17 First Kisses (2 page)

“Hey!” We both burst into giggles.

Megan and I are always making pacts. Some silly, some vitally important.

Pact #1: We will be best friends forever (sealed with a pinky swear in seventh grade).

Pact #2: We will never let each other kiss dorky boys (decided after I confessed the whole horrible experience with Steven Lippert).

Pact #3: We will escape from Pine Bluff and live out our dreams in the wide world beyond (we went through a poetic phase in tenth grade).

Pact #4: We will do everything we can to remedy our reputations as sluts/bitches (made after the Yoko Ono Incident—we've pretty much fixed our reps since then).

Megan clears her throat. “Pact number five will be all about making something different happen. So for you, that means meeting a new boy. Someone worth breaking your no-kiss streak for.”

“Sounds good to me. What are you going to do?”

“I'm going to win queen for homecoming and prom.”

“You're on homecoming every year.”

“Yeah, but this is more than just homecoming court. This is queen. For both homecoming
and
prom. People almost never get the double crown.”

I snort. “I can't believe we're about to make a pact about the double crown.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Your half of the pact is about boys, and you're mocking me about prom queen?”

I hold up my hands. “Fair enough.”

“Anyway, you know how much I love winning. So. Pact number five: I will make something different happen this year,” says Megan, as we arrange our hands in the pinky-swear position.

“Pact number five: I will make something different happen this year,” I repeat. Then I add, “Before I die of boredom.”

 

Kiss #1 xoxo

My first kiss was with the most popular guy in school. For most girls, in most towns, this would be a good thing. Not for me.

Every high school has that popular boy who is not only an all-American athlete and devastatingly hot, but also a genuine, nice guy. Well, Buck isn't like that. I mean, yes, he
is
good at sports, and he
does
look like an Abercrombie model (for a parallel-universe Abercrombie that sells rebel flags and jorts), but he's a jerk. He's the guy who still thinks it's funny to tape “I play with my instrument daily” signs to the backs of the band kids. He's the guy who tried to crawl through the ceiling
Mission: Impossible
-style to place a video camera over the girls' locker room (fortunately, he crashed through the tiles and landed on a desk in Mrs. Frankowski's history class). He's that guy.

Every time I see him, I ask myself why (Why?!) my first kiss had to be with him. It was the summer Megan McQueen moved into the neighborhood.

I'm with the boys riding our newly de-training-wheeled bikes, while the other girls play with Megan's Barbie Dream House on a blanket in her driveway. Our subdivision is one of the very first developments in town, the kind with nearly identical houses arranged neatly among the dogwood trees. We circle the cul-de-sac, sometimes popping feeble wheelies, sometimes letting go of the handlebars for a hot second. Then Buck gets
the genius idea that we should try to ride down the Hill.

In reality this hill isn't even that steep, but in my seven-year-old eyes it looms like Mount Everest. Many a kid has ridden up the Hill, only to have to turn around and walk their bike back down in shame when they chicken out. It is common knowledge that Glenn Baker's big brother broke his leg on the Hill. The youngest person to ever make it down was a third grader, and a biking prodigy at that.

But before we know it, all five of us are at the top, staring down in petrification at the meanest stretch of blacktop we have ever seen.

“Who wants to go first?” Buck waits for one of us to respond. “Nobody?”

My best friend, Sam, looks from Buck to the street, then back again. “I don't think this is such a good idea.”

“Well, we knew you weren't going to try it. You wouldn't make it ten feet. Chunker,” says Jimmy, his chest puffed out.

“Do
you
want to try it?” asks Sam.

Jimmy's chest deflates. “No.” He doesn't want to look like a wuss in front of Buck, so he adds, “What about you, Glenn?”

“No way. I'm not doing it. That's how my brother broke his leg. Mom would kill me.”

“Fine. I'll do it.” Buck hikes one leg over his bike.

“And I'll go next,” I say.

Jimmy laughs. “CJ, you can't do it. You're a girl.”

“So. I'm still tougher than you.”

