Several notes before the start of this chapter :)

First, I'm going to change my style a bit for this story.

Second, there will be some chapters (like the one before) that will be a bit boring, to say the least. Everything is needed, everything builds up, and everything will work out.

Third, I've set all the kids' ages, as followed:

Jesse Aarons Jr.- 12

Leslie Burke- 12

May Belle Aarons- 8

Joyce Ann Aarons-4

Brenda Aarons- 16

Ellie Aarons- 15

Fortunately, for those of you who are reading this story, I do not need reviews to keep going. I thrive on the fact that I know I can write a half-decent piece of work. I think of reviews as a little bonus :).

Here's chapter 3. Hope you enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own BtT

--

Lunchtime for the Aarons' household was not spectacular; in fact, Jess only had a quarter of a candy bar that Leslie gave him a week ago. It wasn't that he didn't like it; in fact it was quite the opposite. He loved it, so he tried to savor every bite and more often than not, he would just let it melt in his mouth before swallowing the chocolaty substance down. He once asked Leslie why she didn't eat candy bars more often; how could anyone resist such a sensation?

"You know, Bill and Judy actually bought that bar for my cousin on our way to her birthday party. But since it turned out that she was sick, I asked for it and Bill gave it to me without complaint. I knew you would like it, so I gave it to you."

Jess had given her a puzzled expression. "You don't like candy bars?"

Leslie pondered at the question for a short moment, then jokingly replied, "... no, not really. I prefer something that doesn't kill your teeth in ten years."

They laughed.

No sooner had lunch finished, it was time to pack. Jess knew that he didn't need to bring much, but felt that he still should give something to Leslie's parents, as a sign of respect. He had been over to their house a few times, mostly for homework, but they had never actually met properly.

Meanwhile, everyone else in the house was doing different things. Brenda and Ellie were doing absolutely nothing; they had not agreed to the trip in the first place, but when their mom gave them the look, they knew they could not do anything about it. And so they just sat on the living room couch, not paying attention to anything else in the house, daydreaming of what girls dream of. May Belle and Joyce Ann, however, were putting everything they could find into May Belle's backpack. Actually, it was May Belle doing all the work, and Joycie just clapped and laughed, blissfully unaware of anything else... not that she needed to. However, for Mary Aarons, it was quite the opposite. She had to pay attention to everything and everyone in the house, especially since no one was doing anything useful to help her pack. Jesse Sr. wasn't in the house; he had to go to the store because of an emergency, but promised that he would be back soon. He didn't hesitate to tell the family to go ahead with the picnic if he had not come back by the time it started. Finally having had enough, Mary gave an exasperated sigh and slightly yelled, "Jess, come down here and help me pack, please."

"Yeah, be down in a second." The response wasn't one she had wanted to hear, but figured that she couldn't do anything about it. She knew that when he said that to her, he rarely meant it. He certainly didn't need to pack anything of his own, so soon the mother figured that her son was probably drawing something, probably for Leslie or her parents.

She turned her attention to the two girls sitting on the couch. They were already looking at her, but quickly tried to turn their heads sideways as to pretend to actually be doing something. Mrs. Aarons had none of that.

"How many times have you tried to get out of something?"

The girls mumbled an incomprehensible statement, not bothering to turn their heads to their mother. Mary put her hands on her hips.

"And how many times has it actually worked?"

This time, the answer was clear. "None", the girls replied in defeat. Brenda looked like she wanted to say a bit more to defend herself, but Ellie just stood up and walked over to her mother. Brenda decided not to say whatever was on her mind, and shortly afterwards followed her sister to help Mary pack. Not two minutes into their new job, the girls started groaning and complaining.

"Why do we have to bring this much stuff?"

"Why can't Jess help you pack?"

"We always get all the work, w-"

The sound quickly drowned out of Mrs. Aaron's ears as she heard footsteps outside. She opened the door to find a somewhat eager Leslie Burke. Something about her looked different, but she couldn't put a finger on it.

"Hi, Mrs. Aarons! Is Jess home?"

"Yes, he's in his room. Feel free to go up, but you should knock first; he doesn't like to be disturbed when he's drawing.

As Leslie made her way up the stairs, Mary shut the front door and briefly glanced at the adolescent one last time. Then she quickly realized what was different about her, once she looked at Leslie from a farther distance. The expression on Mary's face was one of confusion, but her lips formed a grin as she heard her boy exclaim in surprise.

--

"You're wearing a dress!"

Jess couldn't believe it. She never wore a dress except for the times that she goes to church with him. And after they come back, she almost always changes back into… her style of clothes. She told him once that she didn't like dresses as much as she did her "normal" attire, so it came to Jess as a great surprise that Leslie was standing here before him, wearing a purple dress that came down to her knees. But, to Jess's somewhat sweet comfort, she still had on her normal pair of boots. Meanwhile, while Jess was looking her up and down, he didn't notice his best friend blush slightly. "…Jess, you can stop gaping at me now."

