The Last Best Kiss (17 page)

“It would be awful.”

“Which is an argument for cutting the girl some slack.”

“Maybe.” The bell rings for the start of the next class—we’re late. I move toward the doorway, and Finn follows me, reaching past me to hold the door open as I pass through. I nod my thanks. “But she just stood there and let them be mean to Molly. How can you trust someone who doesn’t stick by you when it matters?”

“Yeah?” he says softly. “How?”

And it’s right then, as I’m walking through the door he’s holding and out of the dank little stairwell that smells like toes and pizza, that I realize I took the wrong side of this argument and pinned myself, wriggling like a beetle, to the wall. I open my mouth and have nothing to say, and we look at each other and I realize he’s been aware during this entire conversation that I’ve been incriminating myself up and down and sideways. I feel my cheeks turn red and I tell him I’m late for class and I run away.

Later, when my shame has dimmed to a mild burn instead of a raging inferno and Ms. Malik is droning on at the front of the class about species differentiation, something else occurs to me, something that makes me sit up straight in my seat and stare straight ahead like I’m actually paying attention to what Malik is saying (which, of course, I’m not).

And that’s that Finn—who was clearly seeing a parallel between Molly’s situation and what happened between us back in ninth grade—picked the wrong side of the argument.

And by “wrong,” I mean he picked
my
side—the side arguing for forgiveness.

Okay, that’s interesting.

I don’t hear a word Malik says for the rest of the class. I’m too busy thinking about this, wondering why Finn would choose to argue that side when everything that’s happened between us this year has convinced me he believes the opposite.

Maybe he’s changed his mind?

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..................................................................

twelve

T
he twins’ dad has arranged for the van to the music festival to pick us all up at our houses on Friday afternoon. We have just enough time after school to run home and grab our stuff.

At Lucy’s house her entire family—mother, father, and little brother—come outside with her and even stick their heads into the van to say hi to the rest of us. They help her stow her bag, and her father reminds her to work on her college applications and to study for her bio quiz, and then her mother whispers something in her ear that makes Lucy roll her eyes at us and say impatiently, “I
know
, Mom. You can trust me.” Then her brother tells her she’s incredibly friggin’ lucky to get to go to a music festival and says, “Mom and Dad better let me go to music festivals when
I’m
in high school.” “Twelfth grade,” says Lucy’s mother, who has a warm smile and is very pretty. Lucy’s father, who looks like a tall, graying, short-haired version of Lucy, cuffs his son on the shoulder and they all finally leave the van.

To put this all in perspective . . . when the van picked me up twenty minutes earlier, I was taping a note for my father—
Gone to the music festival with my friends. Be back late Sunday. A
—onto the monitor of his desktop computer: I figured it was the one place where I could be sure he’d see it. That was it for my good-byes.

Oscar’s the last pickup. Once he’s carefully arranged his bag in the back and buckled himself into the empty space next to me, the van driver appears in the open sliding door and asks for our attention. He’s a skinny oldish-to-old guy. “Okay, kids,” he says warily, “we’re all on the same side here. You want a quick, pleasant, easy ride to the desert, and so do I. I am well aware that every one of you is under the age of twenty-one. Do you know what that means?” We can guess, but we just stare at him silently. He seems happy to answer it himself. “That means absolutely no drinking in my van. There’s no smoking either. You all speak English, I presume? Do you need to hear it in any other languages?”

“En Español, por favor?”
Eric says jokingly.

The guy turns a steely gaze on him. “You really need me to translate? Or are you just being funny?”

Eric waves his hand. “Nah, man, you’re good.”

The driver rubs his hands briskly and says in a completely different, suddenly cheerful tone, “All righty, then! I’m going to hop up front and start driving. You need to stop for a potty break or anything, you just call my name. I’m Bill. Otherwise I’ll leave you alone, and you can pretend I’m not even here. With any luck and not too much traffic, we’ll be at your hotel before six. Keep your seatbelts fastened, relax, and have a great time!” He steps back and slams the door shut.

“Bipolar much?” whispers Phoebe, who’s in the front row with Eric, but before any of us can reply, Bill reappears at the driver’s door and climbs into his seat. And away we go.

