If We Kiss, page 6
If only my main worry was my lack of a headband.
Tess pulled off her underwear from under her huge nightshirt, yanked the band of it down around her ears, and tucked in her hair. She even looked pretty like that. Odd, for sure, but still pretty. She always does. I couldn’t help staring.
“What?” She turned and looked at me, all matter-of-fact. “Otherwise my hair will get wet when I wash my face. What do you do?”
What do I do? It was too big a question. What I don’t do is stand in my bathroom with underwear on my head, two tufts of hair sprouting up from the leg holes, and water dripping off my face. Just when I thought nothing could seem funny to me, though, Tess does something like this. I shrugged.
“Let’s talk about you kissing instead,” she said, lathering up her face with her special face stuff from Filene’s.
“Me?”
“When are you going to put poor George out of his misery and kiss him?”
I groaned and splashed some water on my own face.
“Why are you so scared to kiss? It’s nice. You’ll like it, I think.”
I grabbed a towel.
“Aren’t you going to at least exfoliate?” she asked.
“That’s what it always comes down to in life, isn’t it? Kiss or exfoliate.” I shook my head. “I’m going to bed.”
“You just have to get your first kiss behind you, Charlie. Then you’ll see what I mean.”
When she got to my room (underpants mercifully back where they belong, I had to assume, or at least off her head) we talked for a while about why Kevin had called her at my house and if that was romantic or creepy. I said I thought it was just medium. I think she was hoping I’d vote for romantic. She has not been in love since last Memorial Day weekend, with Luke Sorenson, and that was really short-lived, didn’t even last through that Monday. Elliot Blumenfeld was her first love, last fall. Then in January it was Widge Wainwright, which I didn’t get at all; he is so beige. She had fallen out of love with him by February second but held out until the fourteenth, then broke up with him when he didn’t even give her a card, never mind candy, for Valentine’s Day.
While she was talking, I was thinking that I really should tell her I already had gotten my first kiss behind me, and that it changed nothing, really. But then she’d be so mad at me for not telling her earlier, maybe she’d never forgive me. And the last thing I needed right then was to lose my best friend. I had crossed a line, at some point, by not telling her already. It never happened, I reminded myself; if Kevin ever says it did, I can just say “you wish” or something mature like that.
“I think he might be the one,” Tess was saying.
“Who’s the one? The one what?”
“Kevin,” she said. “The real one for me, the one I’m destined to be with forever, or at least through high school.”
“Really?”
“The one I’ll tell my kids about someday. There’s real tragedy in his eyes, you know what I mean?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said, staring at the ceiling from down on the air mattress. “Sort of. You mean how he looks calm and intense at the same time?”
She lifted her head and rested it on her hand, her elbow bobbing on the mattress. “Exactly! I can’t believe you just said that. Do you think it’s because his mom ran away from home to be a fighter pilot?”
“Is that really true?” I knew the rumor, of course; everybody did. I couldn’t help suspecting it was probably both simpler and more complicated—maybe Kevin’s parents, like my own, had at some point just stopped loving each other.
“Yes, it’s totally true,” Tess said. “She’s in the Middle East, I heard—Jennifer’s father is friends with Kevin’s father, and Jennifer told me, like, last week. Kevin’s mom is in, um, whatever—one of those countries that starts with an I, totally flying jets. Isn’t that cool, in a way? I mean, sucks for the kids, but still. If it’s her passion, what she dreamed of doing all her life, you know? Like when other little girls were pretending to be Cinderella, she was totally, like, bombing enemy aircraft in her backyard. Right? I have the whole story worked out in my head.”
“So I see,” I said. Tess always makes up a whole story for everything. It’s one of the best things about a sleepover with her. She has life stories worked out for all the cafeteria ladies, old men in the mall, everybody. “So then what happened?” I asked. “Why did she get married and have kids?”
