If We Kiss, page 16
“Don’t you care that the Board of Ed won’t listen to you?”
“Does anybody listen to you?”
“Well . . .”
“Nobody listens to me.” He shrugged. “You get used to it.”
“Sorry.” I flipped off the karaoke machine and started to drag it back into school. It weighed a ton. The thought of maneuvering it back into my locker just overwhelmed me. I stopped, sat down on it, and felt tears well up. I was tired and alone, defeated and humiliated.
The bell rang to go back in to class, but I couldn’t. I stood up and headed the other direction, to the woods.
thirty-eight
RUNNING AWAY WHILE dragging a karaoke machine is quite a thing.
Running may be an overstatement. I had to stop every few steps to rest, but even so my arms were being pulled out of their sockets and stretched to gorilla length. I was even making gorilla noises. I thought I had sunk to my newest low point, when I heard someone’s footsteps behind me.
I picked up the karaoke machine and made myself look straight ahead and not stop to rest, while lecturing myself on the unlikelihood of a bad guy lurking in Winston Woods, preying on girls who might cut school and walk home through the woods with ungainly luggage. I mean, even a bad guy would have to calculate the low odds of finding such a victim, right? Of course.
But the footsteps were gaining on me. I’m not fast at the best of times. Don’t look back, don’t look back, I told myself.
I could hear him getting closer. I had to make a decision. Keep the karaoke machine for use as a possible weapon of self defense, or lose it and run? I was never much of a singer anyway.
I dropped the handle and sprinted, jumping roots, dodging branches. One branch slashed across my face. I couldn’t hear footsteps anymore, but I knew that could just be because I was breathing so loud. I was running for my life when I heard a loud voice say, “Charlie!”
How did he know my name? Was it on the karaoke machine? Was this a trick? A bad-guy lure to slow down gullible victims?
Again, “CHARLIE!” He was yelling my name into the karaoke microphone so loud he was getting feedback. Some predator—didn’t even know how to use a microphone properly, I thought, and then it occurred to me that there was something familiar about the voice. I stopped and turned around.
“What are you doing?” said the voice. “You forgot your karaoke machine!”
I walked back toward him, and when I came around a big spruce tree, there he was: George.
“Hi,” he said into the microphone. “I’ve always wanted to try one of these things.” He jutted a hip out to one side and sang, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T! Find out what it means to me!”
“What are you doing here?”
“Following you,” he said, as if that were obvious. “You didn’t finish your speech.”
I hung my head. “I didn’t even start. You were there?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“It was awful.”
“Um, yeah. Pretty bad, as speeches go.” He turned off the power and sat down on top of the machine.
I took off my backpack and sat down on it. “Mr. McKinley may as well have printed it. Nobody reads the City News section anyway.”
“That’s true.” He wiped his nose. “Well, at least you’re honest, and brave.”
“I’m so not. I’m not brave and I am certainly not honest. That’s what’s wrong with you, George—you just see what you want to see.”
“Really?” He considered that. “I thought it was my long torso.”
“You thought what was your long torso?”
“The thing that’s wrong with me.” He stood up to show me, even unzipped his coat. He was right. He did have an unusually long torso.
“I hadn’t noticed your torso before, particularly,” I admitted. “It is long. Okay, that and your delusions.”
“My delusions are—long?”
“Are what’s wrong with you.” I had to smile a little.
He rezipped his jacket and sat back down on my karaoke machine. “My delusions about what? You mean, how I think you’re perfect but really you are lying and conniving?”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
“When were you ever lying or conniving?”
“Trust me,” I said.
“How can I trust someone who’s lying and conniving?”
“George.”
“By your own admission.”
“Fine.” I shook my head and formed the snow into a ball. “Believe what you want. You always have.”
“Are you hating yourself because of that speech fiasco on the Bridge? Or because of Kevin Lazarus?”
I crushed the snowball. “What about him?”