I’ve got my laptop and a DVD of
Mean Girls
—I’ve seen it a million times, but it just gets better with every viewing, and after Oscar admitted a few days ago that he’d never seen it, I figured this was a chance to educate him and help pass the time. But when I insert it into my laptop, Lucy—who’s sitting on my other side—complains that it’ll be too distracting for her. She’s trying to read through notes for her bio test.

“Switch places with Oscar,” I suggest.

She does, so now he’s sitting in the middle, but after we start the movie, she complains that she can still hear the dialogue.

I get out earbuds, and Oscar and I share them.

Lucy leans over Oscar to complain some more to me. “Why did you have to pick one of my favorite movies? I keep watching it even though I don’t want to. Can’t you guys just do homework like me?”

“Oh, for god’s sake,” I say. “Go sit up front with Phoebe and Eric if you’re unhappy here.”

She grumbles that I’m not being very supportive as she slumps down and leafs through her notebook.

Oscar taps something on his phone and tilts it toward me.

What’s up with her?

I take his phone and quickly type in,
Jackson was supposed to come but his coach wouldn’t let him.

“Ah,” says Oscar.

A burst of laughter behind us makes us turn around in our seats. Finn has his phone out and is showing something to Hilary and Lily that’s got them laughing hysterically.

“What’s so funny?” Oscar asks.

Finn holds up his phone so we can see the photo. “Lily thought this was a Chihuahua.”

“I was joking,” Lily says. “But I don’t know what the hell it really is.”

“An anteater?” suggests Oscar.

“I already guessed that,” Hilary says.

Finn shakes his head. “Anna, you want to guess?”

“A capybara,” I say.

He raises his eyebrows. “Give the girl a cigar.”

“Better not,” I say. “Our driver won’t like it.”

“How about an apple?” Lily says, and tosses one to me. She has a bunch of snacks in a bag at her feet.

“I’ve heard of capybaras,” Oscar says. “They’re big rodents. But I didn’t know they looked like that. I assumed they looked like giant mice.”

“How’d you know?” Finn asks me.

“You’ve showed me pictures of capybaras before,” I say. There’s a tiny hole in the fabric at the top of my seat. I stick the tip of my pinkie through it. “You said they were your favorite rodent.”

“I thought
I
was your favorite rodent,” Lily says to him.

“It’s a tie,” Finn says. But he’s still looking at me. Like a teacher whose failing student just surprised him by getting something right.

I hand Oscar the laptop so he can keep watching the movie. I want to try sketching him while he’s distracted; I’m still determined to prove I can do a decent portrait.

He has beautiful, long-lashed eyes and this great, long, straight nose and I get all that down on paper—look, there’s the nose, there are the lashes, there’s his jawline—but it still doesn’t look like Oscar to me. It doesn’t look like anything other than lines on a piece of paper.

I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn my head.

“Do me now,” Hilary says.

“I’m not a Disney caricaturist,” I hiss. “I don’t ‘do’ people.”

“Sorry!” She flops back. “Forgive me for liking your drawing.”

I twist around to face her. “Sorry, Hil. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I’m just frustrated. I’m supposed to add a portrait to my portfolio, but I suck at them.”

“I think that’s
good
,” she says. “It totally looks like Oscar.”

“Show us,” says Lily.

I shake my head and quickly flip the paper over. “Trust me. It’s not good.”

“Why don’t you try sketching all of us?” Finn suggests, looking up from his phone. “Just quickly, without stressing about it? And then if one of the sketches comes out better than the rest, you can polish and use it. If not, no harm done.”

It’s not a bad idea.

“That’s not a bad idea,” I say.

“It’s a great idea,” says Lily. “Do me first.” She strikes a pose, hand on her hip, head tilted back, eyelashes fluttering. She’s dyed the tips of her hair pink for this weekend and is wearing a leather vest that ties up the front like a corset. Today must be Punk Day in LilyLand.

“Okay. But don’t pose. Just be natural.”

“How’s this?” She swivels sideways and snuggles into Finn’s chest. He pushes her away from him.

