New York City-2001

Ephram Brown held on to the railing of the boat as hard as he could. He knew that Doug Bloom was going faster then he probably should have, but he really didn't care. It felt good to him to break the rules for once, not that he was an angel but living dangerously wasn't something he normally did. After all, his dad was a world famous neurosurgeon and even though Andy Brown was hardly ever around, Ephram had heard a lot about surgeries that his father had performed on fairly young people because they had lived dangerously and gotten themselves into some serious accident. No this was the perfect kind of dangerous- dangerous only to a point, and fairly safe. Plus SHE was there and that automatically made it perfect.

"Hey Ephram, you ok? I don't think you're gonna go flying off the boat, you're skinny but if I can stay on so can you," SHE said to him smiling. Ephram immediately let go, yeah he'd admit it, SHE had him completely whipped.

Missy Bloom couldn't help but laugh on the inside. It was so obvious to everyone that Ephram had a thing for her, in fact, unbeknownst to the poor guy, it had been the joke of Eighth grade, and now as the two were entering high school, it didn't show any sign of letting up. *Yeah*, she thought, *I can definitely have fun with this one.*

"Will you two stop making eyes at each other? It's getting me seasick," Doug said.

"Maybe that's because your on a boat sailing, waves do that to people," Missy retorted and slapped her brother for his previous statement.

"Hey! I just call it as I see it," Doug said rubbing his shoulder knowing that that slap was going to leave a mark.

"Whatever," Missy said and laid back down on her towel to sun bathe.

"Hey, Missy?" she heard whispered into her ear sometime later.

"Yeah?" She said groggily.

"I was just uh wondering, if you uh I don't know, wanna go see a movie or something um sometime?" the voice belonged to Ephram.

"Yeah, Ephram," Missy smiled. The strange part was she actually meant it. *Hmm this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship* was the last thought she had before drifting back off to sleep. Ephram looked up at the World Trade Center and smirked, it was true, fairytales could come true in New York- the ugly duckling could get the swan.