“Yeah, I guess that is pretty bad. Okay. You’re right. You’re flawed. How shocking.”
“What? What do you know?”
His mild smile faded away. “Everybody knows.”
I took that in for a second. Whoa. “Everybody?”
“Yeah. I don’t think I’m the one, by the way, who’s deluded about your perfection.”
The woods felt very quiet, and very cold. I wrapped my arms around myself. “Everybody knows what?”
“Well,” he said, smiling mildly again. “Everybody except Tess, I guess.”
“Oh, God. You do know. What do you know?”
He shrugged. “Do you have to buy special CDs for this thing, or does it use the regular ones?”
“George, please.” I crawled over to him. “Everybody knows what about me and Kevin? That I, that we, that I kissed him?”
“Well,” George said. “For starters.”
I put my head in my hands. This could not be happening. “You mean, that morning outside school, everybody knows about? Or what happened in Vermont?”
“Both.” Oh, man. If everybody knew, it meant Kevin had to have told someone. Who? Only Brad, probably. Unless he was, like, bragging about it in the boys’ locker room before gym—hey, guys, you know what? I made out with Charlie while I was going out with Tess. Isn’t that so cool? No. Kevin may be slutty and selfish but he’s not an idiot. But then, how could everybody know?
“How did you—George, please, you have to tell me. How did you hear about it?”
“You told me.”
I was so confused. I looked up at him. “Me? When?”
“Just now.”
“You tricked me?”
He shrugged. “Vermont, huh? That’s gotta be awkward.”
“So, wait. Nobody told you? You just, how did you know to say Kevin?”
“Your feelings for him were, ah, clear. It is so cold out here.” He rubbed his hands together, then stood up and stamped his feet.
“It was that obvious?” I asked him, from down on the ground.
“Yeah,” he said. He held out his mittened hand to help me up. I took it.
I dropped my head against his coat. “You think I should tell Tess?”
“Why would you?”
“If I don’t, somebody else might.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Let’s think. Only you and Kevin know, right? And now of course you’ve told me. I could be paid to keep quiet, so there’s just Kevin. And why would he tell her? So maybe she’ll never find out. How much money do you have?”
“Why?”
“To keep me quiet. This is where we could meet for payments.”
I shoved him. “Shut up. This is . . . George, I’m serious. This is, like, eating me up.”
“The guilt? Because now, on top of it, you cut school. And forced me to cut too, which is a new one for me. I don’t think I’ve ever been out here before. It’s nice.”
“If she finds out from somebody else, she’ll never forgive me.”
“She might not, anyway, even if you tell her.”
“So what should I do?”
George shrugged. “Beats me. Why do you want to tell her so much?”
“Are you kidding?” I shoved him again. “Telling her is the last thing I want to do!”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Are you crazy?”
“The possibility has crossed my mind.”
We just stood there for a minute, facing each other in the cold woods. Puffs of breath from our mouths bumped into each other between us and merged. I looked up at George. He had on his knit cap, green-and-gray patterned, with a pompom on top and ear flaps. His cheeks were pink and his mouth had its usual half smile on it. I looked up into his dark brown eyes and for the first time I saw what my mother had meant. George was actually cute. Really cute. I found myself leaning slightly toward him.
Oh man, I thought. I must be the most horny, hormonal creature on the entire planet.
“Charlie,” he said quietly. “Can I ask you something?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, thinking, whatever else I do today, I cannot kiss George. I cannot get myself any more tangled up than I already am.
“Why did you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Kiss him.”
“Kiss him? Kevin?” I took a step back, looked up at the trees. What a weird question, especially coming from George as I flirted with him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Why?”
Was he mad at me, too? I guess he sort of had a right to be. But this was too weird. Why did I kiss Kevin? “Because, I don’t know. Why are you asking me that?”
“I just wondered.” He turned around and started walking.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Well, I don’t know that many song lyrics, so I guess I’m done with karaoke for the day.”
“George . . .”
