The Kiss Off (28 page)

I opened the front door and was immediately accosted by Poo Bum, jumping around and waggling his tail so fast I wasn’t sure he hadn’t gotten into mom’s jelly bean stash.

Dad poked his head around the corner from the living room. “Poppy!”

Mom appeared, followed by Bex who was jumping around and meowing like a cat, for some reason. And to my surprise, Mads and Vanya appeared too.

I opened my mouth but had no idea what to say.

“Where have you been?” Dad demanded. He had his angry face on, his bushy eyebrows narrowed, and eyes all wrinkly.

“Um, what should really be the question is why are you home so soon?” I said, manoeuvring past them into the living room. I stopped short as I was faced with Rory sitting on the couch. With his foot on the coffee table. With a bag of peas and another of carrots sitting on top of it. It was going red from cold. Or the swelling, because his ankle was the size of an orange and getting bigger.

“What the hell happened?” I said.

Rory stopped wincing and smiled at me with, in my opinion, a bit too much enjoyment. “You are in so much trouble…”

“Poppy!” Mom said. “Where. Have. You. Been?”

“I went out.” I turned to Mads and Van. “What are you guys doing here?”

“You’re still grounded, young lady.”

“How are you even surprised I left the house?” I said. “Come on. All the prison guards were gone and the doors were unlocked. What did you think I was going to do?”

Vanya cringed and closed her eyes. I could tell she was mentally smacking me over the head.

“Where were you?” Dad said.

I shrugged. “I went to Drew’s place. He was having people over.”

“And how did you know that?”

“Because I went on Facebook, okay? And I borrowed my phone. I put it all back though.”

Mom pursed her lips, clamping them shut. She stared at Dad as her blood pressure rose.

“Mr. and Mrs. Douglas, please don’t be too hard on Poppy,” Mads said, stepping in front of me, hands pressed together in prayer. She twisted and looked behind her, at me, her eyes huge and sympathetic. “She’s had a really hard night.”

“What are you talking about?” Mom said through tight lips.

“How are you feeling, Poppy?” Mads said facing me and clamping both hands on my shoulders. “Drew told me you saw it.”

“Saw what?” Dad said.

“I can’t even…what are you going to do?” Mads shook her head with incomprehension.

“She doesn’t have to decided right now,” Vanya said, glancing around at our audience. “But even though she’s grounded and all, we wanted to come and see if you’d let us see her. Only for a minute. To be supportive.”

“Right,” Mads said. “Supportive. And to totally talk strategy. What are you going to do?”

“Mads-”

“Ladies!” Dad said. Mads gasped and snapped to attention. Dad breathed in, breathed out and asked one more time “What, for the love of God, are you girls talking about?”

“Ty loves Poppy!” Mads gushed.

“Mads!” I said, appalled. Vanya pinched her arm and Mads squeaked and slapped her hands over her mouth,

“What?” Mom said. “How do you know that?”

“Because their new single debuted tonight and he said so in this interview – the only interview he’s given about the whole debacle.”

“Mads!”

“And the song is this complete apology and how he didn’t actually do anything wrong and it was all misconstrued and blown out of proportion and he’s freaking in
love
with her,” Mads said. “It’s actually pretty catchy.”

It took Dad a moment to process, because he continued to look at Mads like he was still listening for a while after she finished talking, and he turned to Mom for some sort of sign as how to respond, and found her clutching her hands to her chest, smiling at me the same way she had when I’d gotten my first period and she had wiped away a tear and told me I was becoming a woman.

“He said he loves you?” she asked. I could tell her voice was going to raise an octave any second in a ‘Squee! That kitten is so cute!’ way and I wasn’t sure I could deal.

“Not just that he loves her, it was a big time telling her that he loves her. Like, the national TV, jumping-on-chairs type,” Mads said.

“
Mads
.”

“Only they were standing,” Van added. “And he didn’t jump.”

“Thank you guys!” I said, glaring at them to shut up already. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. We’re broken up.”

But Mom didn’t seem to care, or she wasn’t hearing a word of it. She clutched her hands together in front of her, still watching me, shaking her head with a sigh because a boy was in love with her daughter. She opened her mouth to speak. It was coming, the adorable kitty voice was coming.

“But I snuck out before I knew there was going to be any of this stuff going on tonight,” I said quickly, trying to get the conversation back on track. “I shouldn’t have snuck out. It was wrong, and all that stuff.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Dad said, nudging Mom. She blinked a couple of times and lowered her hands.

“Yes,” she said, slowly climbing back on board the ‘Poppy was bad’ train.

“And you,” she said, turning to my friends. “You know she’s grounded. She’s not allowed to see
anybody
.”

“We know,” Mads said.

“We just thought-”

Dad cut Van off. “You thought wrong. Out. You’ll see her at school and no sooner.”

“Well what about the block party tomorrow?” Mads said as Dad, a hand on each of her shoulders, pushed her toward the door. “Everyone goes to block party, and you were letting her out tomorrow anyway, so-”

Dad said, “No block party!” He opened the front door and ushered my friends onto the porch.

“What?” I said, following after them. “My grounding is over tomorrow. You said! Mom!”

“What’s going on, I can’t hear! What’s going on?” Rory yelled from the living room. But we ignored him.

Mom crossed her arms against her chest, it was like adorable kitty mode had never existed.. “I agree with your father, Poppy,” she said. “You snuck out. You had one night left and you broke out. You get to make up that night by staying here tomorrow, and babysitting Bex.”

