Soul Kiss (2 page)

Brie shook her head.

"Come on, you must have learned mnemonics when you started playing the piano." Brie is a little musical protege, playing Mozart and Brahms and all these other dead European guys. I had played the flute for two years in middle school, because it was the tiniest instrument to carry around. "Empty garbage before daddy flips?"

"The lines of the treble clef," she said.

"Exactly. EGBDF. So if you need to remember something you just look for a mnemonic."

She shrugged. "Too close to moronic for me."

I elbowed her.

"I got an e-mail from that kid I met down the shore," she said, looking out the window. We had left the flowerbeds and single-family houses of Stewart's Crossing by then and were driving through the commercial clutter of Fairless Hills, the town where the high school is.

"That guy? The one who kissed you?"

"Shh," she said. "Yeah."

Brie's family spent a week every summer in Wildwood Crest, a funky town on the Jersey shore filled with weird-looking motels and big stretches of beach.

"And? What did he say?"

"He's back in military school," she said, sighing. "His parents so do not understand him."

"And you do. After a week together under the boardwalk."

"The boardwalk is in Atlantic City, doof, not in Wildwood. And besides, sometimes you just click, you know?"

Her eyes got that spacey look, and I knew the conversation was pretty much over. The bus cruised past the high school's front lawn, with its solitary flagpole in the middle, where we sometimes had social studies class on nice days. Our bus joined a line of others pulling into the school parking lot, which was lined with rows of faculty cars and SUVs and sedans driven by kids whose parents were generous enough to buy them.

While we waited for everyone in front of us to get off, I daydreamed about meeting a boy like the one Brie had met, someone who could see into my soul. That great-looking guy in my dream, for example, who was out there strolling through the meadow and just waiting for me to walk by. I know, it's a very pedestrian and un-feminist dream, but what the hell, I was only going to be seventeen once, right? I figured I might as well wallow in it.

Then I met Daniel Florez, and everything changed.

Daniel showed up in AP English in A period. We were all like, who's he, whispering and texting each other. Everybody else in the class was a known quantity; some of us had been together since elementary school, when classes were divided by standardized test scores. Most of the smart kids in Stewart's Crossing came from rich families, so their parents sent them to private school instead of the public high school. The AP crowd was a smallish one--some kids took everything, others just a few, but we all knew each other.

Daniel was gorgeous. Wavy black hair down to his shoulders, flawless skin the color of caramel, and a body that rocked--broad shoulders, narrow waist, big feet encased in cheap sneakers. Just like the guy in my dream, only younger and not so well-dressed. He wore a plaid long-sleeve shirt that was too big on him and a pair of cheap jeans that were creased funny.

When he spoke up, his voice had just the slightest trace of a Spanish accent. He was breathy on certain words and rolled his Rs sometimes, like on his last name. With the right haircut and one good shopping trip to Franklin Mills, he might have looked like the hero of a
telenovela
, one of those soap operas on the Spanish language channels. Brie and I watched them sometimes just to swoon over the cute guys and the gorgeous clothes the girls wore.

Sadly, he spoke like he had swallowed the dictionary, which was a total turnoff. Our teacher, Mrs. Ash, a sweet old Quaker lady who had to be close to a hundred, put the word
bildungsroman
on the blackboard and then turned to the class, asking if anyone knew what that meant.

No one raised a hand; it was senior year and we had been excellent students for long enough. We were all determined to keep Mrs. Ash's expectations low. But then Daniel raised his and said, "It's a German word that means a novel about the education of a young man. It typically focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. You could call it a coming of age novel too, but not all coming of age novels are bildungsromans and not all bildungsromans are coming of age novels."

The rest of us, Mrs. Ash included, looked at him with our mouths open. I could see Mindy Kagan's braces, and that was not a pretty sight.

Finally Mrs. Ash said, "Thank you, Daniel, that's exactly right." She picked up her chalk again. "I know you've all read books like this already. Who can name one?"

Once again, the room was silent as a tomb, or detention run by Mr. Iccanello, which is pretty much the same thing. I made the major mistake of letting Mrs. Ash establish eye contact with me, so she said, "Melissa?"

I racked my brain for the books we had read the year before. Nothing seemed to fit. I looked over at Daniel, hoping he would help me out. He didn't say a word. But suddenly, "
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
" blurted out of my mouth.

"Excellent," Mrs. Ash said. "You could probably include
Huckleberry Finn
in that list too." She went on to talk about the books we would read that semester, including
To Kill A Mockingbird
(read it in summer enrichment class two years ago) and
Goodbye Columbus
, which sounded like it was written by a girl who was as desperate to get out of Ohio as I was to ditch Pennsylvania, but of course wasn't.

Finally the bell rang and we moved on to AP Calculus. We had all pretty much figured out that Daniel Florez was too weird for words, no matter how cute he was, so no one spoke to him as we walked. But he trailed along behind us, sliding into the seat next to me as the bell rang.

"I am Daniel," he said, sticking his hand out to me.

"Yeah, I heard when Mrs. Ash called roll." But he was hella cute, so I said, "I'm Melissa," and shook his hand. Fortunately then Mr. Iccanello came in and rapped on his desk so we would all shut up.

We sat in rows of uncomfortable chairs with little desks attached, with a whiteboard up front. Mr. Iccanello, who was about fifty with Elvis sideburns and a pot belly, stood behind a table stacked with textbooks. As he called roll, we had to stand up and fetch a textbook and a copy of our syllabus for the semester.

As you could imagine, it caused a huge traffic jam with kids trying to pass each other in the narrow aisles between students. By the time he called "Melissa Torani," there was major gridlock all around my desk. For a math guy, Mr. Iccanello was not very efficient. It took almost twenty minutes to get that out of the way.

