Confessions of a Serial Kisser (19 page)

65

Clam Chowder

T
HERE WERE NO FLOWERS
or notes or other appetite-killing surprises waiting for me at home, so I was free to gorge myself on whatever I could find to eat.

Raiding the refrigerator didn't yield much. I ended up making a Velveeta sandwich, which doesn't qualify as real food, but I was desperate.

Then, re-inspired by Brody's acceptance into Yale, I settled in at my desk and got serious about my homework. Finding the equations of rotated conic sections in math was pretty straightforward, and I took extra care in the graphing, using a blue pencil for the ellipse and a red one for the rotation.

I admired my handiwork when I was done.

Nice!

I did the usual tedious Wednesday-night word search handout for Spanish (ridiculous waste of time, if you ask anyone in that class) and the assigned reading for Miss Ryder. And I actually buckled down and studied for Mr. Anderson's world history test. The copy of Adrienne's notes was a godsend!

So I was feeling extremely happy with myself, and flirting with the idea of walking the five blocks to Taco Bell for something more enticing than a Velveeta sandwich, when my mother unexpectedly jangled through the door.

"Hey!" I called, forgetting that I was upset with her.

"Surprise!" she said, depositing her purse and keys and an overflowing sack of groceries on the kitchen table.

I pawed through the sack. "Oh, thank you!" She'd brought a bag of salad, French bread, clam chowder, croutons, milk, orange juice, deli cold cuts, a gorgeous tomato, and apples. "I am starving!"

She smiled. "So let's eat."

She did try to broach the subject of my dad during dinner, but I pointed at her with my spoon and said, "Not while I'm eating," which actually made her laugh and say, "Okay."

So she talked about work--personnel gossip mostly, but she had some pretty entertaining customer anecdotes, too, and a hilarious story about sticky, icky apple juice all over Aisle 5. And midway through my scrumptious bowl of chowder, it struck me how happy she seemed.

How much she was laughing.

How her eyes were twinkling.

How her smile was back.

There was, of course, only one explanation.

My dad.

I watched her and wondered how a man who had caused her so much pain could still make her so happy.

66

Mysterious Phone Call

B
EFORE BED
I cleaned off two days of makeup, snipped some split ends off my hair, took a piping hot shower, listened to my favorite cuts from
Surrealistic Pillow
(which did, unbelievably, include "White Rabbit"), and vowed to make a fresh start in the morning. I was going to pack a nutritious lunch! Ace every quiz that got thrown at me!

I was also going to forget about the bad kisses and find a good one.

Brody had called me smart and resourceful, and it was time I applied that to kissing. I needed to figure out what made a kiss crimson! I needed to find a better way to make my fantasy a reality!

I sat up in bed reading segments of
Welcome to a Better Life.
It helped me feel like I was in charge--like my actions would have positive reactions and happiness could be mine if I just believed I deserved it.

And I did deserve it!

I did!

In the morning, I packed a lunch, coordinated a sizzling outfit of my mom's jeans, a sparkly tank top, and a fur-trimmed hoodie, applied some fresh makeup (including some shimmering eyebrow highlights), slipped in oversized hoops, and headed for school.

This was a new day!

A new beginning!

I felt good!

My new beginning started with Robbie Marshall ignoring me during math. I should have been relieved, but I wasn't. He'd been really sweet the last few days. (And he was, undeniably, hot.) Did I just miss the attention? Or maybe there was a rumor circulating about me being a lesbian and he was mortified to have kissed a gay girl.

The thought suddenly gripped me.

What if people thought I was gay?

Aw, what's it matter? I told myself. If the dweebs at this school want to think so, what do you care?

At break Pico Warwick, class joker and chum-to-all, came up to me and swept me up onto the quad stage, where he made an exaggerated show of dipping me backward and planting his smackers directly on mine. It was so ridiculous, so Hollywood, and so Pico that I couldn't do anything but laugh when I was upright again. People clapped and whistled while he made a grand bow and I curtseyed, and for the rest of the day I felt great.

And when stinky, oily Roper Harding came in for tutoring and Mrs. Huffington
insisted
that I help him, I stood up and walked out. I'd find some other way of doing community service. Something real. I'd feed the homeless! Paint City Hall! Pick up trash at Prager Park!

Anything was better than twenty hours of smelling Roper Harding.

When I got home, I was jonesing for something sweet to eat, so I went directly to the freezer.

The double-fudge ice cream was gone (a casualty, no doubt, of late-night conversations my mom had had with my dad). There were vestiges of vanilla-orange swirl in a half-crushed carton, but it was more ice crystals than ice cream, so I set it to melt in the sink.

Besides, I didn't want vanilla-orange swirl. I wanted chocolate! Deep, rich, bitter chocolate. There had to be some somewhere!

The phone rang as I was ransacking a cupboard.

"Unless you've got chocolate, go away!" I shouted into cans of beans and boxes of couscous.

