Johnny Loves Daisy

Turn your attention to the girl in the picture. She’s caught there, at the awkward age of fifteen. But sometimes, when I step away, I think I see her smile out of the corner of my eye. Daisy didn’t smile for the camera in that picture. It doesn’t have the sweet essence of her famous, white grin. It’s a candid photograph, and no one knew that it had been taken until that pretty March day was gone. You appreciate things more that way.

I should tell you that this world without Daisy is dark. You never knew her, but the town of Parkglen did. She painted it bright with her warmth and her perfect grace. Ten years after we buried her, I came back.

I moved onto Pressman Street when I was six. We bought a ranch next to Daisy’s, where the Posts kept an orchard a mile thick. We went to grade school together, and I guess that’s how we became friends. The schoolhouse was close enough to walk to, so when the weather was warm, she’d knock on my door and tell me, “Let’s go.” Daisy always insisted that, if I didn’t hurry, we were going to be late. And we always were. I’d pull on my jacket and yank a comb through my coffee-black curls, and that would take all of five minutes. We’d leave early. There was always something along the path to school that made Daisy stop, though. She’d see a flower and pick it, and then she’d tell me a story about its origin and hold it up for me to smell. She’d choose a different path to take and new sights to see, or she’d lead me in a chase to follow a butterfly to its lair. Then we’d sit in the corner together during recess, because neither of us ever made it on time. But it didn’t matter. Daisy was worth being late.

Parkglen was the perfect place to grow up. It’s a quiet, little Washington town. The lawns are green and manicured, and the streets are brick. And there’s a church on every corner, so that you can see a steeple against the blue sky no matter where you stand. What I missed about it most, though, were the cherry trees. The town was painted permanently purple, it seemed. But winter would always come and ruin the picture. The pretty blossoms would disappear under the snow. “They’re called Sakura trees,” Daisy told me once. “They were a rare gift to Washington from Japan.” We watched the blossoms turn from white to purple to air, and we grew old with the world as we did. Time can be cruel, don’t you think?

Daisy had a secret. She was quietly suffering a battle that would cost the young girl her life. She hid it from the world, so that they’d never know and she’d never have their pity. But I didn’t put the puzzle pieces together on my own. I was eating dinner at her house one night when I decided I’d sneak a peek at her room. We were best friends, but I’d never been inside it. I was determined to uncover the secret treasure, once and for all. The secret was no treasure. It was a museum of cards, stuffed bears, and balloons: all the souvenirs of a terrible past. I made it my personal mission to follow her around and make sure she was okay. Daisy hated that. I asked her what she wanted to be once, and she said that she wanted to be a character in a book. “They can have their pasts written out for them,” she said by way of explanation. “They don’t have to pray for happy endings.” She slipped in and out of remission and got around to telling me her secret on her own. And, like a saint, my best friend never complained.

High school was a memorable step. I crossed that bridge with an awful haircut and a broken heart. When I was fourteen, I had my first girlfriend. It was Elisabeth Porter, a suntanned swimmer from our town’s one pool. She was on the swimming team and she loved to be up before the sun, and I can’t really remember anything else about her. If I were to see her now, I wouldn’t know Elisabeth from Eve. Daisy and I hadn’t been our inseparable selves. I’d spent that summer training for the football team. A boy being best friends with a girl wasn’t “in” at the time, so I made new ones. They were miniature Babe Ruths or Colin Powells, and I tried to convince myself that they were a little more like me. But, that cold September, Elisabeth turned me away. I was hurt in a fragile way that I couldn’t let my friends see. Where else would I go? I went to Daisy.

“She isn’t right for you, Johnny,” Daisy told me. I remember. I was sitting next to her, in the crook of a tree. It was a Sakura tree, the kind with the pretty, white cherry blossoms that left their scent in her hair. Sitting here made our skin smell like April. The blossoms were good in that way. I liked them.

“I think she was,” I said in my defense. “I think she was perfect.”

Daisy looked at me with sad, blue eyes. They were the strange color of an ocean as it reflected a night sky. “She was perfect?” Her small voice sounded hurt.

I scratched my head. “Well, no. I don’t know.” We jumped down and made soft landings in the grass below. The shadows of the trees in the orchard fell all around us.

“Elisabeth is just like everyone else,” Daisy whispered. She smoothed a crease in her cotton dress. Her hair was festooned with cherry blossom petals, now. “What does that make me?”

“Perfect,” I answered accidentally, or maybe it hadn’t been, because it was the truth. She was perfect. I raised my brow, considering what I’d just revealed, and almost didn’t see Daisy’s face as it lit, like a candle, into a grin. She tried out the word on the tip of her tongue. Perfect. Daisy leaned in and kissed me square on the mouth. Neither of us had any idea what we were doing. It was one of those things that we just took from the movies. I forgot about Elisabeth as I stood there, breathlessly still, my hands falling onto either shoulder to anchor Daisy in place. Love stories had nothing on this.

I carved our names into a tree that year. Somewhere, in the orchard on Pressman Street, it still stands. I’ve tried to look for it since I got back, to no avail. My old neighbors say that it was probably cut down. Apparently, a pesticide killed a good part of the trees a few years back. But this was our tree. It was mine and it was Daisy’s, and as long as there’s a heaven, my best friend is watching it now. When I do find it, that solemn grave of memories and fallen cherry blossoms, I’ll read the pledge that I carved when we were just kids. She died when she was sixteen. I was about to have my seventeenth birthday, and, of course, she was going to attend. It’s not fair that I could make it so much farther than her. I’d give her that choice if I could. “Johnny Loves Daisy,” the caption in the bark reads. Did she ever think about me?

Turn your attention to the face in the photograph. It’s the last precious look at an angel that any of us less perfect people will see.