“Lissa—”
“It wasn’t like that, Kate.”
I could hear her breathing. I knew she was chewing on her cheek, the way she did when she was upset. She said something quick and low, something about Mike Palermo.
“What?” I said.
“Yesterday in French,” she said a little louder. Angry, but at least she was talking. “He said he knew this girl, Susie someone. That he saw her at Piedmont Park, that she and this other girl. . . . He called them rug munchers.”
My eyebrows pulled together. Rug munchers? Then I got it, and my face burned. “He’s an idiot.”
“My dad plays golf with his dad.”
“So?”
“So . . . I don’t know. What if he—”
“Kate, please. This is us, remember?”
“I know. And what happened at . . .” She swallowed. “I’m not saying, you know, that I blame you, or that I think it’s your fault, but—”
“What?!”
“I’m just saying there’s no point in talking about it. Can’t we just drop it?”
I fought the pressure rising in my chest. “I don’t want to drop it!”
“Well, screw you,” she said, all tight now and glassy-sharp. Her voice made a hiccup-y sound. “Thanks for being there, Lissa. Thanks a lot.” There was a click, and the line went dead.
I couldn’t think. My breath came fast and I could hear my pulse in my head. I banged down the phone and stumbled downstairs.
“Lissa?” Jerry called.
The screen door slammed behind me as I ran to my truck. The tires hit the curb hard as I backed out of the driveway, and I swore and shifted into first. Once out of my neighborhood, I headed east on Lindberg, then took Lindberg to I-85. Since it was Sunday, the highway was nearly empty. I merged into the far left lane and drove.
Kate. That night at Rob’s house. I’m not saying that I blame you . . . God, when she was the one who started things. She was the one who kissed me. Was she in such denial that she didn’t even remember?
It was after the guys had started smoking cigars, after Kate had looked at me and made a show of coughing and waving her hand. “Come on,” she’d said. “Let’s get out of here.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me outside, sprinting across the lawn to the gazebo. We dropped to the floor and pressed our backs against the inside wall. From the house, no one could see us.
“Much better,” Kate said. “I’m sorry, but there is only so much Aqua Velva I can take in one night. Somebody needs to sit Rob down and explain the concept of moderation, and it’s not going to be me.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “I bet he’d give you a cigar.”
Kate grimaced. “Do they seriously not know how stupid they look? How can that be?”
We ragged on them a little longer, tossing out comments to make each other laugh, and then Kate reached inside her jacket and pulled out a silver flask. “Compliments of Travis Wyrick,” she said.
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”
“He was passed out in the kitchen, and Gretchen Ragsdale was patting his hand and singing a lullaby. I figured I was doing him a favor.”
“Uh-huh. What’s in it?”
She unscrewed the lid and sniffed. “Gin? Vodka?” She tipped the flask into her mouth. “Vodka. Want some?”
I took a sip and made a face.
“Yeah. We need orange juice or something.” She took another swallow. “So. Lissa. Summer’s almost over.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“I don’t want it to be. I want things to go on like this forever.”
I’d spent almost every day at her neighborhood pool, every night at her house. “Me, too.”
Crickets chirped in Rob’s yard. A breeze blew through the gazebo, stirring Kate’s hair.
“You excited about school?” she asked.
“Not really. But I’m not dreading it.”
She lifted the flask one last time, then screwed on the top and put it away. “I am. I don’t want to deal with everybody. I don’t want to deal with who’s seeing who and who’s wearing what and all that crap. I just want to hang out with you and do nothing, like we always do.”
“Thanks a lot.”
“No, I mean it in a good way. You’re my best friend, Lissa. You’re wonderful. Everyone else makes me feel like I’m so—I don’t know. Not me.” She leaned against me and closed her eyes. “Whoa. I’m getting woozy. Cheap date, huh?”
