Second Kiss (13 page)

At that she got up from the chair with a wry smile and walked back to her desk and the three girls who seemed startled that she would talk to anyone else but them.

After that Drew started acknowledging me in the halls. She would nod my way or lift her hand in a half wave. Sometimes she verbalized a hello. I was surprised every time, but I usually said hi back. We didn’t talk much in class, but I barely noticed. I was too busy trying to figure out the German language. I was so behind, and I hadn’t even started my mid-term project, which was due in two weeks.

“Do you have a group for the mid-term project already?” I had been focusing so intently on the vocabulary list I was memorizing that I hadn’t seen Drew sit down in the same chair as she had the first time. I should have had a group by this time, but I didn’t.

“No. Do you?” Stupid question. Of course she did, she had a permanent group of followers. So why did she ask?

“Yeah, but we need another person. We’re making a movie about some German kids living in Eastern Germany post-World War Two. There are only four of us. We need a fifth person.

“You’re doing a movie? I thought we just needed to write a story together.“The assignment was to-as a group-write about a significant event in German history. And of course it was supposed to be written in German.

“We’ll have to write the script down anyway; we’re just going above and beyond. Frau Fart will love it.”

Frau Fart-I mean Hart-stirred in her chair, and I could have sworn she heard what Drew had called her. I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t usually a risk taker when it came to homework. I wasn’t much of a risk taker at all. But I was even more worried about not having a group for the project at such a late date.

“Sure, I’ll do it with you.” The words scared me as they came out of my mouth.

Drew looked pleased. “Awesome. We’re meeting at my house today after school.” She handed me a piece of paper with her address and then got up from the chair. “We’ll see you around four then.”

“Four.” I nodded in agreement while looking at the directions that she had carefully sketched out on the thick piece of yellow note paper. Even her handwriting was careful and decisive. It could have been a fancy font option on Microsoft Word.

“Oh!” Drew said as an afterthought. “If you have any old eighties outfits, bring them. We need all the costumes we can get.”

Mom dropped me off at Drew’s house at four o’clock sharp. I felt stupid being so exactly on time. When she answered the door, Drew looked down at the heap of clothes in my hands.

“That’ll work.” She twisted her lips into a half smile. I could tell she was satisfied with the look of uncertainty on my face. “Come on back; everyone else is already here.”

Her house was huge and daunting. The ceiling throughout the entire house was at least thirty feet high with windows that reached to the very top. Drew led me into the main living roomwhich looked like the lounge of a fancy ski resort hotel-and just as she had said, the groupies were already there. I knew all three of them by name, and that was about it. Stella, the tall brunette, was sitting on the floor playing with the stereo. Stephanie, the tiny one with glasses, was sitting cross-legged on an oversized chair playing with her gum, and Carmen, who always appeared to be Drew’s most dominant follower, was draped over the couch as though she lived there, flipping through a celebrity magazine.

Drew walked into the room ahead of me and waved her hand back in my direction. “Guys, you all know Gemma.” She didn’t ask them, she told them. They all acknowledged me as I walked in, and I felt my nerves settle slightly. They didn’t seem to be the mean girls in every high school movie that I thought they’d be. They appeared to be just normal people.

Drew looked me up and down. “Are you going to put on your costume?”

I held it up in disgust. “Is this for me to wear?” I had hastily grabbed Mom’s old prom dress from the costume box in our basement. It was a million different shades of pink with all sorts of ruffles and sequins designs on it.

Drew put both hands on her hips. “Who did you think was going to wear it?”

I took a deep breath and draped the pink ruffles over my head and shoulders. It barely fit. Mom must have been tiny in high school. By the time I got the zipper up, the rest of the girls were finishing off their outfits. Stella, Stephanie, and Carmen all looked like identical eighties cheerleaders. Drew had a humon gous Tina Turner-style wig on with a cut off T-shirt and frayed shorts. And I was standing awkwardly in my mom’s old prom dress. Drew, who was obviously in charge of the whole operation, stood behind a video camera that was set on a tripod.