Before Jimmy can reply, Buck kicks off. Our eyes glue
themselves to his bike as it plummets down the Hill. He is going fast. Maybe too fast. I cringe. Just when I think his bike will skip over the curb and into Mrs. McQueen's azaleas, he pulls his handlebars into a turn that sends him careening in the opposite direction across the blacktop without falling. He's done it. The four of us jump up and down and holler.

I decide to push off before Jimmy can start in on me. My bike gathers speed quickly until the neighborhood whisks by in flashes. My hair whips around against my face. My heart rate is going off-the-charts crazy, but as long as I don't crash or pee my pants, this will be a raging success. I can't let the fear take over, or I
will
crash. After what seems like an eternity of free fall, I slingshot around the cul-de-sac and skid to an ugly stop beside Buck. No crashing. No peeing.

“You are the coolest girl I know,” Buck says, which is pretty much the highest compliment you can get from a seven-year-old boy.

I blush and look at my sneakers, and when I look up again, Buck's face is right in front of mine. He kisses me. Right on the lips. Right in front of everyone. I think maybe he is my boyfriend now. I can't stop smiling. Until I hear it.

“Ah-woo-woo.”

Followed closely by the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song.

And “Buck has a giiiirlfriend.”

Jimmy runs toward us, leading the insult parade with Glenn at his side. Sam trails behind, huffing and wheezing but not yelling anything. The full weight of what he did seems to sink into
Buck's brain all at once. The look of glowing admiration on his face twists into one of discomfort, and then anger.

“She's not my girlfriend. She's just a stupid girl.”

He grabs me by the shoulders and pushes me. Hard. I stagger backward, the heel of one sneaker catching in the spokes of my bike, which is lying on the ground behind me. My butt hits the road with a thunk, and the asphalt scrapes all the skin off my elbows.

“You're not supposed to push girls, doofus,” says Sam, his chubby face red from the run down the Hill.

“What are you gonna do about it, lardo?”

Sam shakes his head, then helps me up and pushes my bike back to my house while I walk alongside him with tears welling in my eyes.

“I hate Buck,” he says.

I can't even answer. The mortification of being kissed, teased, and knocked down in a span of two minutes is just too much for my seven-year-old psyche to handle. Sam and I clatter downstairs to Mama's basement studio, where she photographs other people's babies for them. She has a knack for making even the ugly ones look cute.

Later, while my mom applies Neosporin, she explains that sometimes boys are mean to you because they like you. If I knew then what I know now, I would have called BS.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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A
ll day at school I think about the pact I made with Megan, right up until the last bell rings and it's time to go to soccer scrimmage. I weave through packed halls, past Buck Bronson (Kiss #1), who is shoving some scrawny freshman boy into the girls' bathroom, and Steven Lippert (Kiss #7), who is picking his nose and wiping it on the bottom of his tuba case. He's a complete tool, and I never would have let him kiss me had I not been under extreme emotional duress at the time of said kiss.

I change clothes at warp speed because I like being first to the park and having extra warm-up time. I've vowed to make this year different, to make my next kiss count. But seeing Steven and Buck just reinforces how desperate and impossible my situation
is. I shake my head as I walk through the entrance to Salt Lick Park, a Christmas tree farm on my right, acres and acres of unused fields on my left. I have no idea how I'm going to pull off my end of the pact.

And that's when I see him.

Bouncing a soccer ball from foot to foot and looking so perfectly gorgeous, I half expect to see a halo of light descending over midfield. What can I say? Nothing is hotter than a boy in soccer gear. I think it's the shin guards that do it for me.

He's wearing this black, vintage Felix the Cat tee, totally different from the redneck-prepster look most of the guys at school have. In fact, he doesn't look like he's from around here at all. I start to wonder if I've wished him into existence. Then I realize that (a) I've stopped walking, and (b) I'm staring (in what is probably a really dorky and obvious way), so I jog over and say hi.

“I'm Claire.”

The boy kicks his ball into the air and catches it with one arm. “I'm Luke, uh, Dawson.”