“Oh, isn’t that so obvious and sad?” Tess sat up, psyched. “She felt all this pressure to conform, maybe from her mother or friends or an older sister—yes, I think it was an older sister, who was more traditional and already happily married—and then of course she met Kevin’s father. I mean, he is hot, right?”
My stomach actually made a noise.
“Your guts know it,” Tess said, pointing. “He’s old and he’s still a hottie, so you can imagine how hot he was when he was young. So she met him and they fell in love and you know she was all off balance, falling in love with someone like that. So she tried to be ordinary, make her parents proud and happy like her sister had, tried to forget flying and her own career and all and maybe he insisted on it, Kevin’s father—he wanted her to stay home and make three-things-on-a-plate dinners and go to PTA meetings. So she tried to be that person but all her dreams, when she fell into her insomniac sleep at night, were fighter pilot dreams and eventually she just couldn’t fake it anymore; she just couldn’t be someone she wasn’t, even for the man she loved. Did you know Kevin has a little sister? Amanda, I think.”
“Samantha,” I said accidentally. I was so caught up in the story of this woman’s life, I wanted to hear how it turned out.
“Right. Samantha. The mom supposedly left when the little girl was, like, two. Talk about messing a kid up. But maybe being abandoned by his mother is kind of what makes Kevin so passionate, you know?”
“Tess!”
“What?”
“She didn’t abandon . . . That didn’t even . . . You’re making it all up.”
“So?”
“So you can’t know what really happened between them. Besides, that is such a mean way to put it. Abandoned?”
“Okay, I wasn’t auditioning to be his therapist. He’s not even here. I was complimenting him anyway, Miss Protector of the Kevin.”
I hit her with my pillow.
Tess flipped over onto her stomach and stuffed my pillow under her arms. “Here’s the thing. I wish you’d kissed him, too.”
I froze. What? “You do?”
“So you’d know what I mean. Because he does this thing, when he kisses, or at least when he kissed me at your party.”
“What?”
“Promise you won’t mock me,” she said.
“I won’t,” I promised. “I swear. What did he do?”
“He kind of, like, almost groaned a little when he kissed me.”
His secret hum-sigh. No. That was only for me. I tried to swallow, unable to speak.
“You know what I mean?” Tess asked. “It’s hard to explain.” She imitated it, the sound Kevin made when he kissed me. He made it with her, too, I guess. So either he makes that private sound of longing with every girl he kisses or every boy does that. It was hard not to be overwhelmed with disappointment.
“Do you think that’s weird? Or good?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted.
“Oh, Charlie, you really have to start kissing so we can discuss this better.”
I closed my eyes.
“At Kevin’s party.” Tess sat up and leaned toward me. “Kiss George next week at Kevin’s party.”
“Tess . . .”
“Come on,” Tess prodded. “I’ll kiss Kevin and you kiss George. Let’s make a pact.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m just not that into kissing, maybe.”
“You are crazy,” Tess said, grabbing me by the shoulders. Her face was maybe three millimeters from mine. “Listen to me. Kissing is the best thing ever invented.”
She had a look of total seriousness on her face. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to do. I stayed very still.
She clonked her forehead against mine and cracked a smile. “With the possible exception of gummy bears,” she added.
She scrunched her nose, then flipped over and snuggled down into her pillow. “So it’s a pact then. We kiss them on Halloween. No backing out.”
She closed her eyes. In a minute I heard her breathing slow into sleep. I stared at the ceiling and thought about her boyfriend again, despite my recent and sacred personal vow not to.
thirteen
TESS WANTED ME to go as half a banana and she’d be the other half, so together we’d be, obviously, a banana—split. But I’d already had another idea so she did the banana thing with Jennifer. I went as a lawn: green turtleneck, green cords, and a pink flamingo Beanie Baby pinned to my shoulder. We loved ourselves, how witty we were. Darlene wanted to come over before the party, too, so I said sure, despite dreading that she’d be dressed, as usual, as a prostitute. But no, she pulled through. She had on a whole roll of tinfoil, poufed out over her miniskirt, and a beret with a long white paper coming out the top that said “La Hershey La Hershey” on it.
