Kissing Kate (3 page)

“You’re tempted, aren’t you?”

She snorted, then leaned against me and put her head on my shoulder. “Hey, thanks for going with me.”

“No problem.” I could smell her shampoo. Paul Mitchell, the kind that smelled like coconut.

 

 

 

Nikki’s cousin Vanessa did want to go to the mall, which meant that all four of us—me, Beth, Nikki, and Vanessa—were crammed into the front seat of my Nissan pickup. It was an ’86, it had over two hundred thousand miles on it, and the first thing Vanessa said when she climbed in was, “Is this your uncle’s truck? Nikki said you live with your uncle and that he’s really old and weird. Is this what he drives?”

“Nope, it’s mine,” I said. “I bought it myself.”

“My uncle is not weird,” Beth said, kicking Nikki’s foot. “And he’s not
that
old. He’s forty-two.”

“Is that how old this truck is?” asked Vanessa. She scanned the dashboard. “Where’s the CD player? Where’s the radio?”

I backed out of Nikki’s driveway. “Nikki and Vanessa, you two need to share the side seat belt. And Beth, you need to put on the one in the middle. You know that.”

Vanessa whispered something in Nikki’s ear about the truck smelling like pepperoni, and the two of them cracked up. Beth eyed me reproachfully as she buckled up.

“My friend in Raleigh?” Vanessa said. “Her big sister drives a red Miata. It’s adorable. That’s what I’m going to get when I turn sixteen.”

“Me, too,” Nikki chimed.

“Not me,” Beth said. “I’m going to get a BMW convertible.”

I lifted my eyebrows. In Buckhead, the part of Atlanta we lived in, practically everyone drove expensive cars: Mercedes, BMWs, Saabs. That was one reason I loved my beat-up old pickup, even if it did smell like pepperoni. And actually, it wasn’t pepperoni. It was sausage. On Saturday nights I worked for Entrées on Trays, a catering service that did deliveries for a handful of different restaurants, and last week I’d picked up five orders of cannelloni from The Mad Italian. The smell did kind of linger, but I didn’t care. I thought Beth didn’t either.

“Hey, Vanessa,” I said, “Beth says you just moved here from North Carolina. What do you think of Atlanta so far?” I wouldn’t have asked, except I thought I should give her another chance. After all, she was just a kid.

“Tacky,” she said. “It’s like the tackiest place ever—that’s what my mom says. When we were driving here from Raleigh, we passed a huge water tower shaped like a butt.”

Nikki and Beth giggled.

“It’s not a butt,” I said. “It’s a giant peach. Anyway, the water tower you’re talking about is in South Carolina, not Georgia.”

“Whatever. It looked like a humongous butt.”

I shut up for the rest of the ride. Vanessa entertained Nikki and Beth by describing, in detail, a book she’d gotten for her birthday called
How to Upscale Your Image.
“There’s an entire chapter just about lipstick,” she said at one point. “Like how it’s really important to keep your lips moisturized, so you can apply your lipstick in an even coat. Of course, I don’t have to wear lipstick if I don’t want to, because I already have natural lip color. Not many people do.”

I must have groaned, because Beth glared at me before turning to Vanessa and asking, “What about me? Do I have natural lip color?”

Vanessa squinted. “Maybe if you chewed on them a little.”

“Beth, you do not need to chew on your lips,” I said. “They’re fine.” I wanted to tell them that none of them needed to wear makeup, period. They were in the fifth grade, for christsake. But they’d moved from lipstick to eye shadow, and Beth nodded as Vanessa explained how to make close-set eyes appear farther apart by applying dark shadow to the outer corner of each lid.

Then I started thinking, hell, maybe I should be the one paying attention. With Kate, I never worried about how I looked. It wasn’t important, and besides, she was beautiful enough for both of us. People treated me differently when I was with her, as if some of her spark rubbed off on me. Cuteness by association.

“And if your skin tone is uneven—see how Lissa’s face is all blotchy?—well, that’s when you’d use base. No offense, Lissa.”

