Second Kiss (14 page)

She had just finished speaking when the three girls in discussion bounced around us from behind. “Where’d you go?” Stephanie asked as she watched Drew, who barely acknowledged her. Stephanie looked hurt.

“We always wait for you,” Stella spoke more quietly, like she only meant for us to accidentally overhear what she had said.

Drew didn’t respond to either of their complaints. I thought she was mad, but three seconds later she was banging her hands together wildly. “Girls, take a look at Kit Walker!” She pointed toward where he was standing then turned to us with one hand cupping her mouth as she whispered loud enough for us all to hear, “I think he forgot his pants this morning.”

Kit Walker was a full-fledged jock. He was captain of the ninth grade basketball team and even dressed for the high school junior varsity team. He was one of the most popular guys in the school. So popular, in fact, that he could get away with running to his locker in only his boxers to grab the gym shorts he had accidentally left there.

“Hey, Kit!” Drew yelled out to him with her contagious and carefree laugh. “You forgot to put on pants today!”

Kit didn’t even look up from his locker. He was still rooting around looking for something when he yelled, “Drew! Haven’t I told you? Pants are so overrated!” He looked up at us all just as we approached him. He had a huge grin on his face as he slapped Drew’s hand and told her he missed seeing her more often. He patted Carmen on the back, as she was the only other girl close to him, and he even looked me in the eye for a moment.

“Seriously though, Kit. Where are your shorts?”

Kit cocked his head back. “I really don’t know! I thought they’d be in here.” He looked down at his plaid boxer shorts and shrugged. “I guess these will just have to do for gym class today.” Then he scurried off to the gymnasium, leaving Drew in a fit of laughter as she continued down the hall.

I followed her to her locker, which I found out was shared by Stella, Stephanie, and Carmen too. The locker was lined with cut out magazine photographs of celebrities and male models, and it smelled like a combination of hairspray and perfume.

“So who do you like, Gemma?” Drew asked it so casually you would have thought she asked what I was having for lunch.

“Who do I like?” I said hesitantly. Jess’s face blazed in my mind, and Trace came in as a distant second. But I had made the mistake of revealing my crushes to Clarissa and Nina, and that had been a disaster. I wasn’t about to spill the beans now to a girl that I barely knew.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” she urged.

My shoulders fell with a twinge of embarrassment. “No.” I was sure that all of them had been kissed at least once by now.

“Who do you like then?”

My heart pounded as Jess’s name danced on the tip of my tongue. “No one,” I lied as I put my smallest book in the locker.

“Well, you must like someone. What about Trace Weston?”

My stomach fluttered when she mentioned his name. But I puffed out my bottom lip and said, “No.”

Drew looked up at me with skeptical eyes. Then her attention was drawn downward. “What about that bracelet. You wear it every day.” She cocked her head to one side. “Where did you get it?”

I looked down at the bracelet that Jess had given me and wondered how I was going to escape Drew’s line of questioning. “It was a gift,” I caressed the dangling ruby with my fingers, “from a good friend.” I looked back up at Drew and changed the subject. “How about you? Who do you like?”

Drew beamed with wide excited eyes. “Trace!” she whispered. “I was afraid you liked him, so I didn’t want things to be weird, but I’m so glad you don’t!”

My breath got stuck somewhere between my sternum and my tonsils. “Oh, yeah. He’s all yours.” Which was mostly true, but when she said she liked Trace, a flare of jealousy shot through my chest.

Drew shut the locker and started walking down the hall. I fell in stride next to her while the other three girls followed behind us. I felt weird, like I was co-leading a pack of wolves. I could see people watching us, and I felt myself stand a little straighter as we passed through the hall of lockers.

“I just get so nervous around him,” Drew said.

I was so disoriented by the fact that I was actually walking down the hall with Drew and her friends that I barely realized that she was talking to me.

“Nervous?” I repeated stupidly. “Around who?”

“Trace!” she said, giving me a duh look.

“Oh.”

“What should I say to him?” Drew was looking up at me with hopeful eyes, and I couldn’t believe that she was actually asking me for advice. I kept waiting for someone to jump out of a locker with a video camera and have the whole school yell in unison, “Got ya!”