“Okay,” she said louder than she needed to while looking intently at the camcorder buttons, “take one of Die Friihstuck- Verein auf Deutschland.” Her German accent was messy, but I could piece together the words she had said from past vocabulary lists. The name of the movie was The Breakfast Club in Germany. I laughed out loud as soon as I pieced it together.

Drew looked up at me from behind the camera. “What’s so funny?” The other girls watched me in silence.

I uncomfortably tucked my hair behind my ears. “What does The Breakfast Club have to do with post-World War Two Germany?”

Drew looked at me with a sincerely confused expression. “World War Two ended in the forties, Gemma.”

“Okay?” I waited for the explanation.

“The Breakfast Club was in the eighties, which is after the forties.”

I gasped with laughter once again. But no one else was laughing. Before I had a chance to object-before I had a chance to explain to them that we were all going to fail the midterm project if we turned in a homemade German version of The Breakfast Club, Drew gave Stella the cue to start the music, which was a modern version of “99 Luft Balons” by Nena. The music was loud, and I had no idea what I was supposed to do. No one had given me a script. I stood awkwardly in the middle of the room while Drew and the other three girls danced in front of the camcorder.

“Come on!” Drew whispered. She was smiling widely while whipping her head around in circles. “Dance!”

I started mimicking their eighties dance moves. I followed Carmen as she did the pony, and then I started turning my head in circles like Drew, my long hair whipping around my head and against my closed eyelids. We danced for half of the song until Drew gave Stella the cue to lower the volume so that the song became background music. Drew then waved her hand at Stephanie, who quickly grabbed a poster board from off the couch that read “Verzogerung” and held it in front of the camera. I didn’t recognize the word.

“What does that mean?” I whispered to Stella, who was standing closest to me.

“Detention.”

I gave her a look of confusion.

“That’s what The Breakfast Club is about. It’s about five kids in detention.” She whispered it so loudly I was almost positive it would be heard on the camcorder, but I decided that wasn’t a bad thing, since anyone watching this movie would be as confused as I was. It was beginning to be clear as to why Drew said they needed another person in their group. There were five kids in detention in the original movie, and I was the fifth kid. Drew and Carmen scurried around, putting five kitchen chairs in front of the camera, then everyone sat down, so I did too. The camcorder never stopped running. Drew said it was more artistic to change scenes while it was still on record. I believed her. The rest of the movie consisted of us all trying to talk to each other like we were angry students in detention. Of course it had to be in German, so the sentences were short and simple and consisted of the few vocabulary words we remembered. A couple of times Drew picked a fight with someone, which eventually turned into a fake fist fight right in front of the camera. The movie ended ten minutes later with us all deciding to be friends and giving each other high fives. Stella turned the song back on, and we all danced again until Drew ran over to the camcorder and yelled cut.

Between the afternoon I spent at Drew’s house and the day our project was due, I had a handful of conversations with Drew and her posse, though we talked about little more than our video.

The mid-term project was due the first Tuesday in March. Frau Hart called each group up to the front of the class one group at a time to read their stories to everyone. It was tedious just listening to the other group’s stories. For one thing, they were extremely long and boring and full of words that none of us knew! And for another thing, I was agonizing over the humiliation I was going to feel when we had no story, but a completely unsystematic video about an eighty’s movie.

“Drew?” Frau Hart peered over her glasses and scanned the room until she spotted our little group. “Your group is next.” Frau Hart was all business. I was terrified of what her reaction would be to our movie. I wiped my sweaty hands along my jeans as I stood up to walk to the front of the class. Before I had a chance to move, Drew nudged me and motioned for me to sit down.

“Frau Hart,” Drew spoke with confidence, and I didn’t understand how she could not be scared of the teacher, “it won’t be necessary for my whole group to come up with me. We don’t have a story to read.” She held up a tiny disc in her left hand. “We took the effort to act out our story and record it onto a DVD. I have it here to show everyone.”

