Second Kiss (24 page)

“Uh, this is kind of awkward.” I was at my locker the next Monday morning before school when I suddenly felt Trance’s breath onthe back of my neck. “But you’re at the wrong locker.”

I breathed in a heavy sigh and turned around to face him. He looked so perfect, especially for seven forty in the morning. He had fresh gum in his mouth, and his lips were just slightly parted with a bit of a smile as he spoke. Yet somehow my stomach didn’t flutter-not one bit-as he looked humorously into my eyes. “Your locker is actually in the elementary school a few blocks down the road.”

I bit my lip as an effort to smile at his joke, but I had too much on my mind to actually find it funny. “Trace,” I said before I could talk myself out of it, “you didn’t ask me to dance last year at the Valentine’s dance.”

Trace’s lips fell as he took in what I was saying.

I continued with a nervous laugh, “You probably don’t even remember this, but my friends Clarissa and Nina asked you… “

“I remember.” Trace hugged his arms around his chest and narrowed his eyes as he spoke, “Of course I remember that.”

“So why are you paying all of this attention to me when you obviously don’t like me?”

“Who said I don’t like you?”

I threw my hands up in the air. “You didn’t ask me to dance, Trace! If you liked me you would have asked me to dance!”

“I was planning on asking you dance.” He leaned closer to me with a sense of urgency in his voice. “It took me a minute to find you, okay? But by the time I did find you, you were already dancing with Jess Tyler.”

I swallowed as I recalled that day. I supposed I hadn’t given Trace much time before practically leaping into Jess’s arms. “You could have cut in,” I said flatly.

“And take you away from Jess Tyler?” Trace shook his head. “I watched you two together that day. There was something going on there.”

“Maybe there was,” I said gloomily, “but not anymore.”

I couldn’t believe it was already the end of May. There were only a few days left of my junior high high career. Soon I was going to be in tenth grade. Soon I was going to be a high-school student. The thought of it was surreal. It was what I had been waiting for all year and yet I just couldn’t bring myself to get excited about it. Jess was leaving - sometime - I hadn’t tallked to him since that night in fron of my house, which meant I had no idea when he was heading out to California for the summer. It also meant that he didn’t know anything about Trace kissing me, or my fight with Drew, or anything that had happened to me for the past few weeks. It felt strange and lonely. I hated it. It wasn’t that Jess hadn’t tried to make contact with me. he had called a few times and he even threw rocked at my window one night. But I ignored him. Why should I care about him when he obviously didn’t care about me?

I wasn’t talking to Drew either. Or maybe she wasn’t talking to me. I wasn’t sure anymore. I noticed in German class that she always sat alone in the back. Carmen, Stella, and Stephanie sat on the opposite side of the room, and Trace usually found a seat somewhere around me. I liked talking to Trace, and it was great to have someone to walk with through the halls, but despite what everyone in our class was thinking, we were just friends.

It was almost noon on the last day of school. The halls were mostly empty since everyone was let out early to go sign yearbooks on the soccer field. I was running late though, mostly because I still hadn’t cleaned out my locker and partly because I didn’t know who I would possibly ask to sign my yearbook.

I was walking through the halls with my hands full of old notebooks and a few pop cans that I had just scoured from my locker. I was sauntering slowly past the lockers, soaking in my last day as a junior high student when I noticed a familiar shadow at the end of the hall. It was Drew, and she was at her locker. She was squatting on the ground, stuffing the last of her things into her backpack when she turned to the sound of my footsteps echoing in the hall.

“Hi,” I said as I approached her. I stopped next to her locker and waited to see how she would respond.

She stood up slowly and looked me in the eyes. “Hey.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

Drew bit the side of her cheek as she considered it. Eventually she nodded.

“Why did you become friends with me?”

Drew folded her arms. “Truthfully?”

“That would be nice.”

She watched me carefully as though trying to determine whether I could handle what she was about to tell me. She stood perfectly still, barely moving her lips when she said, “You looked lonely.”

I pitched my head forward in shock. “Lonely?”

Drew shrugged her shoulders. “I thought you could use a friend.”