“Um,” I started as I dodged other students coming toward us in the hall, “just say hi to him, I guess.”

“Hi.” Drew repeated it a couple times in a different voice each time. “Well, this is my next class.” I barely got the chance to register what she had said before she disappeared into the classroom. Before I knew it, the other three girls had scattered as well, and I was left standing alone on the opposite side of the school, wondering how I ended up in this place.

“I have no idea why she wants to be my friend.” I was shoveling pretzels into my mouth after school while Jess sat lounging on our couch in the front room. He had been coming inside a lot more since his week and half long stay at our house last Christmas. “I mean, she already has a million friends. Why does she need another one?”

“Maybe she heard about your photography skills and is hoping you’ll give her some pointers.”

I scowled and tossed a couch pillow at his head.

“You’re not allowed to tease me about that yet! It’s still too fresh. The wounds haven’t completely healed.”

Jess threw back his head. His eyes were squeezed shut, and he choked on his breath for a second. “It was a year ago!”

“It’s still too fresh,” I repeated with a smug look on my face. “I’ll let you know when I’ve healed. Speaking of Trace… ” I looked up at Jess from just under my eyelids. “Drew likes him.”

Jess’s laughter died down, and he focused on my face. “That shouldn’t be a big deal. Last I heard, he didn’t deserve you.”

I looked down at my fingers, which were pulling at a loose string on my sweatshirt. “I guess,” I muttered. After a few silent seconds I looked back up at Jess, who was silently watching me with a searching expression.

“Do you still like him?” Jess asked, and I couldn’t tell if he was jealous or just confused-or both.

I carefully thought about my response to his question. Yes, I had to admit to at least myself that I still got flustered whenever Trace was present. And that, yes, I still got slightly disoriented whenever he and I made eye contact. But I was also starting to have feelings for Jess. I couldn’t explain it to myself, so how was I supposed to explain it to Jess?

“You know what I want to do sometime?” Jess said before I could answer. I knew he was diverting the conversation topic on purpose.

I shook my head. “No, what?”

“I want to go to Niagara Falls.”

I wasn’t expecting that. “Niagara Falls?” I twisted my face. Of all places to dream about visiting, he chose Niagara Falls?

He ignored my reaction. “Have you ever been to Niagara Falls?” he repeated the name with reverence, as though it were a sacred place.

I scowled. “You know I’ve never been there, Jess.” He knew every place I had ever been. And he knew my vacation history was limited to Cape Cod and one trip to Florida for my great Aunt Lucy’s funeral.

“I’ve wanted to go to Niagara Falls ever since I saw the original Superman movie. You know, the one with Christopher Reeves?”

“Superman?”

“Yeah, you remember. The kid falls off the ledge at Niagara Falls, and Superman saves him.”

“That wasn’t Niagara Falls.” I retorted.

“Of course it was. Where else would it be?”

“Why would Superman go to Niagara Falls?”

“He goes there with Lois Lane.”

“I am absolutely positive that you’re wrong.”

“Either way, I’m going to go there someday.” He started twisting a pillow in his hands. “I love water.”

I didn’t respond. I was too busy trying to flip the battery cover off our television’s remote control. Jess sat up abruptly. “Why don’t we go to the lake more often?”

Jess and I lived on the shores of Lake Emery. It was just a small fishing lake, and during the summer months it was our home away from home. But during the winter months it was muggy and cold and mostly frozen over.

“Because the lake is boring and gross in the winter,” I replied as I snapped the battery cover off with my fingernail.

“Let’s go now!” Jess sat up straight and looked at me for an encouraging response.

“What are we going to do at the lake?” I whined. “It’s cold.”

“Let’s just ride our bikes down there and take a look.”

I shrugged my shoulders, which Jess took as consent. He flew to his feet and grabbed my hand in one fell swoop as he headed for my front door.

I blew on my hands as we weaved in and out of the trees that separated the main road from the lake. It had been an uncharacteristically warm day for the middle of March, but it was still too cold to ride a bike without gloves. We had parked our bikes by the edge of the road and were now making our way on foot through the mud and dead leaves that were between us and the lake.

“My dad wants partial custody.” He kicked through a pile of moldy wood chunks as he spoke.

