17 First Kisses (3 page)

I fake glare at him. “You just wait.”

I drop the ball and take off, juking from left to right, racking my brain for a move that will top his. Luke's on me in a second, stealing the ball away. Crap. I should have been more worried about winning than getting fancy. Crap, crap, crap. I mark him
with my hand against his shoulder, determined to steal the ball back. He makes a tiny mistake, and I lash out, kicking it away from him. He'll be on me again, so I have to hurry. I turn, putting on a burst of speed, my arm flailing behind me . . . and I feel something crunch against my elbow.

I turn to see that the something was Luke's nose. It's bleeding. Like a faucet.

“Ohmygosh, I'm so sorry.”

“It's okay,” he says with his hand cupped over his face.

I run over to my bag, scrambling for something, anything, to stop the bleeding.

A crumpled receipt, some gum wrappers, a couple of movie tickets. Useless. My hand brushes against something in the side pocket, but I can't use that. It would be mortifying. I give my bag a second sweep, hoping a Kleenex or something will magically appear, but there's nothing. I know what I have to do.

I reach into the side pocket, cringing as I unwrap it.

Luke's eyes bulge. “Is that what I think it is?”

“I don't have anything else!”

And then I wrap one hand around the neck of the cutest boy I've ever met and shove a tampon up his nose.

“I'm
really
sorry,” I say for the billionth time as Luke and I shuffle through the tall grass lining the road.

He lives on the opposite side of the park from me, past the Christmas tree farm, but it's not
that
far, and I couldn't very well let him walk home alone after doing him bodily harm, even if it
does mean missing the first part of the scrimmage.

“It's okay,” he says, gingerly patting at his swollen face. “I promise. I'll be fine.”

So we walk past row after row of Fraser fir and Leyland cypress that seem so out of place in the September sun, me feeling extremely mortified and him plodding along with tampon strings dangling from his nose. Eventually we talk about things other than Luke's face and my apologies for elbowing it. I'm surprised by how easy it is, talking with him.

He makes an abrupt stop at one of the first driveways off the main road. I stop too, automatically. Neither of us speaks for a minute, and he looks oddly uncomfortable.

“So, this is me,” he says, gesturing to a ranch-style brick house with green shutters.

“Oh. Um—” I take a tentative step into the driveway, and he squares his shoulders.

“I should go.” He turns toward the house. A house I am apparently not invited into. I thought things were going so well.

I hear people talking inside.

“I know I packed it,” says a woman's voice, sweet and quiet.

And then a man's voice, so angry it makes me shiver in the summer heat. “Well, then FUCKING FIND IT. I can't work without my laptop.”

My eyes meet Luke's. The darkness I thought I saw before is back. It all makes sense. Stopping at the driveway. His stiff posture. I act the same way when I'm trying to keep people from meeting my family. I feel a burst of sympathy, but also relief. That
I'm not the only one.

Luke's shoulders slump. “I better go.”

I can't let him leave like that. Before I can even think about what I'm doing, I grab his sleeve.

“It's okay,” I tell him. It's just two words, but I'm trying to say so much more.
It's okay that I just heard your dad yell at your mom. It's okay that your family might be every bit as screwed up as mine. I get you.

Before he turns back to the house, the right side of his mouth curves into a smile. “Cool.”

I think he gets me too.

 

Kiss #2 xoxo

I grab another Cherry Coke from the cooler. It's one of those old-fashioned bottles, the glass frosty and flecked with ice like in the commercials. Sam and I take turns sucking down huge gulps and letting out exaggerated “ahhh” sounds after each one. It is our first girl-boy party, and I'm wearing my best Adidas shorts and matching flip-flops for the occasion.

I look around the finished basement, at the guys in one corner huddled around the PlayStation like it's a golden calf, and the girls in another corner huddled around Megan McQueen. At my middle school, there are four girls from each grade who are the appointed royalty over the rest of the school. They're called the Crown Society, or the Crownies for short, and each class has them. Well, the seventh and eighth graders have them. Sixth graders are too lowly to get royalty. So all year, all the sixth-grade girls (the dumb, superficial ones, at least) spend all their time sucking up to the seventh- and eighth-grade Crownies because, on the last day of sixth grade, they'll pick the four new Crownies. And then you're pretty much set for life. Or at least until eighth-grade graduation.