Nothing she could have said would have surprised me more than that. I had always looked at Drew as a selfish person-there always had to be something in it for her. For the first time ever, I felt like I was seeing the real Drew. And it was answering a lot of questions. It explained why she had been so insistent on me sharing her locker with her even though there was barely enough room for my notebook. It explained why she wanted to throw a party with so many people at my house. It may have even explained why she stopped being my friend when the party was a bust.

I watched Drew as she picked up her heavy backpack and shut her locker one last time. I was sad that I had let so much time go without knowing the truth about her.

Drew started walking down the hall and then paused to see if I was going to follow. When I fell in stride beside her she asked, “What are you doing this summer?”

The thought of summer made my heart ache. “Not much. You?”

“I’ll be at my dad’s in Atlanta.”

“Oh yeah.” She had told me that back in March when we were friends on a daily basis.

“You’ll probably hang out with Jess, right?”

I sighed heavily, “No. He’s going to California.”

“California? Why?”

“Same reason as you, to be with his dad.”

“I didn’t know his parents were divorced. He always seemed like he had a perfect life.”

“I don’t think anybody has a perfect life,” I responded. I opened the door that led outside, and we both stepped out into the sunshine. “Are you going to the yearbook signing?”

Drew squinted into the light. “I don’t think there’s any point. I can’t think of one person who would want to sign my yearbook.”

“I know what you mean.”

Drew looked up at me and with a hint of hesitation asked, “Do you want to come over to my house?”

I was caught off guard by her invitation but somehow not all that surprised. “I would, but I promised my mom I’d be home this afternoon to help her with some stuff.”

Drew pursed her lips and looked down at the ground beneath us. “Well, I guess I’ll see you next year?”

“Maybe we can be locker partners.”

Drew bit her lip and nodded. “That would be good.” She shot me a half smile before turning toward the road that led to her house. I watched her as she walked away, and as I did I thought about the past few months since we had become friends. We went through a lot in that time, and I figured if we had made it that far, maybe our friendship was stronger than I thought.

I turned the opposite way and headed toward mine and Jess’s shortcut home. Even though he hadn’t been there to walk it with me for an entire year, in my mind, it would always belong to both of us. I made my way across our old soccer field, through our hole in the fence, and around our concrete jungle. It seemed so much smaller now than it used to. I sat for a while on our block wall and looked out over our trees and our lake. And as I made my last steps home on my last day in junior high, I felt a little bit older, a little bit more mature, and a little bit more comfortable in my bra.

My heart was pounding as I approached my house because sitting on the front porch in his usual spot on the steps was Jess. It had been a week since he had made any attempts to talk to me, and there he was again as if no time had passed. I had about ten seconds of walking before I reached him to be able to decide what I was going to do with the situation. I missed him terribly. The biggest part of me wanted to run to him, let him wrap his arms around me, and tell him all about my day. But a smaller part of me - the much more prideful part of me - wanted to do the opposite. The prideful part of me won.

“What are you doing here?” I asked callously when I was within a couple feet of him.

Jess pulled himself to standing and stuck both of his hands deep in his jean pockets. “I just wanted to say goodbye,” he replied. His eyes were turned down at the corners, and I thought he looked a bit pale.

“When are you leaving?” I was dying to know, but I shielded my emotions by speaking as flatly as I possibly could.

“Tonight.”

His answer stung my ears and the tips of my toes. But I shrugged my shoulders and walked passed him up the stairs. “Have a nice summer.”

“Gemma.” Jess’s voice was firm as he called after me.

I turned around when I reached the top of the porch. “What?”

“Why are you so mad at me? You haven’t talked to me in weeks. Is this really all because I didn’t tell you I was going to California?”

It was a valid question. One I had thought about many times since that night on the street. I was hurt that he hadn’t told me, but no, that wasn’t why I was angry. I was angry at him for not caring. I was angry at him for not wanting me the same way I wanted him. But I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “It really doesn’t matter. I’ve hardly thought about it.”

Jess lifted his chin and stepped backward toward the lawn. “Really, that’s good. I was afraid you were mad.”