“Please don’t,” he says. “Your hair’s in my face, and I need to send this text.”

She slumps against the back of her seat and pouts. “Gallantry is dead.”

“Gallantry doesn’t like a mouthful of hair,” he says.

She sits back up, tilts her head so she can grab a hunk of her hair in one hand, and moves back over toward him, then brushes the ends of her hair all over his face, giggling. “How’s this? And this? And this?”

“Ugh!” he says, twisting away and putting up his hands to hold her off. “Stop it, Lily. That’s gross.”

“Welcome to my world,” Hilary says, from his other side. “The second you tell her you don’t like something, she does it
more
.”

Lily shrugs and sits back. “I just thought if you got a better taste of my hair, you’d appreciate how delicious it is.”

The look Finn gives her is not a pleasant one.

“How about I sketch you first?” I say to Hilary.

“No! Me first!” Lily says. “You promised.”

“No, she didn’t,” Finn says.

“She gave me a promise with her
eyes
.”

No one laughs. I say, “If you want me to sketch you, Lily, you have to sit quietly for five minutes. Are you sure you can do that?”

“Shut up,” she says. “Why is everyone being mean to me?”

“Because you do things like shove your hair in people’s faces,” Finn says.

“Have a sense of humor,” she says. She arranges herself in a comfortable sitting position. “Anna, sketch me—I’ll stay like this.”

I nod and arrange myself sideways, my back pressed against the side of the van, the sketch pad propped up on my knees. My toes press against Oscar, and he looks up from the movie and asks me what I’m doing.

“Preparing for my career as a Disney caricaturist.”

“I wonder how that pays,” he says, and goes back to the movie.

I spend the rest of the trip sketching everyone around me. They forget I’m doing it and relax back into staring at their phones or talking, which helps.

I’m not happy with any of the drawings. I’m relieved that no one remembers to ask me about them when the van stops. I don’t want to show them.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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thirteen

A
tactical error: the first thing we do at the hotel is troop up to see the suite that Hilary and Lily are going to be sharing with their father, who’s already at the festival. Then the rest of us take the elevator back down to our standard rooms.

The hotel is a concrete rectangle built around a courtyard, but the people who work there wear black uniforms and speak in hushed voices, so it feels kind of fancy once you’re inside. You’d think we’d be happy just to get to stay there for free, and we
would
have been, but after seeing the twins’ enormous suite with its three bedrooms and two bathrooms and two coffeemakers and one dining room table, our normal hotel rooms (two double beds, a chest of drawers, and a single bathroom in each) are a letdown. The girls have room 351; the guys room 353.

“At least we’re next door to them,” Phoebe says when we walk in.

“I think we actually connect,” I say, because there’s a door on the side of the room that shares a wall with 353, and I can already hear someone pounding on it. Lucy unlocks it, and Eric comes barreling through.

“We have one big room!” he cries out happily. Phoebe squeals, and they throw their arms around each other like it’s been days since they’ve seen each other and not about ten seconds.

“We’re not sharing our bathroom with you guys,” Lucy says. “Boys are pigs.”

“I’m not,” Oscar says, coming in behind Eric.

“Maybe not,” she says. “But you’re still not using our bathroom. Girls need their own bathrooms, and the sooner you all understand that, the better your lives will be.”

“Okay, but what about the sleeping arrangements?” Eric asks hopefully. “We don’t have to separate into boys and girls, do we?”

“Yeah, we do,” says Phoebe. “I promised my mother we’d be sleeping in separate rooms.”

“It’s not like she’d know.”

“I
promised
her,” Phoebe says again.

Eric scowls, and the rest of us laugh.

“I only promised her we’d
sleep
in separate rooms,” Phoebe adds, pressing against his side. “I didn’t say anything about when we’re awake.”

His broad face splits into a grin.

“I liked you guys better before you got all lovey-dovey.” Oscar sits down on the edge of one of the beds.

“You’re just jealous,” Phoebe says.

“Yeah.” Oscar rolls his eyes. “Eric’s totally my type.”

“Hey,” Eric protests. “That hurts my feelings. Why aren’t I?”

“That’s not what I meant,” Phoebe says. “And you know it.”