Confessions of a Serial Kisser (20 page)

68

Call Me Stupid

C
ALL ME STUPID
, but I didn't fully grasp my role in what had happened until I saw the Magic Marker rolling across the walkway.

Going after Justin Rodriguez...writing my number on his hand in the biology room...it all felt like a lifetime ago.

Adrienne tried to intervene as three teachers escorted Brody and the battered boys to the office, but the teachers already had their hands full and Brody shooed her off.

"He's going to get suspended!" Adrienne wailed when she was back with me. "And they'll never advance him to black belt!"

"I can't believe he beat them up," I said, my jaw still dangling over the whole scene. "Why didn't he just turn them in?"

She stared at me, pinched her eyes closed, flared her nostrils, opened her eyes, then shook her head. "I've got to go," she said flatly, then turned and left.

"Hey, wait!" I called, but she was gone.

After lunch, chemistry was just a blur. All I could think about was Brody decking Justin. I'd always thought of Brody as my somewhat nerdy older brother, but the nerdy part was now gone. He'd wiped out three decent-sized guys at once! Nothing nerdy about that.

And my heart swelled again because, more than ever, I felt like part of their family. My own family was a mess, but Adrienne and especially Brody had come to my defense in ways I'd never imagined.

As Mr. Kiraly's middle fingers poked the chalkboard and flipped birdies through the air, I wondered how Brody's meeting with Hickory Stick Hershey was going. Somehow I doubted he'd get off with writing letters of apology. Graffiti, obscene language, insubordination, cheating, stealing, smoking...these were all things you could get away with at Larkmont High.

Brawling was not.

I began to feel claustrophobic. The classroom felt like a box--a sweltering box where I was trapped with thirty other glazed-eyed people desperate to escape.

Particles of chalk dust danced in the air. Why did this room still have chalkboards? Why not whiteboards? Why were we having to breathe in chalk dust instead of toxic marker fumes?

The chalk dust began to feel like a blanket that I couldn't breathe through. I was suffocating. Smothered. And Mr. Kiraly's voice...it was a Hungarian torture device, booming chemical conversions in my ear, echoing...echoing...

When the bell rang, I escaped the classroom in record time. I began running, dashing past people, dodging them, squeezing between them. There was only one class left in the school day, but I couldn't bear the thought of being locked up for another fifty minutes.

I needed to find Brody.

Find out what had happened.

Thank
him.

Somehow that seemed so much more important than going to psychology.

My plan was to walk to the Willows' house. I was sure Brody had been suspended, and that that's where he'd be. What I wasn't sure about was how to leave campus without permission. Having never given it serious thought before, I had no idea how much stealth was involved in ditching school.

What I discovered was it's easy. To ditch school, you simply
leave.
No one asked where I was going, no one asked for a hall pass.... I just walked away.

No wonder Larkmont has such a truancy problem!

I left the way I always leave: through the student parking lot. To my surprise, Brody's truck was still there...and Brody was in it, reading his physics book.

I guess you can suspend a guy from school but you cannot make him leave.

"Hey, Chevy-man!" I said, opening the passenger door.

He seemed surprised. "Evangeline?" Then he looked at his watch. "You're going to be late to psychology!"

It flashed through my mind that him knowing I had psychology sixth period was odd. But Brody's a fact magnet, so I just chuckled and said, "You're suspended and I'm ditching...who'd have thought?"

He chuckled, too. "Not me."

"I was actually on my way over to your house to thank you."

He blushed.

"Really, Brody. You didn't have to go and get yourself suspended." I grinned at him. "You should have just let
me
beat them up." Then I added, quite seriously, "I feel bad that you're in trouble over me. And Adrienne says you won't be eligible for your black belt now, which I know is a big deal. Is that because you're only supposed to use karate in self-defense?"

He shrugged and nodded. "I'll have to go before a review board. It'll just take longer."

"So how long are you suspended from school?"

"A week."

"A week! How long did Justin and his cronies get?"

"They've got detention."

"That's it?"

He nodded.

There was a moment of awkward silence, and then I blurted, "Well, I don't know what to say. I'm sorry this got you in trouble." I shook my head. "It's been a really sucky year, but I'm glad I've got you and Adrienne looking out for me. You're like the brother I never had, Adrienne's like the sister I never had.... Your parents are even like the parents I
wish
I had."

He was looking at me in a peculiar way. Confused? Embarrassed? Uncomfortable? I wasn't sure. With Brody, you don't really talk about feelings. You talk about science. Or math. Or how to maximize compound interest. I was treading on new territory here, and it was obviously making him uneasy.

So I laughed and gave him a sisterly hug (something I've done a lot of over the years), then said, "Look, Brody, I'm just trying to say thank you, all right?"

But as I pulled away, I found myself face to face with him.

Looking him in the eyes.

And before I knew what was happening, we were kissing.

69

Attempting to Re-establish Sanity

I
T WAS THE SWEETEST
, dearest brotherly kiss.

And weird.

How could I have just kissed Brody?

Or wait. How could
he
have just kissed
me
?

As I pulled away, I felt confused and embarrassed and incredibly awkward. "Wow. Uh...
well
..."

Being a man of many words, Brody just blushed.

I sat there a moment, then opened the passenger door and started babbling. "Well. I'm going to walk home now. I'm going to walk home and clear my head and...and cut my hair. Yeah. I think I'll go cut my hair."

"Don't cut your hair again," he said. "I like your hair!"

"Well," I said, my hands flitting around my head, "I'll probably just snip it a little here and there."