Her head was heavy on my shoulder, and I could smell the vanilla she’d dabbed behind each ear. She fingered the bottom of my T-shirt. “Hey,” she said, “remember when we talked about what it would be like to kiss another girl? What it would feel like?”
“Yeah?”
“Want to try? You know, just as an experiment?”
I kind of laughed. “Oh, like for the good of humankind? ‘Girl Kisses Girl and Saves the—’”
She lifted her head. Her lips grazed mine.
“Huh,” I joked. “You taste like vodka.” I pressed my palm against my leg.
“You taste like you.” She kissed me again, and my lips parted against hers. My heart whammed beneath my ribs.
Kate moved so that she was lying on the floor. She slipped her hand beneath my shirt, touched the small of my back, and I lowered myself so that I was lying beside her, our bodies parallel. Her thighs, her hips, her breasts pressed against me. Her lips on mine.
Heat flooded through me. I had tried to block that night from my mind for so long that now, alone on the highway, I felt like I was hyperventilating. I flicked on my blinker and got off at the next exit, then pulled into a Stuckey’s parking lot and cut the engine. I tried to steady my breathing.
We didn’t hear Rob and Ben until they were halfway across the yard, only feet from the gazebo. Kate jerked herself up, ran her fingers through her hair.
“Kate,” I said.
She shot me a panicked glance, then made a point of looking at the floor, at her hands, anywhere but at me. She grabbed the flask and quickly unscrewed it so it would look like we’d just been out there drinking. “Get up. Hurry!”
I fumbled with my bra, tugged down my shirt. By the time Rob stepped inside, Kate was on her feet, grinning and not paying attention to me at all.
We never talked about it, not until tonight. Kate went back to the house with Ben and had three more beers before throwing herself all over him. I watched from the doorway, then walked out the front door and didn’t look back. Monday, the first day of school, Kate ignored me and I ignored her. But no matter how much we denied it, we both knew that what happened was more than an experiment or a drunken mistake. Otherwise, why would we care? Why wouldn’t we just laugh about it and move on?
What Kate and I felt was real, and screw her for pretending it wasn’t. And screw me, too. I was sick of running away.
CHAPTER 19
THAT NIGHT I HAD THE DREAM AGAIN, the one about walking off with a stranger. Only this time there was no stranger, and no Cookie Churchill either. This time I’d been walking across the parking lot, and someone had whistled at me, one of those wolf whistles, like, Over here, hot mama. I turned at the sound and saw Ben Porter and Rob Lynch leaning against a car and looking cocky as hell. They laughed and slapped each other a high five, and I’d jerked awake. And now, sitting up in my bed, my heart was still pounding. My scalp prickled, and even though it was four in the morning and I was alone in my room, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
I got a drink of water from the bathroom, then went downstairs and switched on the TV. There was no point in going back to bed. I pushed the up arrow on the remote and skimmed through the channels. On TNT, before-and-after pictures of a girl with acne flashed on the screen. The shot changed to show the same girl sitting with a dark-haired boy, laughing and holding hands, and the name of a product appeared in bold letters. “Miracle Salve—Because Who Doesn’t Need a Miracle?”
I heard the floor creak, and I glanced over my shoulder to see Jerry standing in the
doorway.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he said. His hair was sticking up funny, and he was wearing his ratty blue sweats.
“Was I too loud? Sorry.” I muted the TV.
“Leave it on if you want. Doesn’t bother me.” He came around the sofa and dropped down beside me. He watched as the infomercial began again, then said, “Your mom and I used to watch TV together, back when your dad was putting in such long hours at his firm. I’d come over to help with you kids, and then your mom and I would find some old movie and sit up watching it until Dan got home.”
He’d told me that before, but I didn’t mind hearing it again.
“You have her coloring,” he said. “You look more and more like her every day.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. Mom had been beautiful, with thick brown hair and dark eyes. She’d probably never had a zit in her life.
Jerry spread his hands on his legs. He drummed his fingers, then held them still. “You doing okay, Lissa?”
