But when she was born, the doctors and her parents only had the best evidence to go on, and that “evidence” was the anatomy of the newborn in front of them.Īs soon as my friend’s daughter knew how to articulate it, she told her mum that the doctors were wrong. And when I visited, I congratulated my best friend on her new baby boy. A thing I only know because I visited her and her mother in hospital. A thing that doesn’t in any way affect her inherent eight-year-old-girl-ness. A thing that, if you’d only just met her, you’d have no idea about. There’s only one thing about her that’s different from many other eight-year-old girls – a thing that, when you’re with her, you don’t even think about. My friend’s daughter is a typical eight-year-old girl. So far, so exactly like most eight-year-old girls. She has long, straight hair and a beautiful, gappy smile, and impeccable fashion sense. My daughter has just got her into Harry Potter.

She’s a year older than my own daughter and they’re very similar – they both love Disney Princesses, singing and doing the Macarena (I know, right? I never thought that would be the cultural phenomenon that would extend from my teen years to my middle age. From the award-winning author of If I Was Your Girl, Meredith Russo, comes a heart-wrenching and universal story of identity, first love, and fate. Six years of birthdays reveal Eric and Morgan’s destiny as they come together, drift apart, fall in love, and discover who they’re meant to be-and if they’re meant to be together. Maybe one day I’ll be ready to become the person I am inside. With a dad who cares about his football team more than me, a mom I miss more than anything, and a best friend who can never know my biggest secret. MORGAN: I know that every birthday should feel like a new beginning, but I’m trapped in this mixed-up body, in this wrong life, in Nowheresville, Tennessee, on repeat. That there’ll be a day, a minute, a second, where it all falls apart and there’s no turning back the clock. But sometimes I worry that Morgan and I won’t be best friends forever. The years where we stuck by each other’s side-as Morgan’s mom died, as he moved across town, as I joined the football team, as my parents started fighting. There was the minute Morgan and I decided we were best friends for life. Six years…ĮRIC: There was the day we were born. Birthday, Meredith Russo, Flatiron Books, 2019.įrom the publisher: Two best friends.

Birthday russo