He smiles and holds out his hand. I try to ignore the giddy feeling I get when our palms touch.

“Are you here for the scrimmage?” I ask. Maybe he goes to school in the next town over.

“Nope, just messing around.” He shifts from foot to foot and flicks his strawberry-blond hair out of his eyes. “Is there a game starting soon? Do I need to clear out?”

“No! I mean, it's fine. It's not an official game or anything. The high school girls' and guys' teams get together and play
pickup games during the off-season so we don't get rusty.”

“You mean Rutherford High School?”

“Uh-huh. There's just the one.”

“Cool. I'm starting at Rutherford tomorrow.” He tosses the ball into the air and maneuvers under it so it bounces off his forehead.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Just transferred in from Miami,” he says, still heading the ball.

Score. A new student means he's never dated, crushed on, or stalked my best friend. If you made a Venn diagram of all the hot guys at school and all the guys Megan has dated, you'd have about three guys left. And speaking of hot-guy Venn diagrams, if you made one with all the hot guys at school and all the guys who are smart, there'd be, like, four guys who are in that middle overlapping section, two of whom I already kissed in a debacle that earned me the Yoko Ono nickname.

“What year are you?” With my luck, he'll be a really tall freshman.

“I'm a senior.”

“Me too. Wow, you had to switch schools in the middle of your senior year?” We only started a few weeks ago, but still.

He nods, and the ball bounces off his head at a funny angle. He starts passing it from hand to hand in circles around his waist, and I can't help but smile at his inability to hold still.

“Yeah, it kind of sucks, but my dad's in the military, so I'm used to making friends fast.” He shrugs. “At least I got to spend
middle school in Germany.”

“You did? That's awesome.”

I am genuinely impressed. Our eight-stoplight town is halfway between Atlanta and Alabama and all the way redneck. Most of the kids at school have all the culture and ambition of sea monkeys, so it's nice to meet someone else who realizes there's a whole world out there.

“So, do you think it's cool if I stay for the scrimmage?”

“Definitely. It's not for another twenty minutes, though. We could play one-on-one while we wait? First to five wins?” This guy may be cute, but the true test is how he performs in this soccer game.

He gives me a confident shrug and tosses me the ball. “Sure. Ladies first.”

I don't like the way he's standing there, all cocky and sure of himself, so I set the ball down and give it a few dainty taps. His stance relaxes, the way it would if you suddenly realized your opponent was five years old.

This is going to be too easy.

I cut to the left, and before he has time to think
I just got beat by a girl,
I'm past him and I kick a straight shot to the back of the goal. Too. Easy. His eyebrows rise into his hairline. I know that look. It's the face people make when they realize how good I am. I live for that look.

“Ohhh . . . ,” says Luke as I run to retrieve the ball. “I didn't realize I was playing with a shark.”

I hand him the ball with a smirk. “Maybe.”

“It's cool. I like a girl who can play.” He winks at me, and I'm momentarily startled by his eyes. They're blue and dreamy and everything, but there's something else, something shuttered, and that's the part I find myself strangely drawn to. If my life were one of those paranormal romances, he would be the guy that turns out to be a were-manatee or whatever.

And because I'm so busy mooning over said manatee eyes, Luke gains the split-second advantage he needs to get around me and score. Oh, it is on.

I have to earn my next point, with fakes and spin moves and every trick in my arsenal. Luke isn't cutting me any slack, and I'm glad. I could never respect a guy who did. Plus, I kind of like the way he's all up in my personal space. I finally psych him out with a quick Cruyff turn, and my shot just makes it.

Then it's Luke's turn. He manages to maneuver around me and, not to be outdone, crosses one leg behind the other when he kicks the ball into the goal. It is a showy, showy move.

My mouth hangs open. “Seriously? Did you just Rabona me?”

He fixes me with a charming smile, dimples included. Whew. Any second now his new-guy glow will wear off, and I'll realize he has poor dental hygiene and a hunchback, but I'm swooning over those dimples until then.