We took the effort? The way Drew phrased it even I was convinced that we had done something special. Maybe we would get a good grade after all. But then again, Frau Hart hadn’t seen the movie yet. Surely as soon as she saw that it had nothing to do with German’s history she’d give us a failing grade. Frau Hart scurried to her feet and rolled the television and DVD player to the front of the room. I was in shock; so far she hadn’t said a thing about us not following the assignment. Drew smoothly turned on the equipment and slid the disc in the player.

“Frau Hart, would you mind turning off the light?”

My jaw nearly dropped to the floor as Frau Hart flipped off the light switch and scurried back to her desk to watch the movie. The entire class was staring at the black screen, and I felt nauseated as I thought about that first scene when Drew had first turned on the camera at her house. I had been standing clueless in the center of the room when the music had come on. My awkward and confused face was going to be the first thing that everyone saw. I was going to look like a complete idiot!

But I was wrong again. The first thing to appear on the black screen were words. The first words listed our names. I was surprised to see my name at the top of the list. Then the title of the movie showed in German with the English name in parentheses below it. While the title was still showing, the opening song began. When the actual movie finally started, we were well into our dancing. My awkward stance had been totally skipped over! The whole class watched the five dancing girls with wide, excited eyes. Even Frau Hart had an amused look on her face. The rest of the film looked like a completely different movie than what I had participated in that day at Drew’s house. There were distinct cuts and scene changes. There were smooth close-ups of each of us as we spoke. It actually looked like a good movie! I was amazed! And so was the rest of the class. I glanced at Trace once-probably out of habit-to see him leaning forward on his elbows, intently watching the movie. I watched him as his eyes moved around the screen. He had a new expression every time we spoke on the movie. When the movie finally ended, everyone cheered and clapped their hands. Frau Hart was laughing joyfully and even clapped her hands a couple times as she stood up to turn the lights back on.

“Wundervoll! Wundervoll!” Frau Hart exclaimed as she rolled the television back to its place behind her desk. “Fur deine grogen Anstrengungen danke,” which in English meant, “Wonderful! For your great efforts, thank you!”

I couldn’t believe it. Drew had gotten away with it. We all had gotten away with it! Our project was a hit! I looked over at Drew, who was lounging back in her chair with a slight grin as though it was no particular big deal at all. The next group was called, and I figured that the end of our project meant the end of my friendship with Drew, Stella, Stephanie, and Carmen. I didn’t belong with those girls anyway. They had a magic that I couldn’t compete with. So I was surprised when I walked out of class when the bell rang and heard Drew yell my name. “Gemma, wait up!”

I stopped in place and turned around as the rest of my German class whizzed by me. I felt some of them looking at me differently, and then I saw Trace. He was walking toward me and looking at me straight in the eyes. I stopped breathing. When he got within six inches of me, he stepped to the side and breezed past me while whispering, “Nice dancing.”

Was he serious? Was he mocking me? I couldn’t tell. But the smell of his cologne twirled through my hair and around my nose, and the same fluttery feelings that I had about him last year danced inside my stomach once again. Before I had a chance to analyze what had just happened, my elbow was being yanked and I looked down to see Drew at my side.

“Do you know him?”

“What? Who?” I looked around as though I didn’t know what she was talking about.

“Trace Weston. Are you friends with him?”

I blew a raspberry through my lips. “Trace Weston and mefriends? Uh, no.”

“Hm.” She looked at me unconvinced then without skipping a beat asked, “Where’s your locker?”

Her question threw me. Did she know that Trace’s locker was beside mine? I wasn’t sure if I was quite prepared to reveal that hidden treasure. “Uh, it’s… ” I pointed toward the eighth grade all.

She looked disgusted. “You’re in the eighth grade hall?”

“My family was out of town during registration, so I… “

She seemed to guess the rest of the story. “You should put your books in mine and Carmen’s locker from now on.” It was closer to a demand than a suggestion. She started walking down the hall again and I followed.

“Where are the other girls?” I didn’t have to say their names. She knew who I was talking about.

She shrugged. “I don’t know. They’re big girls. They can make it to third period on their own.”