Kiss Crush Collide (2 page)

The smell of patchouli hits me before I can even make it to the top of the stairs.

“Freddie must be practicing for her year abroad,” I whisper to Shane over my shoulder, stopping to fan my hand in front of my face.

Our bodies bounce into each other as I lag and Shane advances. Prodding me from behind, pressing solid and strong, he’s urging me toward the top of the stairs and the possibility that he is going to get some as soon as we get to my room.

“If you’re lucky she is growing her armpit hair out, too,” I say, delaying the inevitable with my arms out, weight suspended from the polished banisters, knowing that Shane thinks Freddie is hot. Everybody does. She is.

He smiles back at me, all white teeth and good manners, unwilling to comment and risk the possibility of pissing off one of my sisters. Shaking his head, he wrinkles up his straight, slightly sunburned nose and slides his fingers tightly around mine as we trip up the last carpeted step.

“I heard that,” Freddie yells as soon as we turn into the hall. “And you’re late.”

I drop Shane’s hand and step into Freddie’s doorway. Sniffing, I can just make out a top note of nail polish swirling above the cloud of patchouli. Freddie is on her unmade bed, curled over her toes, an open bottle of fruit punch-colored polish on the small shawl-covered table next to her.

It seems like everything in Freddie’s room is recently shawl covered. Or scarf covered. The lamps all burn faintly under fringed scarves. The chairs, dressing table, desk, bookshelves, even the bed—all draped.

She is getting a jump start on her foreign exchange experience. Next year she will be living in France, and this year I guess we all are. The sounds, compliments of an almost endless loop of conversational French playing through her iPod speakers, with an occasional bout of Edith Piaf, the sights, even the scent of Paris spill from Freddie’s room 24-7.
J’aime Paris
and all that, but I don’t know if I will make it to next fall.

“I got here in twelve minutes,” I say flatly, leaning against Freddie’s door frame, twisting my hair around my fingers in frustration. Twelve,[] I think, mentally navigating the maze of hallways, stop signs, and ass grabbing I had to navigate with Shane in that short period of time.

“Just how fast does she want Shane to drive?” I ask.

Freddie stops painting and leans back against the crazy pile of orange, pink, red, and purple pillows that threatens to take over her bed. She waves her hands around over her feet, homecoming queen style, in what can only be an attempt to speed up the drying process. I have a miniflashback, leaning there at the edge of Freddie’s stinky pink room, to last fall, when she was perched up on the back of a convertible wearing a sparkly green dress and a silver crown, shivering in the sharp air as she rolled by in the homecoming parade, waving those same cupped, stiff hands at me and the crowd.

“Faster,” she says while testing a nail for sticki-ness. She looks up at me and adds, unnecessarily, “Obviously.”

“It’s not like I missed anything,” I say, dismissing the total duh face she is making at me from her bed. Staring down, I snap off some of the hair that is woven around my fingers like golden thread, feeling each strand stretch before it breaks with a sudden little pop. Shane reaches for me, pulling at my hand. I let his warm fingers slip through mine.

“That’s what you think,” Freddie says almost sagely, her expression unreadable behind a curtain of long blond hair as she picks up the bright little brush, starts fresh on her pinkie toe, and I wonder what she means.

Shane tries his luck again, pulling more impatiently this time, and I give in, letting him lure me away from Freddie and Edith and whatever it is that I may have missed. Hooking my fingers around his, I drag my toes through the thick cream carpet all the way down the hall, feeling his pull getting stronger and stronger the closer we get to my door. He knows my mother’s nerves may have been momentarily settled now that I am home safe, but the sound of her uptight heels clicking across the tiled foyer downstairs means we are running out of time.

Roger has perfectly trimmed dark hair that stands up in a neat line along the edge of his forehead, like a hedge. He also has sharp creases down the front of his khakis and fine, shiny driving moccasins that match his leather belt. His arms are tan from golfing; his face is tan from skiing in the winter and from summers manning the barbecue at his family’s lake house. So, in short, he is just like every boyfriend Yorke has ever had, but with maybe a little bit more money, as I discovered that evening while waiting with my sisters on our front steps for a ride to the club and he pulled up in the little red M3 Shane and I had parked behind earlier that day.

