbs-up.

He stared at me a beat, looking weary, then said, “Joseph. I need you to take this responsibility seriously.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, suddenly feeling a little suspicious of his reason for choosing me for this job—that it had more to do with Berry’s parents’ social status or net worth. I was only thirteen, but I had seen Mr. Wilkes use me as a pawn like that before, and in that moment, I was annoyed not to be back outside in the courtyard with my friends. I also predicted that I wasn’t going to be a fan of this new girl named after a piece of fruit.

But my attitude did a one-eighty the second his office door opened and our guidance counselor brought her in. She was a dead ringer for Tatum O’Neal, and let me just say, there was a reason I’d seenThe Bad News Bearsthree times. I got to my feet, as I had been taught to do when a girl enters the room, while Mr. Wilkes rose from his desk and cleared his throat.

“Joseph, this is Berry Wainwright,” he said, gesturing toward her. “And Berry, this is Joseph Kingsley the third.”

“How do you do?” I said, looking directly into her eyes, another point of etiquette, though also what Iwantedto do.

“I’m well, thank you. And you?” Berry said.

“I’m good,” I said, for some reason relishing my bad grammar, perhaps because I wanted to offset any notion of being the kind of guy who had a Roman numeral after his name.

Mr. Wilkes asked us to take a seat, and for the next few minutes, he droned on about how wonderful our school was and how happy we were to have Berry. He then informed me that her class schedule mirrored mine with the exception of our respective seventh-period math classes.

“Lemme guess,” I said with a laugh. “She’s in a higher math class than I am?”

“She is, indeed,” Mr. Wilkes said, staring me down. “Perhaps if you work harder, you can join her in accelerated math next year.”

“Or maybe,” I said, keenly aware that self-deprecation was a crowd favorite. “We both workequallyhard, and she’s just smarter than me.”

Mr. Wilkes ignored this as he stood and said, “I’ll let you two get acquainted before first period…. Berry, please know that you’re in excellent hands with Joseph.”

He gave me a final look that said,Don’t mess this up,then ushered us out the door of his office.

Now alone in the hall, Berry and I gazed at each other for a few awkward seconds before I cleared my throat and asked the standard back-to-school question. “How was your summer?”

“It was fine,” Berry said. “How was yours?”

“It was fun…really fun…. I did a lot of surfing.”

She nodded, looking uninterested but not impolite.

I changed tactics, asking, “Hey, has anyone ever told you that you look like Tatum O’Neal?”

“No,” she said.

“Well, you do,” I said. “Have you seenThe Bad News Bears? The movie?”

“No,” she said again. “I don’t really like sports.”

I started to tell her that liking sports wasn’t a prerequisite to enjoying the movie but suddenly realized something. “Hey. Where’s your British accent? Did you lose it already?”

“No. I never had one. I’m not British,” she said, holding my gaze in a way that many girls were incapable of doing—not just with me, but withanyboy. “My dad worked at the embassy.”

I nodded, mentally returning to my theory about her wealthy, connected parents. “What’s he do now?” I asked, though I actually didn’t care.

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