The picks haven't gone out yet, but Megan is obviously going to be on the list. She has perfectly long, perfectly straight, perfectly blond hair and huge blue eyes, and she wears the coolest clothes, and sometimes the seventh-grade Crownies
even let her sit with them during assembly. The competition is getting desperate now that it's the final month of sixth grade. Last week Britney even dyed her hair a hideous platinum color—probably in an attempt to look more like Megan.

So the girls are falling all over themselves trying to see who can scoot her bar stool closest to Megan's. I know Sam's cooler than any of them, but sometimes, when they cluster in a circle like that, I kind of wish I weren't on the outside. I was expecting a lot more from my first boy-girl party. I mean, it's all people have talked about since the invitations went out. Apparently, Amberly feels the same way, because she struts to the middle of the room with her empty Coke bottle and announces in a loud voice, “Who wants to play spin the bottle?”

“Shh!” Britney's eyes practically pop out of her head.

She points upstairs, where her mom and dad are drinking margaritas with some of the other parents. Amberly rolls her eyes.

“Who wants to play spin the bottle?” she whispers.

The boys are in. Amberly was the first girl in our class to get boobs, so they'll do anything she says. Someone's head explodes on screen behind them, and they don't even notice. They drift toward Amberly like they're zombies and she's the only person in the room with a brain.

“We can't play if I'm the only girl,” she giggles, even though you know she would. That girl is tra-shy.

“I'll play.”

Megan hops off her bar stool, smooths her pink shorts, and
joins the circle. Once she's decreed that it's cool to play, the other girls follow. Sam and I look at each other, shrug, and sit down too. Amberly lists off the rules.

“You have to sit boy/girl. And you have to kiss whichever person of the opposite sex the bottle points closest to. On the lips, obviously.”

There's some giggling and whispering and rearranging as per the rules, and I'm relieved to see at least half of the people in the circle look as terrified as I feel.

Amberly goes first, and the bottle stops on Jimmy Marcus. I think he's grosser than gross, but I watch her every move anyway because I don't think my kiss in second grade counts for anything, and Amberly really seems to know what she's doing. She slinks across the floor like it's no big deal and plants her lips right on his, their heads tilting in perfect unison. They make it look deceptively easy, but I keep worrying about the most random things. Like how two-thirds of people turn their head to the right, so chances are the guy I kiss will too, but what if he's one of the 33 percent who turn left? Will our noses hit? Will we do a weird head-bobbing dance while everyone laughs at us?

The bottle ticks its way around the circle to everyone else. I get more and more nervous the closer it gets to my turn. I haven't had to kiss anyone yet. The boys' turns seem to magically land on Megan and Amberly. Then someone places the bottle in front of me, and everyone stares and waits for me to pick it up.

I lean over and put one hand on the neck and one hand on
the bottom. Before I spin, I think for a second about who I want it to land on, and Sam's face pops into my head. I shove the thought away. He's my best friend.

Everyone is waiting, so I hurry up and spin. The bottle loops around and around. As on every other turn, the circle collectively sucks in its breath on the last revolution. Anyone but Buck! The opening of the bottle sputters to a stop in front of Glenn Baker's kneecap. Whew. That's not so bad. Glenn is half black and half Irish. He has creamy brown skin and eyes so clear and blue you look into them expecting to see a bottom. He's beautiful even though he's a boy.

Glenn nervously licks his lips, but his eyes smile at me. My stomach does a backflip. As I crawl toward him, people lean forward on either side, but I try not to think about that.

When I kiss him, I don't feel fireworks or anything, but his lips do feel nice, and at least he isn't slobbering on me. I've never experienced this kind of kiss—a
real
kiss—and I'm starting to wonder if they all make you feel light-headed like this, when Glenn pulls away, leaving me sucking at the air like a goldfish. Then it's someone else's turn.