His announcement came out of nowhere, and even though I was shocked to hear it, it somehow explained his sudden need to go on a random bike ride to the lake in the middle of March.

I pushed a dead branch out of our path. “That can’t happen, can it? Not after what he did?”

Jess shrugged and shook his head. “I’m not sure.” As he spoke, we both lifted our heads toward the voices coming from the shoreline just twenty feet ahead of us.

“Oh, no.” I was disappointed. “There are other people here.”

“Good,” Jess replied. “I’m glad other people are enjoying this place.”

I looked at him in disgust, and then I looked down at my mud-covered blue jeans. I heard the voices more loudly. I cleared one branch away and then another until I saw four girls sitting on the sand at the edge of the pond. Even though I could only see the back of their heads, I knew immediately who they were; Drew, Carmen, Stella, and Stephanie. I wanted to turn around and bolt before they could see me, but a branch snapped under my sneaker and they instantaneously turned around.

“Gemma?” Drew spoke first. She was obviously surprised, but I thought I sensed some annoyance in her voice. Did she think I followed them? Maybe it was in my head. Before I could respond, Jess stepped out of the trees behind me. All four girls stared at him with shocked expressions. I was positive that they were wondering what a guy like him was doing with a girl like me.

“Who’s your friend?” Drew nodded toward Jess. The same protection I had felt over my secret non-friendship with Trace earlier that day took over me again now, only ten times stronger.

“Uh,” I stammered. I was tempted to give him a fake name like Bruce or A.J. in order to keep him safe from their future conversations.

“I thought you said you didn’t have a boyfriend.” Skepticism dripped from Stephanie’s words as she spoke.

I ignored her. “This is Jess Tyler.”

Drew’s eyes widened as she looked straight past me at Jess and lifted one eyebrow. “Hi, Jess Tyler, it’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

It was absolutely impossible to find anything wrong with her greeting to Jess. Unlike Clarissa’s brash form of flirting, Drew was subtle and cool. I hated it. I had to wonder, though, where she had heard about Jess. I had never told her about him.

Jess shifted behind me. “Do you girls go to school with Gem?”

“Gem?” Drew sat up straighter and looked at me with a devious smile. “I like that.”

I looked down at the dirt and mumbled, “Don’t call me Gem.”

Jess patted me on the back. “She thinks it sounds too much like Jim.”

Jess loved calling me Gem, despite the fact that I had begged him not to for years. It didn’t bother me anymore when he said it, though. It was like a little pet name he had for me. But I still cringed whenever anyone else said it. And for some reason it was driving me twice as crazy to hear it from Drew.

“I think it’s cute,” Drew said while smiling at Jess.

I turned to Jess and reluctantly told him their names. I spoke in a steady tone, but my eyes pleaded with him not to give away the fact that I had been talking about them all afternoon. Jess read my cue and nonchalantly walked toward the shore line of the pond. “It’s nice to meet you all.” He picked up a couple pebbles and tossed them into the pond. All four girls had their eyes glued to the back of his head. I could have painted a picture of them in the length of time they spent watching him. I looked at the back of Jess to see what was so incredible that all four of them would be watching him with drool practically dripping down their chins. Okay, I knew Jess was tall and good looking. But there were a lot of good-looking guys in Franklin. Why was Jess getting so much attention from some of the most popular girls in town? He had on a Philly’s hat that he wore backward on his head, his brown hair curled softly out the ends and around his ears. He was wearing a midnight blue hooded sweatshirt with the sleeves pushed up around his forearms so that they wouldn’t get dirty as he picked up rocks. He wore a pair of old Lucky Brand jeans which, now that I looked at them, fell over his lower half perfectly. And to finish it off he was wearing some old running shoes that were now soaked in mud and dead leaves.

“You can skip rocks,” Drew spoke lowly and evenly as she boosted herself from the ground and shook off the sand that was stuck to her jeans. She walked toward Jess, who was launching his third stone into the pond. It skipped over the water four times then disappeared beneath the black surface.

Jess squinted into the sun. “Not really. I think that last one was a record for me.”

Drew stepped so close to him that they were nearly touching. She looked so tiny next to him. She picked up a semi-flat stone and tossed it effortlessly across the glassy water. It skipped at least six times before it disappeared.