I dropped off Beth and her friends at the mall and told them to meet me at Chick-fil-A at two o’clock. I parked my truck and walked across the street to Cost Cutters, where I had an 11:00 appointment. I’d planned on simply getting a back-to-school trim, but now, after listening to Vanessa for the entire car ride, I found myself considering something more drastic. Maybe short hair would look good on me. Something soft around my face, maybe some layers . . .

Wait. I was letting a ten-year-old influence how I cut my hair? I’d worn my hair the same way for the last three years— shoulder length, the ends slightly turned under—and except for a disastrous attempt to grow out my bangs, I’d liked it just fine.

I wondered what Kate would say if I cut it short. Kate had great hair: blond and thick and really soft, not coarse like mine. She used to get me to play with it when I spent the night at her house. She’d put her head in my lap while we watched TV, then close her eyes while I ran my fingers over her scalp.

Last summer we put lemon juice on our hair to add highlights, and afterward, when she stood in the sun, the strands around Kate’s face glowed like gold. My hair turned kind of orange-y.

“Auburn,” Kate said.

“Yeah, right,” I responded.

Now my hair was back to its usual dull brown, and the more I thought about it, the more I decided that a short haircut was just the thing to get me out of this rut. What kind of wimp was I if I couldn’t take a risk?

“I need a change,” I told the stylist, whose name was Marcia. “Something kind of feathered around my face? Well, no, not feathered, exactly, but—”

“Something classy,” Marcia said. She ran her fingers through my hair, lifting it in her hands as if weighing it. “A wedge. An asymmetrical wedge.”

I should have known right then that I was making a mistake. I should have gotten up and run. “No, um, that’s not really what I—”

“Oh, honey, it’ll be
perfect.
” She leaned closer and pressed her hands against my cheeks. “You have an oval-shaped face. See? You need something perky and full to bring out your eyes. Do you ever wear eyeliner?”

“Well, no, not usually. Eyeliner kind of scares me. I don’t like touching my eyeballs, and I don’t think—”

“You should consider wearing eyeliner, hon. You have lovely eyes.” She patted my shoulders and straightened up. “All right. Let’s get this show on the road!”

I didn’t end up with an asymmetrical wedge, thank God, but it couldn’t have been much worse if I had. I finally convinced Marcia that I didn’t want to go super, super short, and so she chopped off my hair at this awful mid-cheek length that made me look like an Eastern European refugee. It was just short enough that I couldn’t tuck it behind my ears without it falling in my face, and just long enough that it wouldn’t stay in place if I raked it back with my fingers. In fact, if I’d gotten a super-short haircut and had been trying to grow it out for a couple of months, this is how it would look. I had gotten my hair cut in an awkward, growing-out stage. I had
paid
to get my hair cut in an awkward, growing-out stage. I even left Marcia a tip.

“What did you do to your
hair
?” Vanessa said when I arrived at Chick-fil-A.

“I cut it,” I said. I resisted the urge to try to push it behind my ears.

“Well, duh,” Vanessa said. “But
why
? Are you going to go to school like that?”

Beth looked mortified. She busied herself gathering their empty cups and refused to meet my eyes.

On the drive home, while Beth, Nikki, and Vanessa tried out each other’s new lip balms, I mentally rehearsed my rules for future living. Never make a major hair change without thinking about it for at least a day. Never make a major hair change at Cost Cutters. And regardless of how horrible life is, don’t think a new look will solve the problem.

I DROVE AROUND FOR A WHILE
after dropping off Beth and her friends. I wasn’t due at work for a couple more hours, but I didn’t feel like hanging out at home. I turned right, and then left, and then left again, and before I knew it I was parked down the street from Kate’s house, staring at her window from the front seat. I knew she wasn’t there—her Jeep wasn’t in the driveway—but I didn’t care. I’d been thinking about her all day; at least this way I had something to focus on.

What I’d been turning over in my head was the fact that just because the two of us kissed, it didn’t have to
mean
anything. Friends did that kind of stuff sometimes. Not to the extent that we did, maybe, but girls at school walked around with their arms slung over each other’s shoulders, and I’d seen guys on the football team slap each other on the butt more times than I wanted to count. Plus, Kate was a very physical person to begin with—that’s just the way she was. She used to clutch my arm in the theater when we watched scary movies, and if my shirt tag was ever sticking out or my collar was messed up, she’d reach over and fix it without giving it a second thought.