He turned around. “Isn’t there someone else you worry will never forgive you?”
“Who?”
He took off his backpack, set it in the snow, unzipped it, and pulled out a black book, a little bigger than an assignment pad. “This is for you.” He tossed the book to me.
I clapped it between my gloved hands. “What is it?”
“A metaphor.” He put on his backpack and walked away.
I looked down at the book in my hands. The cover was leather, smooth and black and blank. I opened it, and when I saw what was inside, I took off my gloves and dropped them on the ground. I sat down on the karaoke machine and looked slowly through the book. The weather report was glued down on each page, torn or cut from the upper right- hand corner of the newspaper, and, above it in George’s scrawly handwriting, the date. Every day, one day after the other. December 16—Today, mainly sunny, less windy, high 46. Tonight, clouds thicken, low 41. Tomorrow, heavier rain arrives. December 17—Today, rain heavy at times, high 39. Tonight, partly cloudy, diminishing winds, low 29. Tomorrow, limited sun . . .
On and on, not a day missing, not even today.
thirty-nine
THE THEME OF Darlene’s party was: My parents aren’t home.
She hadn’t told any of us ahead of time for fear word would get out and people wouldn’t be allowed to go, or her parents would somehow hear about it and cancel their weekend away. “You know the expression ‘Three can keep a secret—if two are dead’?” she asked me, when I got dropped off.
I hadn’t heard of it before. It didn’t do a lot for my mood. I brought my sleeping bag and duffel up to her room. Tess and Jen and I were all planning to stay over. I wasn’t sure how I felt about doing that with her parents not due back until the next day, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby so I kept my mouth shut. I could always call my mom later if necessary. I went back down to help put chips in bowls.
It wasn’t long after most people arrived that the bottle of gin from Darlene’s parents’ liquor cabinet started getting passed around. I had one sip from the Dixie cup Tess poured for me and almost puked on the spot. It tasted like liquid Band-Aids. Other people I guess did not agree.
“You just have to chug it,” Tess told me. “Like this.” She threw her head back and tossed the whole shot of liquor into her mouth at once. Swallowing, she made a terrible face, then smiled. Kevin smiled at her and shook his head, then kissed her lips lightly.
I threw my head back and tossed my drink in, too. It burned, it was bitter, it was disgusting. For a few seconds I was unsure if I’d be able to force myself to swallow it and, once I did that, whether I’d be able to keep it down. But I did. So there.
“See?” Tess said. “Isn’t that better?”
I crumpled my cup before she could pour me any more.
“Let’s bake,” she said. “C’mon, Kevin, let’s see what there is to bake.” He followed her. She flipped her head back to look at me, her blond hair catching the light. “Aren’t you coming, too, Charlie?” She gave me a little pout with her lip-glossed mouth. She still had some on, then. She hadn’t done all that much kissing yet. I knew I was being mean, if only in my own head. I had been internally nasty toward her ever since she went to the library instead of coming with me to the Bridge. As if I had any right to question her loyalty to me. But there it was.
I followed them to the kitchen. Loud music was playing in every room, different songs all smashing together. It was hard to think through the noise and the buzziness that must have come from that horrible stuff she’d made me drink—what was it? Gin. Oh, yeah. Beaten again. I should know I’m no good at gin by now, I thought, which made me smile.
“What?” Kevin was looking at me.
“What what?” I asked him.
“You had a . . .” he whispered. Man, his whispering really kills me. “Nothing. Hey. Mr. McKinley asked me to tell you something.”
I raised my eyebrows at him, unsure whether the heart palpitations had to do with him or with newspaper or both. “What?” I asked.
“He said he re-read your article and if you want to reconsider quitting the paper, he’d be willing to take you back.”
“How grand of him,” I said. “But he won’t publish it, will he?”
“No.” Kevin shrugged. “Who cares? It’s just the school paper, Chuck.”