The person on the other end ignored my command.

Or perhaps they had chocolate!

On the sixth ring I scrambled to answer the call. "Hello?" I panted.

A voice whispered, "You're nothing but a stupid tease."

Before I could fully absorb what I'd just heard, the line went dead. It had been a girl's voice...but whose?

Sunshine's?

It had been disguised as a baby-girl voice, so it was impossible to know.

I laid the phone carefully on the counter and stared at it for a full ten minutes. And as much as I told myself that the call had been mean and stupid, I still felt icky inside.

The condo number was unlisted--who besides Adrienne would have it?

When I thought enough time had passed, I pressed star-sixty-nine.

After twenty nerve-racking rings, a man answered the phone. "Hello?"

It was a voice I didn't recognize. "Hi. I missed a call from a friend? I'm not sure whose house this is?"

He laughed. "It's not exactly a house. It's a pay phone outside of Starbucks."

"The one in the Baldwin Center?"

"Yeah," he said.

I thanked him and got off the phone, racking my brain.

Adrienne would never do such a thing.

Who else had my number?

67

The Halls of Hell

C
LUES TO THIS LITTLE MYSTERY
began surfacing the following day. I was still reeling from Mr. Anderson's insane history test when Adrienne came rushing up to me at break and blurted, "Someone's writing your name and phone number on urinals."

"On
urinals
?"

"Brody told me. It's in the boys' bathroom in the four hundred wing and in the five hundred wing. It says 'Call me! Kiss me!' then your name and phone number. He's already talked to the janitor--they're going to clean it off."

I gasped as I connected the dots. "I got a crank call from someone last night."

She gasped, too. "No!"

"But...it was a girl."

Her eyes were enormous. "What did they say?"

So I told her the whole story, and she said, "Well, if they were disguising their voice, maybe it was a guy!"

"I
thought
it was a girl, but now...I don't know!"

"Don't worry," she said, putting an arm around my shoulders. "We'll figure it out."

My heart swelled. Even though my going after a crimson kiss was something she didn't entirely get, Adrienne had really tried to help me. And now, despite the fact that she thought my kissing had gotten out of control, was she abandoning me?

No!

Adrienne Willow was more than just a friend. She was my ally! Someone who would get to the bottom of who'd done this! Someone who'd make sure that the creep who'd turned me into target practice didn't get away with it!

I hugged her and said, "Tell Brody thanks, okay?"

The bell rang. "Why don't
you
tell him?" she called, hurrying off to class.

So despite everything, I was actually feeling okay until some guy with bushy sideburns (who I'd seen around campus but didn't actually
know
) came up from behind me and said, "You Evangeline?"

"Huh?"

He eyed me up and down with a disgusting grin. "Ooooh, baby!" he laughed, and hurried off.

All through third period I felt flushed and angry.

So I'd kissed a few guys. So what!

Then between third and fourth I heard exaggerated kissing sounds. I looked around for the source, but it could have been any of a number of people. And during fourth I could feel people staring at me. I wanted to stand up and shout. "Get a life, people! I didn't
do
anything!"

I was so relieved to see Adrienne at lunch. She joined me in the quad, whispering, "It's bad out there."

"I know! I can't
believe
this."

She unearthed her lunch. "I ran into Brody after third. I told him you were very grateful."

"I
am,
" I said. "I don't know what I'd do without the two of you!"

I unwrapped my homemade sandwich and Adrienne's eyes popped. "Wow, where'd you get that?"

"I'm trying to eat better."

She nodded. "Well, that's a good start!"

But after a few minutes Adrienne said, "You know, maybe we should start eating lunch somewhere else."

I looked over my shoulder to the place she was watching.

It was the "popular girls," packed in a little huddle, trying not to look like they were doing what they were obviously doing: talking about us.

Or, more likely, me.

"Maybe so," I said.

But just then a high-volume howl cut through the lunchtime chatter and someone came crashing out of the 100-wing's boys' bathroom.

The quad fell quiet.

Everyone turned to look as Travis Ung limped away from the bathroom.

Then suddenly Blaine York came thudding through the door, followed by some dreadful thumping and crashing sounds. Then Justin Rodriguez staggered out, blood streaming from his nose.

"Oh, no!" Adrienne cried, dumping her sandwich as she shot to her feet. "Brody!"

"Brody?" I asked, following her to the scene. "Where?"

He emerged from the bathroom, calm and collected, with not so much as a scrape on him.

"Wait," I said to Adrienne. "
Brody
beat them up?"

Adrienne gave me a look that danced between pride and despair. "Oh, this is bad. This is very, very bad!"

The quad began to buzz with collective disbelief as people crowded in to see the winded, staggering carnage that was Justin, Blaine, and Travis. Everyone was asking the same thing: "Brody Willow downed three guys?"

Unfortunately for Brody's spotless behavioral record, it was true.