The boy quickly blinked and looked up, his cheeks slightly red. Then, to Jess's slight horror, he caught her eyes as he tried to turn his head sideways to avoid looking at her. There was no getting out of it now.

The color of her pupils was so extraordinary that Jess figured that it must be a new color. It was a while before both of them realized what they were doing, and when they finally got all five of their senses back, they started laughing… hard. Soon Jess had to crawl into a ball on his bed to keep his laughter from reaching an all time high. Despite the uncontrollable laughter, he couldn't figure out why he was laughing so hard.

Maybe it was just one of those moments where nothing was funny so everything was funny.

His thoughts raced away from his mind as he eventually stopped laughing, sat up and found himself a foot away from Leslie, also sitting on his bed. She was looking at a piece of paper that she found on the ground, lying face-up for the world to see. It then dawned on Jess that the piece of drawing she was looking at was the one he was drawing right before she came into his room; the shock of it made his hands tremble as he fidgeted around, waiting for the eventual criticism that he knew was to come any second. It was, after all, Jess's first attempt at something this complicated, and he had intended to show the drawing to her after he was done perfecting every detail. Right now, it was barely the end result of a rough sketch.

"…it's really nice, Jess."

"I know, I know, I know its bad and I got the perspectives all wrong, but I- wait, what'd you say?" He stared at Leslie in disbelief. She giggled.

"I said I think it's really nice." She handed Jess his picture back, and stood up to leave. "I have to go back because Bill told me that he wants me to do something before the picnic. See ya!" Shock still regulated through Jess's body as he still sat on the bed trying to comprehend what had just happened. He snapped back to the real world when Leslie, who had noticed that he was still in a whole other world, bent down and gave the boy a quick peck on the cheek. She left shortly left after that, and Jess only caught a glimpse of her golden hair as she left the room. And so, a rather stunned Jesse Aarons sat on his bed, wave after wave of incomprehensible feelings crashing down upon him. Suddenly, something sprang up in his head.

"Why'd you come here anyways?" he called after her. Whether she heard or not, no answer came back to him.

--

Leslie walked upon the dirt road, enjoying the crumbling sound that her boots made upon making contact with the small and rocky pieces of nature.

We need a place. Just for us.

Huh?

You know, a place where there's no Janice Avery or Scott Hoager.

Yeah, but when we go back to school, there they are again…

It was the Saturday of their first week of school that the picnic was taking place. The first week had been rather boring compared to Leslie's first year, and the main cause of such an oddity was the remarkable event of Scott Hoager moving away to New York. Gary, no longer having a "torture pal" with him, found interest in bullying the youngest third and fourth graders of one only two schools in Lark Creek, the one that all of the kids of the small town went to. The one that Leslie and Jess went to went from kindergarten to eighth grade; the other went from ninth to twelfth. From her father and her previous experience in Arlington, Leslie knew that some schools went only from kindergarten to fifth, and there would be another school in the same town that went from sixth to eighth. This was called "middle school." She often wondered why there wasn't this "middle school" thing in Lark Creek; it certainly seemed better for both younger and older kids.

Janice Avery became their part-time friend; she no longer bullied them or anyone else in the school. Leslie and Jess noticed that ever since the fake letter and the incident in the girl's bathroom, her personality had changed from rude and undisciplined to… semi-rude and sort of undisciplined. A lot of times at lunch, Jess and Leslie would see Janice sitting alone under a tree, a finger twiddling her hair, clearly in thought. And out of these common situations, a smile would sometimes find their way to the two kids. An unspoken truce between Jess and Janice had formed and Leslie was the bridge; all three of them knew that.

On the Monday of the first week of school, "Free to Pee!" could be heard all across the playground nearly every single minute during lunch. On Tuesday, the chant died down, and there was peace for the ears of many.

Waking up from her thoughts, Leslie found herself at the front of her house where Bill was standing outside the front door, just as she thought, waiting for her. He had a straw hat on, and it was revealed that Judy also had one on when she walked out of the house with a large picnic basket in her hand. Leslie noticed that both her parents had their hands full. Besides the basket, her mom had a rather large box, supported by being under Judy's armpit, and wrapped up with some wrapping paper filled with an array of colors. Bill, on the other hand, had two more baskets, both slightly larger than the already big one Judy was holding. They both looked ready to go, but Leslie was puzzled. "Isn't the picnic at five? What time is it right now?"

Bill was the first to answer. "It's three right now. But you know, Leslie, being prepared early is better than being prepared late. Here, help me put this stuff on our bikes. We'll go to our picnic spot first and set up-"

"And then maybe relax a little bit." Judy piped in, a curious smile on her face. Bill smiled back at his wife.

"Yes, that too." Then, returning her attention to Leslie, continued. "Anyways… Leslie, can you finish washing the dishes inside? You can go to the Aarons' house after you're done, and go with them together to the picnic when the time comes."

It was an "I'm asking you to do this" statement more than a "can you please do this?" question, but Leslie wouldn't have said no either way. Bidding her parents goodbye after helping them put the baskets on their red and blue bikes, she turned around, closed the door, and went into the kitchen.

