Second Kiss (18 page)

“So you told Drew that it was okay to invite all her friends here while we were gone.” My mom was not smiling, but her face was still her normal beige tone, so I took that as a good sign.

“No! She said that we should each just invite one person, she and Carmen and I, and we would see what happened from there. The person that Carmen invited didn’t even come!”

“Who did you invite?” Dad chimed in. He was now flossing his teeth. It was so like Dad to get caught in a random and unnecessary detail.

“No one.” And that was the truth. I didn’t have anyone to invite.

Mom was sitting straight up in her bed, her arms folded over her chest, and her lips taught. “And let me guess, Drew told the most popular kid in school, and he and his buddies all showed up?”

She was getting good at this. I nodded.

“Why were they only here for a half hour?” I could barely understand Dad, as he was talking again with two fingers and a string of floss in his mouth.

My head was bowed so low that I was speaking straight into my chest, “Jess came over and kicked everyone out.”

Dad scratched the top of his head and tossed his floss in the trash can.

Mom was still except for one eyebrow that lifted high enough to reach her hairline. “I’m disappointed in you, Gemma.”

That was the sentence I had been dreading all day, and my mom said it best. She was disappointed in me. It wasn’t a big surprise, but it sounded terrible said out loud.

I wanted her to yell at me. I wanted her to tell me I was grounded for a year. But she just stared at the air between us, looking older than I had ever seen her look before.

“Thank you for telling us the truth. Your father and I will talk about what we think will be the best consequence for your actions, and we’ll talk to you about it tomorrow.” She didn’t ease off from her seriousness for a moment. She was perfect at being firm. She scared the heck out of me.

I mumbled a good night and closed their door behind me. My heart was beating incredibly fast as I walked down the hall toward my room.

“Hey, loser,” I heard Bridget’s voice as I passed her room. I knew she was talking to me. I stopped and peeked around her half-opened door as she grumbled, “Get in here.” I pushed the door open and walked up to the edge of her bed stand. She was sitting in her bed just like my mom, reading a big textbook. Her room was covered with Yale paraphernalia. Hanging from her walls were posters, banners, an old vintage sweater, the works. She had wanted to go to Yale to study law since she was born. She was definitely the intelligent one out of us two sisters.

“What?” I muttered the way a defensive little sister does to her big sister who just called her a loser.

“Since you’re going to be doing my chores for the next year, I thought you might as well get started now by taking my dirty clothes down to the laundry room. Make sure you separate the darks from the whites.”

I looked at her in amazement. “You heard me in there?”

“This house isn’t that big, Gemma.” She was looking at her textbook again. She and Mom were so much alike, except that Mom was caring and loving and kind.

“They won’t get mad at you,” I whined. “I’m the one they can’t trust.”

She snorted. “Oh trust me, I’m in trouble. Big trouble. You think they’re going to see past the fact that there were thirty kids in the house while I was upstairs in my room minding my own business?” She snorted again. “No way. I’m probably in it deeper than you are. Not that I care. I’ll be out of this house and living in the dorms in five months, but we made a deal and you’re doing my chores-for a year.”

I scowled. “You just said that you won’t even be here for a year.”

“Yeah, but all my things that I leave behind will need dusting. And I’ll come home now and again with dirty laundry-that should give you plenty to do.” She dipped her nose back into her book. I huffed and left her room. When I got to my room, it was dark. I didn’t want to turn on the lights. I stood in the blackness for a minute, contemplating the whole weekend and how things had changed so dramatically in twenty-four hours. My parents couldn’t trust me. My sister was my new master. Jess, my best friend, hated me and probably wouldn’t ever talk to me again. And Drew, my only friend at school, who also probably wouldn’t talk to me again after last night, was turning out to be not such a good friend after all. Life had been so much simpler a few months ago. I silently wished to be able to go back to that time.

I was still standing motionless between my closed door and my bed when I heard a small tap at my window. I darted out of my room so quickly that I forgot to switch on the light for a signal. I had been dying inside for the past twenty-four hours that we hadn’t spoken to each other. I closed the back door carefully and tiptoed on the cold grass until I saw Jess staring up at my window with a handful of small rocks in his hand.