“I’ve had a lot going on so… ” I waved my hand at a bug as my lie floated away with the breeze.

Jess nodded and puffed out his bottom lip. “How are things going anyway, with Drew and Trace and all that?”

I faked a smile. “Trace kissed me at that party.” I leaned against the porch railing. “It was just a game, but no one else got kissed on the lips.”

Jess flexed his jaw and looked down at the grass. “Sounds like things are working out for you then.”

No, not at all actually. I didn’t even like the kiss. I wish it had never happened. I wish the person who kissed me was you. “Yeah, I guess.

Jess looked at the house behind me, then at the ground again, then at a nearby tree. He couldn’t look me in the eye. He hated me for letting Trace kiss me. He always said I was too immature for stuff like that. And now he couldn’t stand to look at me.

“Well I got to go,” Jess said as he backed away farther toward the sidewalk. “I need to pack still.”

I turned toward my house and opened the front door. I spoke to the doorknob as I muttered, “Have a good trip.”

I stepped through the door and closed it behind me, but just before it shut I heard his soft voice say, “Bye, Gemma.”

The pizza guy came that night at six o’clock. Mom was out to dinner with my aunt that was in town from Alberquerque, and Bridget was on a date, so Dad ordered pizza and we ate it together on the couch while watching some old cowboy movie that made him feel like a kid again. I was bored with the movie, but I loved spending time with Dad - just the two of us. On the screen in fron of me some cowboys were tromping through the desert on horseback looking for Indians, but my thoughts were with Jess and the horrible way I had let things end.

“What you thinking about?” Dad asked.

I waved my hand at the television with a smirk. “Cowboys and Indians, obviously.”

Dad pointed the remote control at the screen and hit pause. “Come on, what’s on your mind?”

I scowled at the piece of hair I was twisting between my fingers. “Jess.”

“When does he leave for California?”

“Tonight sometime.” I looked out the window toward his house. It was starting to get dark. “He could be gone already.”

“Did you say goodbye?”

“I guess.” I slouched into the couch. “Things between Jess and me are just… ” I paused to think of the right word, “confusing.”

Dad let his head rest on the back of the couch. He was looking better these days, but he was still tired. “What’s so confusing about it? You two are best friends. You love being together. What more do you need to know?”

I looked at Dad from the corner of my eye. I had never admitted to anyone that I had feelings for Jess. But there was something about the way we were sitting there together, eating pizza and watching a cowboy movie that made me want to open up to him.

“Sometimes I think I want to be more than just friends with him.”

“But?” Dad asked with raised eyebrows. He wasn’t surprised with my confession.

“But he doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

“How do you know?”

“I just do,” I said more harshly than I meant to. Every time I talked about Jess or thought about Jess I felt rejected. I was beginning to hate the sound of his name. “Dad?” I was hoping to change the subject, though my next question was anything but easy to ask. “Are you going to die?”

Dad turned his head toward me again and took in a deep breath of air. “The doctors are giving us every reason to hope.” He brushed his hand over my hair, which fell against my back. “That being said, it is possible that I will die sooner than I’d like.”

I stared blankly at the paused movie in front of me while hugging my knees close to my chest. My stomach started tightening, and I felt like I wanted to throw up. “We’re never going to go up to the Cape again, are we?”

He dipped his chin toward his chest. “Probably not.”

I nodded my head like it wasn’t a big deal. I didn’t want to make him sadder than he already was.

“I know it’s hard, but,” he hesitated, “it’s kind of like the problem you’re having with Jess. Right now it seems earth shattering, like it’s the end of the world. But from my point of view, I know that it’s not. I know that you’re only at the beginning of your story. The experiences you’re having with Jess and all your friends are just life lessons for the bigger things that will come later on. And I think that it’s the same with my illness. Right now the idea of dying is,” he paused for a moment, “well, to be honest, it’s downright terrifying. But I have faith that we don’t have the whole picture. And I have faith that there’s someone out there that does, and he knows that this is only the beginning. He knows that the experiences I’m having here on earth are just preparing me for the bigger things that will come later on.”