Blue light flickered on the sofa. On me, curled up with my knees drawn to my chest. “I’m fine,” I said. “I drank too much Coke before I went to bed, that’s all.”
He looked at me. “You left the house in an awful hurry.”
I didn’t respond.
“I was worried. Sophie and I, we both were.”
For some reason that made my muscles tighten. What right did Sophie have to worry?
Jerry cleared his throat. “Anyway, if there’s anything I can do, anything you want to talk about . . .”
“There’s not,” I said. “Really.” I forced a smile. “So how is Sophie? Seems like things are going well with you two.”
His shoulders relaxed. “We have a good time together,” he said.
“Great,” I said. I hoped I sounded more sincere than I felt, because deep down I did want Jerry to be happy. Right now, though, I figured that if I was miserable, everyone else should be, too. Plus, what would it mean if Jerry and Sophie really ended up liking each other? Marrying each other, even?
Jerry settled into the sofa. “It’s funny, isn’t it? I always figured I’d be one of those guys who ends up alone. Or that I’d have to settle for someone who was just as lonely, and that would be the only reason we got together. But with Sophie . . .”
It was strange, hearing him tell me this. I kept my eyes on the TV.
“Well, we’ll see,” he finally said. He stood up. “Get some sleep if you can, okay?”
“Yeah. ’Night, Jerry.”
“Good night.”
After he left, I turned off the TV and leaned back against the couch. Jerry did his best, I knew that, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. Sometimes he felt more like a roommate than anything else. Usually that was okay, but tonight it added to my depression.
Guilt washed over me. Jerry had come downstairs to check on me, after all. I could have opened up to him, but I didn’t. What more did I want?
My mind flashed to my parents. To Mom. When I was eight, two months before she and Dad died, my elementary school had a medieval parade. Most of the girls dressed up as ladies of the court, wearing tall cone-shaped hats made out of construction paper, but I had decided to go as a knight. I remembered standing in my third-grade classroom, fighting back tears because I couldn’t get my costume to work, and looking up to see Mom being led in by one of the teachers. “Oh, Lissa,” she said, fingering the pieces of cardboard I’d covered with aluminum foil. She helped tie the pieces to my body, then made me join the parade, even though I no longer wanted to.
At the end of the day, prizes were given for the best costumes. My name was called for “Most Creative,” but I pressed close against Mom’s leg and refused to walk to the front of the room. I thought the judges felt sorry for me. I didn’t want everyone looking at me.
“Go on,” Mom said, kissing the top of my head. Afterward, she told me my costume was fine, that I needed to have more faith in myself. “You were faced with a hard situation, and you handled it. I’m proud of you.”
That was one of the last memories I had of her.
I stretched my leg so that my foot reached the coffee table, my toes curling against its edge. If Mom were still alive, would I talk to her about this stuff with Kate? Probably not, just as I didn’t tell Jerry. Still. Like a trace of perfume, I had a feeling that if I did, she would have understood.
CHAPTER 20
“YIKES,” ARIEL SAID, “what happened to you?”
I yanked my biology book from my locker.
“You look exhausted,” she continued.
“I didn’t get much sleep,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. I just didn’t.” I closed my locker and strode down the hall.
“Wait!” she cried. She jogged to catch up. “What are you doing after school today?”
I glanced at her, and for the first time I noticed her hair, which was no longer burgundy. Now it was a pale orange, and so short that it stuck up in little tufts all over her head. She looked like a baby chick.
“Nice hair,” I said.
Her hand flew to the top of her head. “Really? You like it?”
“Yeah. It looks good.”
“My mom hates it—big surprise. My dad didn’t even notice.”
“He had to have noticed. He probably just didn’t know what to say. Jerry pulls that kind of stuff all the time.”
She shook her head. “Nope. He didn’t notice.”
We entered the stairwell and navigated our way through the crowd. It was too noisy to talk, so Ariel waited until we reached the second floor before asking, “What about this afternoon? Are you busy?”