“Hey,” I spoke cautiously. I was suddenly not sure if he had come to make peace with me or to reprimand me some more.

Jess was startled, but he looked happy to see me. He dropped the rocks in the flowerbed and walked toward me. “I didn’t think you were going to come down.”

I looked up at my window then back to him again. “I’m sorry for last night,” I said. “I was mad about the dumb party and… “

Jess stepped toward me and placed the top of his index finger on my lips. “I didn’t come here for an apology,” he whispered. He was standing so close to me that I could feel his cool, minty breath on my cheeks.

“Why did you come then?” I asked when he lowered his finger from my mouth.

He didn’t blink once as he stared at me with his crystal blue eyes, searching for what he wanted to say. When he finally spoke, his words were distinct and exaggerated, “I hate seeing you with other guys. When I walked in on you and Greg, about to kiss… ” He shook his head at the memory. “… I went ballistic. I overreacted. I’m sorry.”

I was surprised by Jess’s confession of jealousy. It was a con fession I had wanted him to make for such a long time, and now that he had, I wasn’t quite sure what it meant. Did it mean that he wanted to kiss me? Or was it simply an explanation for his actions and nothing else? He was still standing so close to me, and he didn’t take his eyes off mine for one moment. He raised his hand up once more and ever so gently rubbed the back of his fingers along the jaw line of my face. When his fingers reached my chin, he slowly dropped his hand and stepped away from me with a sigh. “Just for the record, why were you and Greg going to kiss in front of a room full of people?”

I nearly got whip lash from Jess’s new direction of conversation. I could have sworn five seconds ago that he was going to kiss me, and now he was asking about Greg? It took me a second to gather my thoughts. “I don’t know. I don’t think he was really going to kiss me.”

Jess looked confused. “It sure looked like he was going to kiss you from the angle that I was at.”

I skimmed my fingers through my hair, and a million tiny strands fell back around my face. “No, it was just a game. He bet me a quarter that he could kiss me without touching me.”

Jess looked up at the sky and rolled his eyes.

“What?” I asked innocently.

“The quarter kiss.” Jess rubbed both of his hands over his face.

“The quarter kiss?” I repeated. “There’s a name for it?”

“The guy bets the girl a quarter that he can kiss her without touching her-which is obviously impossible-then he kisses her, and when the kiss is over, he hands her the quarter since he lost the bet. So the girl gets a quarter, and the guy gets a kiss. It’s stupid.”

I looked away from Jess toward the pale yellow siding on our house as the information registered in my brain. “It was a trick,” I said as the events from the night before unfolded in my mind. I started breathing heavier as anger filled my lungs and then my cheeks. “He was going to take advantage of me in front of all of those people!” I began to huff, and I could feel my face getting hot.

“Don’t be too mad, Gemma. Greg’s not such a bad guy; he just likes attention.”

“How do you know him, anyway?”

Jess hesitated. “We kind of hang out with the same crowd.”

My mouth dropped open. “So Drew was right?”

“It’s not like we’re good friends; we just happen to be friends with the same people.”

“Is he a sophomore like you?”

“No, he’s a senior.”

“A senior?” I was almost flattered to think that a senior in high school almost kissed me. But then I remembered the trick, and a wave of nausea passed over me. “He’s two years older than you. I don’t know anyone two years older than me.”

“That will change when you get into high school.”

“So all those people that were here last night-you know all of them too?”

Jess took a deep breath. “It’s not like they’re assassins. They didn’t know they were going to a fake birthday party.”

“But the alcohol in the punch! You knew it was there without even tasting it!” It was all coming together in my head now. “Do you go to a lot of parties with alcohol?”

“You know me, Gemma. You know that I’m home with my mom and sisters on most weekend nights. And when I’m not with them, I’m with you. I don’t go out and party with those people. But I’m friends with a lot of them at school. A lot of them are on my baseball team, and some of them are in my classes. They don’t all drink, but some of them do. I can’t tell them how to live their lives. I just stay away from that side of them. But I know that some of them do it, especially Greg. So when I saw the punch in his hand-I just knew. He’s a nice guy; he’s just got some messed up priorities.”