This manicured man is now standing with an arm wrapped tightly around my oldest sister’s waist as the soft tinkling notes from the club’s piano bar drift over to our table. Our middle school music teacher is moonlighting for tips. Hunching over the gleaming black baby grand in the corner, her frizzy hair bounces in time as her eyes, magnified to the tenth power by her thick, smudged glasses, trail along on the photocopied sheet music. She pauses a moment for applause at the end of each piece, then silently cracks her knuckles and starts in on another melancholy, boozy tune.

My dad sits at the head of the table, his smile beaming out into the room. My mother, to his right, dabs at her eyes, leaving dark mascara spots across her expensive linen country club napkin.

I look around the table, my wineglass at half-mast. We are supposed to be celebrating Freddie’s graduation, yet only Shane and Evan, Freddie’s boyfriend whom she is planning to dump at the end of the summer so she can get buck wild during her year abroad, seemed truly surprised to hear Yorke’s engagement news. They jumped up and clapped, giving themselves away as outsiders. The rest of us were already in on it.

Yorke could never keep a secret. Ever. She was always the one who guessed where our Christmas gifts were hidden each year. Then she would convince me, or Freddie, but usually me since Freddie kind of has an iron will, to come along on the expedition to uncover them.

If we refused, Yorke would find the gifts herself and then, afterward, pin us down and tell us what we were getting. I remember being under the stairs in my dad’s office late one December afternoon when I was about eight, holding a big yellow flashlight while Yorke shifted boxes around and called out everything she found. “Dollhouse . . . board game . . . dresses . . . books for Freddie . . . paint set.” My heart dropped and the flashlight bobbed every time she found another box.

For other occasions, she would tell you what a present was just as you were starting to tear off the wrapping paper. It was like someone snuffing out the candles on your cake just as you were about to blow, your lungs full of air and your mind full of wishes and then whoosh . . . gone.

It didn’t matter whom the gift was from or whom it was for; she had to tell. And not just us. I remember going to birthday parties as kids. Yorke got us invited to everything, as she is, and was even then, the most popular and social person I have ever met.

We would walk in the front door, wearing our matching but different-colored dresses, and Yorke would hand over our perfectly wrapped gift and announce baldly, “It’s a baby doll.” Then she would walk away to pin the tail on the donkey or join the circle of little girls with freshly brushed hair and pink dresses who were just dying to play with her and Freddie and I would be left standing, embarrassed, in the front hall with an upset mother and a confused little birthday girl.

She didn’t grow out of it.

“Leah, you made the squad!” she screamed just thirty minutes after I had finished my freshman pep squad tryout. We weren’t supposed to know the results until the next morning, so did I mind keeping it a secret until then? “Leah, I heard you got captain!” she cheered, calling from her dorm room the next year, an insider even when she was on the outside. She knew before I did, before anyone else did, and of course she had to be the first to tell. It was the same thing with her engagement; she even had to trump herself.

We had been driving along in Roger’s red convertible earlier that night, the smooth tan leather seats smelling new and expensive, his frat boy rock barely loud enough to be heard over the sizzle of the tires and the swirl of the warm June breeze. Freddie and I were squeezed in the back, our short black dresses fluttering, our legs angled toward the middle, knees knocking together, as we pulled out of our driveway for the short trip to the country club. Yorke lowered the volume on the power ballad as soon as we hit the street and turned around to face us.

“Guess what?” she gushed, and I leaned forward, gripping the side of her seat with my fingers. Roger gunned it just as she squealed, “Roger and I are engaged!” and she was snapped back into her seat, momentarily pinned down by the force of the engine.

I took this opportunity to look to my right at Freddie, who was sitting back in her seat, her eyebrows raised. She smiled at me and then turned her head to look at the passing countryside. I settled back. Of course she already knew. Freddie and Yorke are alike in a lot of ways, but not this one. Freddie can keep a secret. She’s like a vault.

Yorke swiveled back around, and I plastered a huge grin on my face as Roger jerked us into a higher gear.

“I was going to wait until we made the big announcement tonight at dinner, but I just couldn’t . . . ” she said as she smoothed her hair back with her right hand, pausing long enough for me to see the weighty diamond sparkling on her finger. “Don’t say anything to Mother or Dad, okay? I mean, they already know, but still, act surprised, okay?”