Just like in English, Daniel was willing to speak up when no one else was, giving a long, drawn-out explanation of what a real number was. Even Mr. Iccanello looked bored by the time he was finished.

There was no AP class in third period, so we all split up. I went to study hall, which was a total waste of time since there was nothing to study yet, and I met up with Brie again at lunch, where we sat with Chelsea Scalzitti and Mindy Kagan, just like we'd been doing for four years.

Daniel Florez sat by himself at the end of a long table. There was a clearly defined space between him and the group at the other end. No one sat with him, and no one had invited him to join them. I felt kind of bad for him, but I didn't want to let myself in for one of those lectures of his, either.

Chelsea leaned in close and said, "I think the new kid is wearing a shirt my aunt Bernice bought for my brother last Christmas. My mother couldn't donate it to the thrift shop fast enough."

Mindy said, "He must be from some foreign country. He talks funny."

I refrained from pointing out that all the metal in Mindy's mouth didn't exactly contribute to her speech patterns.

"And what is he eating?" Chelsea said.

Daniel had brought his own lunch, in a paper bag -- a couple of sandwiches and some chips that looked like they were made from freeze-dried bananas.

"I don't know, but it looks gross," Brie said.

Though I didn't know why, I was determined to shift the conversation away from Daniel. "Tell us about Wildwood Crest, Brie," I said. "Did you have fun?"

She shot me a murderous look. "It was okay. Typical Jersey shore."

At least that launched everybody into stories of where they had gone for summer vacation.

Because the Big Mistake has so many weird things wrong with him, we hardly ever go anywhere. We didn't even have grandparents in distant places to go visit. My mom was an only child from Harrisburg, and her parents were both dead, which maybe contributed to her desperate attempts to get us to feel like Macgregors.

The only place we ever went was to visit my aunt and uncle in Scranton, because the Big Mistake can't eat most processed food, he's allergic to mattresses and pillows, and we're long past sharing a room with our parents. The Big S Motel, a few blocks from their house, let us bring our own linens and gave us a discount on two adjoining rooms.

So I was stuck in Stewart's Crossing all summer, taking enrichment courses when everyone else was off playing at the beach or in the mountains. I had to sit there and listen to stories about roller coasters, restaurants where you sat on the floor to eat, and science museums with creepy dinosaur skeletons. And all I could do was sit there and say, "That sounds cool" even when it didn't, because I didn't have anything better to contribute.

When lunch was over we moved on to AP History, in D period. And sure enough, Daniel was there, sounding like he had swallowed the history textbook. When Mrs. Becker asked if anyone knew why we were beginning our study of European history in 1789, Daniel said, "That was the year the French revolution began, when the people rose up against the corrupt emperor and proclaimed a republic. People think that's when they executed King Louis the sixteenth but that didn't happen for a couple of years."

The rest of the class groaned. It looked like we were going to be in for a long semester. I mean, European history was bad enough, but it was going to be miserable if we had to listen to lectures from both Mrs. Becker and Daniel Florez.

On the bus home, Brie and I talked about a million things, from bad lockers and worse classes to new updates on the same old boring classmates. Our teachers were smart enough not to give us homework on the first day of school; it would set a bad precedent. So I went over to Brie's house, around the corner from mine, and we spent the afternoon polishing our nails and texting our friends and listening to music.

Around five I went back home. The Big Mistake was already there, sprawled on the couch in the living room with his headphones on. Neither of us said anything as I walked past.

When he was ten his pediatrician had him tested for allergies. We discovered that he reacted poorly to wheat, food dyes, food additives, and peanuts, among many other things. I had been eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day for lunch. Of course that had to stop immediately: Robbie couldn't even have peanut butter in the house.

He did start to behave better, I'll give him that. But it meant that we all had to eat Robbie's diet, because my mom wasn't going to make separate meals for him. I walked past the kitchen and sniffed. It smelled horrific.

"What is that?" I asked my mom, who was sitting at the table doing a crossword puzzle while whatever awful stuff was baking in the oven. "Salmon-spinach loaf," she said proudly, like it was some accomplishment.

"Gross. Can I have something else?"

"This is not a restaurant, Melissa," she said, for like the ten thousandth time. "You eat what you're served or you don't eat anything."

"Fine, then I'll starve," I said. "The child protection people will come over and ask 'why is your daughter so skeletal?' and you can tell them it's because all you serve in this house is horrible food that normal people shouldn't eat."

"You're not exactly skeletal," my mother said.

I burst into tears. "I knew it! You think I'm fat! I hate you!" I ran into my room and slammed the door behind me. The whole crummy house shook.

I'm not like anorexic or anything. And I don't throw up my meals. But I always feel like I could lose a few pounds, that if I did boys would think I'm cuter, that my life would be totally better.

I threw myself down on my bed and pouted for a while. Then I texted Brie to see what they were eating at her house.
Pizza,
she replied.

Cn I cm 2?

While I waited for her response I looked in the mirror. I hadn't had a beach vacation like Brie where I could tan, and my skin looked pale. I thought it would never be that golden caramel color of Daniel Florez's.

I stopped. Why in the world would I think of him? He was cute, but a total dork. I wouldn't go out with him if he begged me.

But I did love the way his hair looked. Why couldn't mine be wavy like that, instead of curly? I remembered the way he had looked at me in English class, how the book title had suddenly come to me. Maybe he was telepathic! And he could see right into my soul, and send me secret messages in the middle of English class.

My head was spinning when my phone burped.
U cn cm,
Brie texted.