How mature of me. We'd just shared a semi-incestuous kiss, and I was now discussing hair-cutting strategies.

"I gotta go," I said, and took off.

He didn't follow me in his truck, didn't run after me, didn't even honk the horn in an effort to get me to come back and talk.

It was probably the smartest thing he could have done, because I didn't
want
to discuss it. I wanted to forget it.

Unfortunately, two monster bowls of the fudgeaholic ice cream that I discovered in the freezer did nothing to help.

So I cranked up
Ride the Lightning
by Metallica, and from "Fight Fire with Fire" through "Creeping Death" I let it bash my worries away.

It wasn't until the opening strains of "The Call of Ktulu" that I realized someone was bashing on my door.

"Evangeline! Evangeline, it's Adrienne! Open up!"

Before I could fully consider the potential repercussions, I turned off the music and whisked open the door.

Adrienne rushed in and handed me a book. "I couldn't find the movie. I know he has it somewhere, but I couldn't find it. All I could find was the book. It's his favorite book."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"Brody! You have to read this, okay?" She pressed the book on me. "You have to read this, and then you will understand that he is in love with you."

"What?"
I looked at the worn milk-chocolate-colored cover with gold lettering.
"The Princess Bride?"
I gave her one of her own trademark squints. "And he can't be in love with me! He's practically my
brother.
"

"Yeah, well, he's already got a sister, and I don't think he's looking for another one." She held her forehead. "Don't you get it? All those times we tried to set him up...all those times we kidded him about letting us find him a hot girlfriend...he's been in love with you!"

I collapsed into a living room chair. "This is not good."

"You're telling me!" She sat in the chair next to me. "I got an inkling of it the other day when he said, 'As you wish,' but I couldn't quite believe it. After today I
totally
believe it!"

"What was that 'As you wish' about, anyway?"

She pointed frantically to the book. "You have to read that!" She leaned way over toward me and said, "Evangeline, he is the sweetest guy! What are we going to do?"

My face contorted into what must've been a horrendous sight.

"What?" she asked.

"I kissed him," I blurted. "Or he kissed me. I don't know. We kissed."

She jumped out of her chair.
"What?"
She looked at me like I'd just murdered someone. "When?"

I grimaced. "Today. During sixth period. In his truck."

"How
could
you?"

"I didn't plan for it to happen, I didn't
mean
for it to happen, I'm not even sure
how
it happened, it just did!"

Her head quivered side to side. "I can't believe you! How could you have kissed Brody when you don't even
like
him!"

"I had no idea he liked me!"

"So what! You don't like
him.
It's not fair to kiss people you don't like!"

"But--"

"You are totally out of control! Who
won't
you kiss?"

"What?"

She threw her hands in the air and said, "I've got to get out of here. This is so unbelievable."

"Adrienne, wait!"

But for the second time that day she hurried off, only this time she slammed the door.

70

Outsider

I
WAS AFRAID TO CALL
A
DRIENNE
over the weekend; afraid to go over and try to talk to her; afraid (for the first time in my life) to run into Brody.

So I stay holed up in my room, reading
The Princess Bride.

It served as excellent parent repellent. Every time my mother looked in, I was obviously doing something studious; and the unwritten rule is one does not disturb one's child when they're studying. (Never mind that I was reading about a dreaded pirate, a sweet farm boy, a beautiful maiden, a disgusting prince, and a Spanish swordsman who lived to avenge his father's death.)

It was a fantastic book. Funny, moving, inspiring...and yet Sunday afternoon when I'd finished it, what I felt was heartache.

"As you wish" really meant "I love you."

What was I going to do? I loved Brody, but I wasn't
in
love with him. He was nice-looking--it wasn't that. He was smart and kind and obviously heroic (in a karate chopping sort of way). But to me he was
family.

What was I going to do?

Fortunately, I had the condo to myself because my mother was off doing "sneaky shopping" for my birthday. And fortunately, there was still some fudgeaholic ice cream in the freezer to help me think.

There was no sense in using a bowl.

These were desperate times!

I went directly at it with a spoon.

And while I ate, I ruminated.

I deliberated.

I contemplated.

And with the carton finally scraped clean, I concluded that there was really only one thing to do:

I needed to talk to Brody.

I considered calling. The phone, with its appealing remoteness and its emergency abort feature (otherwise known as the end button), seemed like the safest way to go.

But it was also cowardly.

So I took a shower (two days of reading in bed will make you feel matted all over), flossed my teeth (I don't know why--they just wanted flossing), and left the condo. No makeup, no agonizing over clothes, no earrings--I just pulled on some jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers, and I left.

On the walk over to the Willows' I tried out every opening line I could think of. I didn't know how in the world to say what I wanted to say.

Actually, I didn't know
what
I wanted to say. "I'm so sorry!" seemed like a good start, but what exactly was I sorry for? Until the kissing incident in the truck, I'd never been anything more than chummy with Brody. It's not like I'd been leading him on! And who'd kissed whom?

How could I not know?

So I was already completely muddled when I walked past my old house and saw my mother's car.

Once again it was parked beside my father's.

I stood there for a moment staring. So much for "sneaky shopping."

I hurried on, but when I neared the Willows', I saw Brody and Adrienne sitting side by side on the steps of their porch. They were deep in conversation, and even though they were probably talking about me, I couldn't seem to find the courage to join them.

I eased back and watched from the shadows of the neighbor's tree. The bow of their heads, Adrienne's comforting rub of Brody's back...it was all so quiet and gentle and warm.

I felt like a ghost by that tree. A ghost of the girl I used to be, stuck somewhere between worlds.

Between families.