It actually took me a while to get used to how touch-y she was, back when we first started hanging out. Jerry wasn’t much of a hugger, even when he first moved in, and by the time I was in junior high, he’d pretty much stopped touching me altogether. So the first time Kate hugged me—it was after she got an A- on a science test that I’d helped her study for—I stiffened without meaning to.

“What?” Kate said, pulling away. “You act like I’m your Great-Aunt Lucy or something.”

“I don’t have a Great-Aunt Lucy,” I said.

“You know what I mean. Do I have peanut-butter breath? Is that it?” She cupped her hand around her mouth and exhaled.

“No, it’s just . . .” I shrugged. “I guess it’s been a long time since someone’s touched me.” I realized how weird that sounded, and I blushed.

“Oh. Does it bother you? I mean, should I not hug you?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Good,” Kate said. “Touching is good.”

I wondered if she remembered saying that. I wondered, if I brought it up, if she’d deny it. But that’s what I wanted to tell her, that one person touching another person was perfectly normal. It’s just that we’d been drinking that night at Rob’s—she’d been drinking, anyway—and so things went further than they should have.

I thought of her hand on my skin, under my shirt. The surprise of it, my sharp intake of breath. My pulse quickened now in the truck, and I shoved the memory away. For several minutes I held myself still—eyes closed, head back against the seat. Then a car drove by, and I jerked to attention.

A blue Saturn. Not Kate.

Of course not Kate. She was probably at the movies, because she always went to the movies on Saturday afternoons. We used to go together, and sometimes after one show, we’d sneak past the usher into another. Only today she’d be with Ben. She’d have her popcorn and her pink and blue heart candies from the Candy Jar, which she ate together to mix salty with sweet, and Ben would have his arm around her shoulder. Or maybe he’d rub her neck like he did that night at Rob’s party, after they found us at the gazebo. Slow, lazy circles, while Kate relaxed and leaned closer.

I twisted the key in the ignition. It was stupid, lurking outside Kate’s house like this. I never should have come.

 

 

 

At the Old Corner Bookstore, the clerks pretty much let you fend for yourself, which I liked. I knew I didn’t want to go home and truly be alone—which was different, somehow, than being alone in a crowded store—and so I’d driven here with the vague notion of finding some way to get Kate out of my head. I stood inside the front entrance for a moment, then frowned and headed for the section labeled “Self-help.” I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I figured that was as good a place to start as any.

The first book I picked up was a book on candles called
Light Your Inner Fire.
I riffled through the first couple of chapters, then flipped to the back and found a chart indicating what color candle you should burn to achieve spiritual harmony. It had to do with when you were born. If you were born in January, your candle color was midnight blue, and if you were born in April, like Kate, your candle color was dusty rose. I was born in October, and according to the chart, my birth candle was brown. Not black, a Halloween-y color that at least had drama, but brown. I didn’t know candles even came in brown.

I reshelved the candle book and moved farther down the aisle. Aroma therapy, past-life regression, astral projection . . .

Hmm. I’d heard of astral projection; it had to do with letting your spirit leave your body and go floating around the universe. As a concept, it had potential—talk about a great way to escape your problems. But the book I pulled out bugged me. On the cover a dreamy-looking woman lay face up in a field, while her astral self rose gently from her body. That part I could handle. What bothered me was the fact that her astral self was naked, but her physical self was wearing a peach leotard. It made no sense.

I glanced around, suddenly embarrassed to be here. The only other woman in this section wore a flowing shirt and a crystal necklace, and yes, that was definitely patchouli I smelled. I put back the book on astral projection and was heading for the exit when the title of a light blue paperback caught my eye. It was called
Lucid Dreaming: The Power of Being Awake and Aware in Your Dreams.
I tugged it free. The notes on the back said the author was a professor at Stanford, that he worked in something called a “sleep research center.”

I paused. Placing too much importance on dreams was awfully New Age-y, but the author of this book had a Ph.D. The cover photo showed him wearing a white lab coat and glasses. I turned to the first chapter and scanned the page.