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All I ever wanted was for Juliana Jung to leave me alone.
As if that'll be the day. This girl wouldn't let me out of sight, not even for once. It was as if I a was walking magnet.
And this meant that it didn't take a genius for anyone to know that Juliana Jung, was awfully in love with me. Everybody knew; Her family, my family, the entire neighborhood, and the entire population in our school, or we could even go as far as the entire population of Michigan! For all I knew, everyone knew, that I was Juli's. I was branded for life as Juli Jung's little boyfriend.
This all started when my mother decided to move to Michigan, and that was bye-bye Canada.
Most of the time, people pitied me when I told them that I left Canada, as apparently, that country was a lot better than the US. And I often nodded my head with a frown, though in reality, I couldn't recall a single thing from my life in Canada. I was too young to remember, too young to be sad or scared of changes, because all I could ever care about was the size and color of my new bedroom.
I had no complaints. I was open to starting a new life in Michigan... until I laid my eyes upon the girl next door, Juliana Jung.
It was the 12th of September 1993, a pouring afternoon in Michigan, Ann Arbor.
The day we moved into the new house, it felt like the sky decided to dump an ocean on us. The rain was pouring down in huge, heavy drops, and our car was packed full of boxes and furniture. Dad was already in one of his "I'll just do it myself" moods, which usually meant things were about to get tricky.
Sure enough, as we tried to pull up the driveway, the car's wheels started spinning in the mud. I could feel the whole car sliding backward, and before I knew it, we were stuck. Just like that, our new driveway had swallowed up our car, and Dad was muttering under his breath.
"Guess we'll have to carry everything to the house." He said, sighing as he got out.
So there I was, in the middle of a rainstorm, lugging a box that felt like it weighed a ton. I was just trying to make it to the front door without dropping it when things went from bad to worse.
Out of nowhere, this big dog came charging at me. It was like one of those slow-motion scenes in a movie where you know something bad is about to happen, but there's nothing you can do to stop it. The dog jumped on me, and before I could even yell, I was flat on my back in the mud. The box flew out of my hands, and I was covered head to toe in cold, sticky muck.
"Hey!" I shouted, trying to shove the dog off me, but it was too busy slobbering on my face to care.
Just then, a girl came running toward me, her dark hair sticking to her face from the rain. She had a pink raincoat on, the kind with little flowers, and she looked a bit worried but also a little amused. "I'm so sorry!" She said, gently pulling the dog off me. "That's Champ. He gets a bit too excited sometimes."