“I give up,” I said.
“I’m a French kiss!”
Even Jennifer had to admit that was pretty good.
My mom came down in the witch’s hat that she wears every Halloween, and a new black sweater with her black jeans and boots.
“Is that new?” I asked.
“Yes,” Mom said, running her hand over her stomach. “Thanks for noticing.”
I hadn’t intended it as a compliment, though the sweater did make her look good. Curvy. My father’s wife, Suzie, wears blouses and floral prints that hang nowhere near her body. I used to like it that my mom was less inhibited than Suzie.
“Can we just go?” I asked.
Tess smirked at me. “Getting psyched, huh?”
I ignored that. She had mentioned our kissing pact a couple of times and though I tried to point out that I hadn’t officially agreed, Tess was, like, have your lawyer call me, you’re not getting out of the pact, you wimp, so you’d better practice puckering.
We piled into the car. I sat in front. Mom put on Bruce Springsteen, who was moaning “If you love me tonight I promise I’ll love you forever.” More pacts. I closed my eyes.
“Mom?”
She said nothing but turned down the music a bit.
“You’re not staying, are you? At the party?”
“I thought I might,” she answered. “It’s a family party, adults as well as kids. That’s what I heard. All ages welcome.”
Tess and Darlene groaned in the backseat.
“No, Mom, it’s not.”
“But . . .”
“Mom, we’re in ninth grade!”
“Yes, Charlotte, I am aware of that, but . . .”
“Forget it.” I kept my eyes closed and concentrated on the sound of the saxophone. I played saxophone in middle school and it never sounded remotely like that.
“Is that okay?” my mother asked me quietly. “If I stay?”
No. Obviously, not.
But I said nothing. What more could I say? She obviously didn’t care when I said it was NOT a party for her, it was for me, us, the kids.
I didn’t open my eyes until she stopped the car and put it into park. My friends were already spilling out the back doors.
“Your costume is great,” Mom whispered.
“Thanks,” I grumbled.
“Do I look okay?” she asked.
I opened my door and turned away from her.
“I mean I know it’s hackneyed,” she said. “But I was thinking that was kind of the fun of it, unless people don’t get it and think it’s just unimaginative . . .”
“Which people?” I got out and shut the door, not really wanting to hear her answer.
I caught up to my friends and went up the walk to the back door. Tess said, “You okay?”
I shrugged.
“My mother would never want to be at a party with me,” Darlene said.
“Lucky,” I said.
“You think?” Darlene asked.
“Let’s just go in,” Jennifer suggested, so we did. I don’t think they really wanted to show up at the party with my mom either, so we let the door close behind us as Mom was heading up the walk. Too bad if that’s rude, I decided.
The party was in the room I think was supposed to be the dining room, except that instead of a dining table there was a pool table. I spotted George as soon as I got there. Well, he was pretty hard to miss. George is not what you’d call a skinny guy, though he is definitely not fat; he told me once that his mother said he has big bones. He was wearing a white turtleneck that was all bulged out by a pillow or two underneath, and a furry panda bear hat tied onto his head. He gave me a big smile and headed toward me.
“It’s gonna be hard to kiss him past all that,” Tess whispered. “You’ll have to make him sit down.”
“Shut up,” I said, scanning the room, subtly I hoped, for Kevin. I located him beside the drinks table, dressed as a vampire. It was just black pants, white button-down shirt, red bow tie, his hair slicked back with gel, and some makeup—whitened skin, black around his eyes, red on his mouth. In a sane state of mind I would have dismissed that get-up as being as hackneyed as my mother’s witch suit, but my hormones had apparently knocked me semiconscious: He looked so hot my mouth dropped open.
“Hey,” George said.