“All I want to do is go home and take a nap.”
“Take a nap later. Come to Memorial Park and hang out with me and Finn.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because it’ll be fun. Because it’s a nice day.”
The bell rang and the hall emptied out. “I don’t know,” I said, stopping outside the biology room.
“Meet us at Memorial, over by the swing set. Around three o’clock.”
“Maybe.”
Ms. Horowitz reached to close the door, and I ducked inside.
By the end of sixth period I was a zombie. My head throbbed if I moved too suddenly, and my eyes burned in a dry, gritty way as if my eyelids were coated with sand. On top of that I felt incredibly grubby, because at around 6:00 A.M. I’d gotten sucked into an old Highway to Heaven episode about a lost dog, and I’d run out of time to shower. As far as I was concerned, the whole day was a write-off, and all I wanted to do was go home and crash. Maybe watch a little TV. Hah.
I slumped in front my locker, trying to decide which books to bring home, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed long blond hair. My breath caught in my throat.
“Lissa,” Kate said.
I grabbed the book on top of the stack and shoved it into my backpack.
“Lissa, I’m sorry about last night. I was a huge jerk.”
“Yeah, you were.”
She gnawed on her thumbnail, but she didn’t turn away.
“Well, I’m sorry, too,” I said. I shut my locker. “But not for what you think.”
Her eyes flicked to the end of the hall, then back to me. “I know. Me, too. And I know we didn’t mean anything by it, but . . .” Her voice practically disappeared. “Come on. It’s just not normal.”
My heart lurched. “What’s not normal?”
She didn’t answer.
“Me? You think I’m not normal?” I tried to push past her, but she grabbed my arm.
“You know that’s not what I mean. God!” Her fingers tightened on my skin, and then she let go, wrapping her arms around her ribs.
“What? Can’t bear to touch me?”
“Stop it. Stop being this way.”
We stared at each other.
“I’m trying to apologize,” she said. Her voice trembled. “Can’t we stop obsessing about this and just be friends again? Please?” r />
I looked at her. Her hair, so different from Ariel’s, hung loose around her face, and her eyebrows were drawn together in an unhappy line. She wore silver earrings shaped like dolphins, the earrings I’d given her on her fifteenth birthday. Yearning swept over me, a huge rush of desire for things to go back to how they were.
I let go. So hard until I did it, and then so easy once it was done. “That would be good,” I said.
Kate smiled. She gave me a hug—a quick one, not too close—then stepped back, glancing at her watch. “Ah, shit. Lissa, I’ve got to run. I’ve got gymnastics practice, which normally I could skip, except—”
“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s fine.”
“Yeah. Well . . .”
“Really. It’s no big deal.”
“I’ll call you, all right?”
“Sure. Whatever.” I watched her walk down the hall. She stopped at the door, waved, then disappeared around the side of the building.
I closed my eyes. What had I just done? What happened to old-fashioned soul-searching, to my decision to stop pretending? Because I knew that Kate, when she asked if we could be friends, meant only on her terms.
It was just that it felt so good to talk to her, to be near her. To have her look at me and smile.
As for the rest—I didn’t want to think about it.
I decided to go to the park.
“Lissa!” Ariel called. She and Finn leaned against a huge oak. Next to them sat a six-pack of Rolling Rock.
“Want one?” Ariel said. She offered me a bottle, shielding her eyes from the sun.
I took it and dropped down beside them. “You have a bottle opener?”
“Twist off,” Finn said. He took my bottle and clamped it between his elbow and his side, using his good hand to twist off the cap. “Here you go.”
“Thanks,” I said. I didn’t even know why I’d taken it. I wasn’t much of a drinker. But I tilted the bottle and gulped down several swallows.
Ariel stretched out her legs and put her feet in my lap. “Check out these babies,” she said, wiggling her shoes. “Aren’t they awesome? I got them at Abba-Dabba’s.”