My arms were folded tightly over my chest by now, and I grunted as soon as Jess ended his speech. “Nice? I don’t think a nice guy would trick a girl into kissing him.”

“You could have said no, Gem. You are partly to blame, as much as you’d like to be the victim in this situation.”

I thought about that for a minute. As much as it bugged me that he would claim that I wanted to be a victim, I kind of knew it was true.

He continued, “And I was probably a bit rough with those things I said about Drew. She’s living in the shadow of her brother, and it makes sense that she feels like she needs to do things that are as elaborate and as noticeable as he is. And besides, you could have said no to her too.”

I relaxed my shoulders and looked up at the night sky. “I could have said no to a lot of things.”

“But you didn’t, so I said no for you.”

And that was how it had always been with me and Jess. He was the smart one, always ready to give me advice when I did something stupid. And I was the naive one, always ready to be saved. And I had to wonder if that’s all we would ever be. Why hadn’t he kissed me? Why was I always making such idiotic decisions? Why would Jess want to be with someone like me? Then it occurred to me that maybe Jess’s closeness, his soft touches, and his long stares had absolutely nothing to do with him wanting a relationship. Maybe that was just his way of taking care of me.

I fully expected to be mocked and scorned when I returned to school on Monday. But when everything seemed normal, I remembered that besides Drew and Carmen, everyone at my house on Friday night was in high school. That made me feel older than I was. I wasn’t sure how things were between Drew and me. I wasn’t sure if she was mad at me for the way the party turned out. I wasn’t even sure if I was mad at her for the way it all turned out. I wanted to be mad at her, but just like Jess had said, she wasn’t entirely to blame.

“Hey!” I tried to sound as casual as possible as I approached Drew and Carmen at our locker before first period. Drew was emptying the contents of her backpack into the locker while Carmen carefully applied lip gloss in a portable mirror she held in her hand. Both of them seemed surprised to see me.

“Hey,” they both said simultaneously, though the emotion behind their greeting was lacking.

I reached over Drew’s head to grab my geometry book and asked how their weekends were. Neither of them answered me, but they watched me with careful eyes. I leaned up against the wall next to our locker and pretended not to notice. “It got warm this weekend. I can’t wait for summer.” Nice, I brought up the weather. Could I be any more awkward? But I had to say something.

Drew looked at Carmen then back at me. “We don’t think it’s a good idea that you share our locker anymore.”

“Are you serious?” I stared at Drew with my entire face scrunched up around my eyes. She must have been joking. I thought she might be a little bothered about Friday night, but to entirely end our friendship? The whole stupid fake birthday party was her idea!

“Things were just so weird the other night.” Drew replied without looking at me.

Then Carmen added, “It left a bad taste in our mouths.” That was one of the first times Carmen had actually spoken to me directly.

“You have got to be kidding me.” I glared at Drew. “You’re the one that came up with the fake birthday party. You’re the one that invited half the high school. And you’re the one that asked your brother to kiss me!” I was yelling now and slowly becoming aware of the passing students that were turning their heads toward the commotion.

“You could have said no, Gem” Drew muttered into the stack of books she was holding against her chest.

“Why does everyone keep telling me that? There were a ton of people around! Most of which were very good-looking high school boys! So I gave into peer pressure! I’m fifteen! It’s my job to give into peer pressure!”

Drew looked around the hall like she was bored with the conversation. “Sorry, Gem. It was just too … weird.”

I glared hard at the side of her head. She may not have been able to see it, but I knew she could feel it. “Why did you even become friends with me? Was it so you could humiliate me? Did you just see me as an easy target to belittle and boost your selfesteem?” And at that moment I knew. I knew why she had started talking to me. I knew why she had made me her new best friend. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it before. “You used me to get to Trace Weston, didn’t you?” Drew shifted her feet uncomfortably, and Carmen stood next to her like a bodyguard. “That’s it, isn’t it? You thought I was friends with him, and you thought you could get to him through me. Well, I’ve got news for you. Not only did you not get Trace, you just lost me!”