"Oh my gosh…" Leslie immediately took back her thoughts about accepting the job just five minutes ago. Anyone would've; the number of piles of dishes and the number of dishes in each pile must've easily been able to be stacked up into a miniature replica of the Eiffel Tower. Usually, the girl didn't mind doing the dishes. On most days it was only six or seven; rarely, when there was something to celebrate about, around fifteen would've appeared. Leslie had caught a glimpse of a stack of dirty dishes in Jess's house when she last went there to visit Jess; the pile now seemed to be extraordinarily small compared to the one that she had to deal with right now. Making a big sigh for mental relief, and getting a glass of lemonade from the fridge, she put on the sink gloves and the kitchen bib, and got started.

Leslie Burke took pride in almost everything she did; her work, her play, and even occasionally, her mistakes. She took the time to rinse, wash, rinse again, and dry each and every plate and bowl as if it had a soul of its own, carefully inspecting it for any brown spots or specks before setting it on the island in the middle of the kitchen. A couple of them were a bit more challenging, one Leslie figured to be dried up tomato paste, whatever that was used for, and another which smelled, to her surprise, like peanut butter. By the time she was taking off the gloves and giving a look at the kitchen clock on the wall, it was fifteen before four o'clock. Hands trembling a little, she power walked out the house, closed the door behind her, and set off the journey to her best friend's house.

--

"You really should do something other than drawing."

Jess looked up from his sketchbook. He hadn't heard her footsteps, and here she was, having seen her only around an hour ago, standing in front of him in his room. "What?" But he only found himself without his sketchbook a second later, the item being snatched away from him.

Leslie gave an exasperated sigh. Why is it that Jess always seems this zoned out when he's drawing?

"C'mon Leslie, give that back. Almost all of my life's work is in there." Leslie raised a sarcastic eyebrow. "I'm not kidding! I even dated all of my pictures on the back of each sheet. Give that back and I'll show you."

Too rare of a chance to miss, since Jess seldom showed his pictures to Leslie without being persuaded twice or more, Leslie gave back the sketchbook. It suddenly seemed considerably larger as it left her hands. Plopping down on the bed, she leaned her body closer to Jess for a better look as Jess opened the first page of his gateway to imagination.

The first picture was a stick figure with three hairs coming out of its overlarge head, standing in the middle of nowhere. On the back, it was dated 5/12/98.

"You were five when you first started drawing?"

"Yeah, I was…" leaning back on his bed, he closed his eyes, as if remembering a good memory. "Back when Ellie and Brenda weren't jerks, the three of us would play all the time. Then, I got my hands on a pencil and things went crazy. Brenda and Ellie were blamed for not stopping me drawing on the walls of the house, but in the end everything worked out. I even got-" Jess patted his sketchbook "-this."

"How many of these do you have?"

"How many of what?" Jess sat up.

"These sketchbooks!"

"Well, there's this one. My whole family knows about this one cause it was my mom who gave it to me. We call it the master sketchbook, cause its so big. There are three others I have, one I got from Dad when I saved all the plants in the greenhouse from utter destruction- trust me, you don't wanna know… the second one was from the first grade art festival for most creativity. Anyways…" The two kids turned their attention back to the "master" sketchbook. "…all of these were just doodling." While Jess was skipping a few pages, Leslie caught a glimpse of some of them; many of them were messy and had black marks everywhere on the page. As the pages turned, the dates got more recent. Finally, they reached 1/25/02. The handwriting for the dates had changed; Leslie figured that Jess's mom or Ellie or Brenda was doing all the dating until Jess got older.

The person in the drawing was much improved than the one back from '98, though it was still very comical. The person had a body, arms, and legs. Everything was out of perspective and the ratio was wrong, but one particular item caught Leslie's eye.

"You drew a girl?" When Jess didn't reply, she took the book from the boy's lap and started flipping the pages. A brief look at all the pictures onward showed a girl with long hair, drawn yellow from a crayon. The dates also had a pattern; each picture was dated a day after the previous, instead of the usual interval of two to three days per drawing. Finally, Leslie arrived at 2/13/02. Jess suddenly snatched the book away from her grasps. Leslie was just about to ask why he did that when she noticed that Jess's face was a bit red. Nevertheless, he closed the book and put it away in his box of precious items, which was sitting on the upper left hand corner of the bed.

"I think we should go down now." Then, without waiting for a reply, Jess got up and quickly walked out of the room stiffly.

Leslie stood up, standing beside the edge of Jess's bed.

Why did Jess take away the book from me? It's not like I was doing anything to it, or being rude…

Maybe I did something unconsciously that upset him.

Or maybe, he just wanted his privacy.

Satisfied to assume that that was what really happened, she headed out the bedroom door and went downstairs, looking for Jess. However, at the middle of the stairs, she stopped in her tracks. Fortunately, no one downstairs noticed her yet, because she just stood there, one foot on a step below another, her left hand gripping the metal bar at the side. Leslie brought an image back to her head.

2/13/02

February 13th, 2002.

February 13th.

Only then had Leslie realized that Valentine's Day was only one page away.