I catch Glenn sneaking glances at me for the rest of the game, or at least I hope I do. Now that we've kissed, he seems different, taller maybe. After the bottle gets passed around the circle once, people start drifting away from the group. Amberly pulls Buck away by the hand, and they start making out in a corner.

I could do that
, I think as I wash my hands in the bathroom.
I could take Glenn's hand and lead him to a dark corner.
The longer I think about the idea, the better it sounds. As I step out of the bathroom, I think about the way his lips felt. I'm wondering how his hand would feel in mine as I turn toward the party and see him sitting on the sofa with Megan in his lap. His fingers twisted into her perfect hair. Locking lips like they are the only people in the room.

All I can think is:
Guys like him kiss girls like her. They don't kiss girls like me.

I'm still thinking about it that night at dinner. We eat at the dining-room table every night, and even though my sisters and I complain that we can't eat in front of the television like a normal family, we secretly like it. Tonight my mom made bacon-wrapped scallops and homemade mac 'n' cheese, which totally don't go together, but they're my dad's favorites. He holds my mom's hand across the dinner table in between bites.

My big sister, Sarah, puts down her utensils with a flourish and smiles broadly. “I have news!”

“What is it?” my parents ask at the same time.

“I got into Georgia,” she squeals.

My parents make a huge fuss—which for my mom means chattering a mile a minute about how she knew Sarah could do it, and for my dad a wide grin and a quiet compliment. My little sister, Libby, yells “hooray” over and over, even though she's two years old and has no idea what's going on. It's a big deal that Sarah got in—school isn't easy for her like it is for me. Every redneck at her high school wears a University of
Georgia hat like they're going there, but from what my family says, it's pretty selective for a state school. My family are serious Georgia fans and very southern (but we're the grow-okra-in-your-backyard-garden, drink-sweet-tea-on-your-porch-swing, go-to-church-every-Sunday kind of southern, not the NASCAR-watching, four-teeth-missing, baby-daddy-having kind of southern), so, yeah, my parents are thrilled.

I'm happy for her too—it was her first-choice school—but it's weird. Sarah won homecoming queen just like Mom, and now Sarah's going to Georgia just like Mom and Dad. Sarah's the perfect daughter. I'm just the nerdy tomboy.

“How about you, CJ?” asks my dad. “Anything new?”

“I got a hundred and five on my math test.”

“That's fantastic,” he says, and I can't help feeling proud. My dad is an architect, and he loves school just like me. He's always steady and he always knows the right thing to do.

“A hundred and five in math. I don't see how you do it,” says Mama, but the way she says it, I can't tell if it's really a compliment.

“It sounds like we have a lot to celebrate,” says Daddy. “Claire-Bear, do you mind grabbing the ice cream out of the freezer? I just bought some.”

“What kind?” I ask. Mama, Sarah, and Libby all like mint chocolate chip, but Daddy and I like cookies and cream. Which pretty much describes our entire family dynamic. Them versus us. Ballet and glitter and incessant chattering versus school and sports and steadiness. Daddy likes to joke that at least he got to
have one kid who's like him. “You're my one, Claire-Bear, you're my one,” he always says.

“This time I got both.”

Of course he did. My dad is the peacemaker in our family. Where I push against our differences, he embraces them.

“How was that party you went to today?” asks Mama.

“Fine.” I push my food around my plate and try to figure out how to ask her what I've been putting off asking her all night. “Hey, Mama? Can we go shopping tomorrow? Like, for girly clothes?”

Sarah leans over and playfully ruffles my hair. “They grow up so fast.”

I roll my eyes at her.

You would think the heavens had parted and George Clooney himself had tap-danced on our dining-room table. My mother's face is positively radiant with joy. She gives my sister that look all the time, but she's never looked at me that way.

“Of course we can!”

What have I gotten myself into? She's going to turn me into a miniature version of Sarah, who is a miniature version of her. I picture myself wearing a dress every day, having a flawless shell of makeup covering my breakouts, sporting perfectly styled, tornado-proof hair. Ugh. We'll have to work out a compromise. No matter how much she pushes, I draw the line at pearls and Lilly Pulitzer.