“Chuck?” Tess asked. “That’s cute. I like it. Chuck. Chuck, help me get up on the counter.” She took another swig of gin, then grabbed my hands, made them into a step for herself, and climbed from my palms onto the counter.
I felt myself grimacing at her behind her back. I tried to shake myself out of it, reminding myself that she was my best friend, and even if this is one side of her I don’t enjoy so much, this fun-loving-party-girl-flirtatious side, well, there are sides of me that are even worse so I should have some patience and tolerance. We all suck, especially me.
She threw down a box of brownie mix. “Score!” She jumped down and crashed lightly into Kevin, who caught her. “Whew,” she said. “Guess I’ve had enough.” She picked up her cup from the counter and handed it to Kevin. “You have it.”
She crossed her arms and leaned back against the counter where I was already leaning with my arms crossed. Her and me, a team, as always. We watched Kevin look into the cup, swirl the clear liquid around a couple times, then chug it. “Ugh,” he said, screwing up his face. “Bleh. That stuff is lighter fluid.”
Tess laughed her wicked laugh and got busy making the brownies. I helped; a bunch of people helped. She has a way of deputizing everybody. She was just bugging me, I guess.
About fifteen minutes after the brownies started baking she opened the oven door to check on them. “I think they’re ready,” she announced, and took them out, her butt up in the air.
“They’re not ready,” I said. I grabbed the box out of the garbage to show her. “It’s thirty-four to thirty-seven minutes, if that’s a nine by nine pan. If it’s eight by eight, it’s forty-two to forty-five. They’ve been in for fifteen! They’re still liquid.”
“They’re still liquid,” she mocked. “Listen to you, Chuckie. When did you become Chef Boyardee?” She was rummaging through drawers. She pulled out a spoon and shoved it into the hot brownie goo. She blew on it a few times, then put it in her mouth.
“That’s disgusting,” I said. “You ruined them.”
“Come on, Betty Crocker,” she said, tossing the spoon onto the counter beside the pan of half-cooked brownies. She looped her arm around my shoulders and leaned toward Kevin, dragging me with her. “Don’t judge your stepsister-to-be when she gets like this, Kevin. Deep down inside, she is not as serious and self-righteous as she seems. It’s just a phase. Charlie can actually be a lot of fun.”
“He knows,” I said. And I felt a wave of cold slide down me, from her arm on my shoulder down to my toes. Cold, cold, cold.
“What?” Tess asked, cocking her head at me.
“He knows I can be fun. Ask him.”
“You know she can be fun? Kevin?”
Kevin looked a little pale. The room had gotten quiet, I think. Everybody seemed to be leaning forward, listening.
“Sure,” he said, shrugging.
Tess leaned toward Kevin and kissed him on the mouth, a teasing little kiss, light but lingering. Her arm was still around me so I was dragged in near the kiss myself. “Mmm. You just need to get kissed, Charlie. You are so tense lately.”
“Shut up, Tess,” I said.
“What? It’s true.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I said.
“Really?” Tess smiled at everybody in the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter? Says the Crusader for the Truth? The Kamikaze Karaoke Truth Crusader?”
She laughed her wicked laugh. I didn’t laugh with her, didn’t crack a smile. I couldn’t look around, knowing all our friends were watching this. Knowing George was behind us by the fridge, and Jennifer over by the pantry. Please stop, I begged Tess silently; hold it in, I begged myself.
“Come on, Charlie, I’m just kidding. Can’t you take a joke? I’m sorry.” She tried to kiss me on my cheek. I pulled away. She picked up Kevin’s hand and held it. “She won’t even kiss me. She’s never going to kiss anybody. She is purity itself.” She leaned in to kiss him again.
“That’s not true,” I said.
Tess pulled her mouth away from Kevin’s, or maybe he pulled away from her. I couldn’t really tell.
“Really?” Tess asked. “Who are you going to kiss?”
“Kevin.”
Her face went white and, though she was trying to smile, the effort showed more than her teeth.