“Okay.” I nodded, going along with Yorke’s scheme, like always. “Now,” I said with a big breath, “let me see that ring.”

Yorke held out her hand just as Roger took a wild right, the swing of the car pulling her fingers away from mine. I grabbed on to Yorke’s seat and steadied myself. I looked up to see Roger smiling benignly at me in the rearview mirror.

It seemed a bit dangerous to be crowded up near the front of the car with Yorke’s diamond, Freddie’s knees, and Roger’s testosterone, so I leaned back and listened to Yorke’s stream of wedding plans: cream roses, champagne cocktails, and strawberry dresses. Or maybe that was cream-colored dresses and strawberry champagne cocktails?

I looked out over the lake as we whizzed by. It was smooth, the water dark with splashes of sunlight trailing a boat or two. There were dads and kids out on the docks, tying up Sunfishes or just casting off for an evening sail.

We had grown up on that lake. Learned to swim, sail, and fish there. Spent our summers in that water wearing matching but different-colored bathing suits.

Freddie is an excellent diver. She spent hours practicing off our dock, my dad in the water up to his neck, encouraging her. I used to watch how Freddie would bend her legs, how they would tense right before she pushed off, the way she kept her toes pointed as she hit the water.

She held my hand the first time I went to dive, our toes curled over the edge of the old wooden dock. When she let go, I sailed into the water. I knew what to do. I had learned all I needed to know from watching her.

Days and days went by when all we did was swim and lie on the dock, wrapping ourselves in our thick beach towels when the sun started to set, our hair still dripping from its sun-bleached ends.

My sisters were my best friends. We shared secrets, sandwiches, every minute of our lives, even a bathroom. I was jealous that Yorke got to sail in her little boat alone, that Freddie was taller than I was, that they both could French braid and do a perfect cartwheel. I spent all my time trying to catch up with them and measure up. I still do.

Roger took a tight curve. I reached up, fingers tangling in my hair, and settled back with Yorke’s news, waiting for the familiar feeling of jealousy to kick in.

Every time we drove past our old house on our way to the club, my mother would insist we slow down so she could curse the new owners. “Geraniums. How common,” she would comment, her eyes following the house, her head motionless. “Mason,” she would say to my dad, “did you see the color of the shutters?”

With Roger behind the wheel, there was no slowing down for the lake house, even though flashes of it appeared between the trees and then disappeared as quickly as the memories running through my mind. There was no slowing down, period. Freddie and I were going to be lucky to get out of this drive with our kneecaps intact. Summer already seemed to be rushing by, and it hadn’t even officially started yet.

Roger slammed to a stop at the club’s curved entry, and my knees smacked into Freddie’s with a sick thud. Our bodies flung forward until our seat belts caught and tightened us down.

Roger was out in a flash, not having said a word the entire drive. It seemed he preferred to communicate nonverbally through erratic gearshifting and sudden, violent braking.

He was around to Yorke’s side of the car with his hand on the door before the engine even stopped. He opened it gallantly, she stepped out and kissed him, then he pushed the seat forward and held the door for Freddie. I was left to fend for myself.

Struggling with my seat belt and my wind-whipped hair, I didn’t notice the hand held out for me until it was right there in my face. It was not the large, lumbering hand of my boyfriend. It was masculine, yes, but in a thinner, more energetic, knuckle-cracking kind of way.

I glanced up into green eyes with bits of brown dancing in them as I shook my hair over my shoulder, rubbed my sore knee, grabbed my purse, and then reached for the outstretched hand.

“Smooth ride?” he asked. A smile curved up one side of his mouth.

I laughed. When he wrapped his fingers around mine, a warm current of electricity flowed through me. I felt suddenly solid, as if my world had been rolling past me and it had stopped, right now, amazingly sharp and in focus as if I had just taken off my roller skates. I didn’t want to let go.

Roger appeared in front of us. His sharp creases and crisp lines were unaffected by his driving. His face was serious, and the key to the red M3 was swinging from one of his fingers. He dangled it and then finally dropped it. Those electric fingers snagged the key, breaking our hold, and my heart, midair.