Answer
Jess Aarons, an eleven-year old boy living on a country farm with his parents and four sisters, has nurtured one dream all summer long. When school opens, he longs to be the fastest runner in the third, fourth, and fifth grades. Each day at recess races are organized among those three grades, and now that Jess is in fifth grade and at the top of the ladder, he is confident that he can outrun them all. Bridge to Terabithia opens with his morning training run in the cow pasture. As he runs, he thinks excitedly of the race coming up, and basks in the idea of winning and distinguishing himself in front of everyone. He pictures the amazement of his schoolmates and the admiration of his family.
However, he is called sharply back to reality when his mother calls him in to breakfast, complaining that he has run too long and will have to milk the cow when he has finished breakfast. Coming into the house, he is heckled by his mother and whined at by his older sisters, Ellie (the oldest) and Brenda (the second oldest), who make nuisances of themselves in general by pestering their mother for money for school and bickering over the chores. We also meet May Belle, Jesse's six-year-old sister, who admires Jess a great deal and gets along better with him than do the others, and Joyce Ann, his four-year-old sister who is young enough to be simply a pain in the neck. Brenda and Ellie coax money out of their mother for back-to-school shopping, which leaves Jess to do all the chores, "as usual," he thinks grumpily.
At the end of the chapter, May Belle brings Jess the news that a new family is moving into the "old Perkins place", which is the farm next door to theirs. Jess shrugs off the news and carries on with the chores.