He startled me. I’d forgotten him again.
“What?” I sounded defensive, even to myself, and beside me Jennifer jumped at the shrillness of my voice.
“Good article,” George said.
“Right.”
“It was.”
“I couldn’t even find it,” I said truthfully. I had had to read through the entire paper twice, once at school and later at home, before I could find my piece. It had been that kind of week.
“Come on,” George said. “It was there.”
“It was a tiny block, with no byline.” I had intended to sound confident and shrugging so the poutiness of my own voice surprised me.
George touched my shoulder. “Well . . .”
“And it had almost no information—only the date, time, and location of the board meeting.” Penelope had cut all my musings and filler. It was basically more of a notice than an article. “How did you even know it was mine?”
“You told me you were covering it,” he said. “So I looked.”
“Nice party,” I commented to change the subject.
“Yeah, I guess. You look, um, nice. Good. As always. But, um, what are you dressed as?”
“A lawn.”
“A lawn?”
“Yeah. Get it?”
“With a Beanie Baby left out on it?”
“A flamingo. Get it? Like, you know, when people put plastic flamingos on their lawns?”
“Who does?”
“Some people,” I said, trying to look past him at Kevin, who wasn’t budging from his spot across the room.
“Really? Plastic flamingos? On their lawns? Why would people do that?”
“I don’t know, George. What are you supposed to be?”
He tilted his head and tried to make eye contact with me. “A panda.”
“Oh,” I said, hating myself for being such a bitch. “Good one.”
He stood there for another second or two, then said, “Thanks.” When I still wouldn’t look at him, he looked away, then asked, “You see the weather report today?”
“The what?” I asked. Then remembering having been all freaked out on the phone with him about the weather report and its lack of long-term significance, I said, “No.” I’d figured he wasn’t even listening that day. I wasn’t really talking about the weather report then, anyway. It was just a metaphor, as my English teacher, Ms. Lendzion, would say, for how bad it was that Kevin liked me for such a short time I hardly got to enjoy it. Not that I was about to explain that to George, my boyfriend. Boys don’t get metaphors.
“Oh,” he said, and kept standing there, with his face turned away.
Then I felt guilty for acting that rude, so I reluctantly asked, “Why did you want to know about the weather?”
“I saw it,” George said. “The weather report.”
“Yeah?” I said, thinking nastily, And your point is?
“Yeah,” he said. “Right up there on the top corner of the newspaper.”
I so did not want to talk about the weather. “Oh,” I said. “Is there anything we should know about tomorrow’s weather, then? Because I guess it’s too late for today.”
“Nope,” he said. “Nothing at all. Just . . .” But he didn’t say anything else and after a minute he walked away.
“Ouch,” Jennifer whispered.
I let out my breath. “I hate parties,” I whispered.
“Let’s get drinks,” Tess whispered to me.
She grabbed my belt loop but I hung back.
“Lighten up, drama queen,” she whispered. “Come on.”
“I’ll go,” Darlene said.
“Okay.” Tess shot me a look and crossed the room with her. Jennifer and I leaned our backs against the wall for a few minutes, watching the girls who had the guts to talk to the boys. I couldn’t hear what Tess was saying or see her face, so I just stared at Kevin’s, and watched a slow, sexy smile spread across his mouth to reveal plastic white fang teeth.
A little sound escaped from somewhere in my throat.
I watched him looking at Tess. It was all I could do to stay upright.
“Yeah,” Jennifer said. “Want to find the bathroom?”
I nodded and pushed off from the wall. But what I should’ve known by then, after what happened at my own party, was that you never know what you might find around a corner at a party.
fourteen
WE WANDERED AROUND for a few minutes, but there wasn’t an obvious bathroom. Kevin’s house is all on one level, very modern-looking. We were about to head down a hallway when Kevin’s best friend, Brad, rounded the corner. He is a nut. He was dressed as a pregnant cheerleader. “Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded.