Bex jumped in the air. “Yay!” and she ran and hugged me around the waist, still jumping and jiggling up and down. “Stacey and Natalie are coming over too! I’m going to give you a makeover!”

“Mom that’s not fair!” I said. Shouted. Whined. One of those.

Mom shook her head at me. Tough love. She headed toward the kitchen. “I’m going to call Pashmani right now and tell her we don’t need a sitter anymore,” she said. “Maybe
she’d
like to go to the block party.”

“Ooh,” Mads said. “Low blow, Mrs. D.”

“Good night girls,” Dad said, closing the door in their faces.

“We’ll see you next week at school!” Van yelled through the door.

Dad and I stood in silence staring at each other for a minute. I could see the mountain of emotions flickering all over his face. Disappointment and anger at my bailing on my act as a responsible young adult who could be trusted to respect the terms of her grounding (even though the very reason I was grounded was because I was very much the definition of an
ir
responsible young adult); frustration and fluster from Mads and Van’s appearance and, finally, aggression and sheer awkwardness about the whole rock star loving his baby girl thing. God, I couldn’t think about it. An image of Cam’s hand on mine, his finger gently caressing the back of my hand, his face so close to my own that we could have…we were going to…we almost… I shoved those thoughts away because the last thing I needed was my dad seeing
that
all over my face.

“What’s happening, are they gone? Are Mads and Vanya gone?”

“Shut up, Rory!”

“Poppy, come into my office a minute,” Mom called and I hurried away from the hallway and Dad and the conversation that would have been excruciating but inevitable if I’d stood there much longer.

I walked into the office and found her perched on the edge of her desk. She nodded toward the door and I closed it behind me.

“Okay, so this boy,” she said. Oh crap. “I take it
you
broke up with
him
?”

“I’m not doing this,” I said.

“And he wants you back because he, because he…” she sighed and clutched her hands to her chest again.

“Yeah yeah, because he loves me. Yes. But I’m not gonna do this, Mom.”

“So how do you feel about him?”

“Mom, stop!”

“What?”

“I’m not doing this, I’m not talking about this with you,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s weird.”

“But you can talk to Vanya and Mads about it?”

“Yes.”

“But not me?”

“Yes.”

“But they’re just your friends.”

“That’s right,” I said. “They’re my friends.”

“And I’m your mother.”

“Right again.”

“But…but…why can’t you talk about your feelings with me, honey?” she said. “I’m your mother and I care about you. I want what’s best for you.” She leaned toward me, went to stroke my hair behind my ear and I batted her off.

“Because it’s weird!” I said. “I told you already! And because you just made me babysit during block party, my favorite night of the year. So no, I’m not talking to you. Not about this. Not ever.”

She sighed heavily, clearly not pleased with where the conversation had gone. “Fine,” she said.

“Fine?”

“Yeah, fine. Don’t talk to me. But you’re stuck here tomorrow night and that’s final.”

“Whatever,” I said and wrenched the door open, stomping all the way up to my bedroom, stomping so hard the family pictures on the walls shook.

The next night while my parents and The Pest (on crutches) were house-party hopping and wandering around the carnival atmosphere that takes over the park and shopping district, I lay on the couch staring at the ceiling, sighing dejectedly and every so often placing a cushion over my face and groaning like I was dying.

Dying, that sounded easier than this whole debacle was. I had no idea what I was going to do, because I had no idea how I felt. My feelings for both boys swelled inside me, swirling around my body, in my head, making me dizzy and wrenching the cushion over my face again. I had to stop that after a while because I ended up inhaling some dog hairs and coughing so much my nose ran.

Ty had hurt me so much, broken my trust. But it turned out he hadn’t. And I’d wanted Cam back for such a long time, we’d barely even started when I was a cranky idiot and broke up with him and this whole stupid mess started. It would have been so much easier if I didn’t want to be with either of them. At least I didn’t have to decide tonight.

The only sort of questions I was likely to be asked tonight were along the lines of, “How is me eating brussels sprouts going to help the starving people in Africa?” and “Why can’t fish fly?”. Much simpler. There was some giggling from the hallway and I braced myself. A couple of seconds later there were some ear-piercing screams running toward me and three sets of little girl hands pawed at me, grabbing at my sleeves, my hair, Bex jumped on top of me, trying to pull me up. She hadn’t realized she had a better chance of getting me up if she was…well…not on top of me.

“Girls,” I said as they hauled me up to a sitting position and Bex crawled into my lap, jiggling up and down, reminding me of Mads. Natalie and Stacey climbed up with us and jumped on the couch. Mom would have had a fit if she saw it, so I let them jump as high as they wanted. Bex squealed with delight as Poo Bum wagged his tail, chased it a couple of times, barked at all the squirming and wriggling and bouncing on the couch and decided he was joining in. He jumped up and licked Stacey’s cheek before shoving his nose into Natalie’s armpit. Over their giggles and shrieks I could still hear the frivolity outside. I was freaking missing Block Party. I listened to the dull thudding of music from other houses down the street, the neighbourhood screamed and cheered and laughed at things that probably weren’t all that funny, but they were all having such a good time that anything remotely worth smirking about was getting a round of belly laughs and a teary eyed standing ovation.

Bex climbed off me and sat on the back of the couch, peering back at the drop to the ground behind it.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said as I got up and pulled back the curtains. I really wanted to be out there. I squinted at the faces in the darkness, trying to recognize people. Actually, I was trying to recognize one person.

I wondered what Cam was doing tonight. Was he in the street, playing football with the Dads? Or maybe he was in on a game of roller hockey with the boys from around the corner. Maybe he was helping Mr. Carmichael light his barbecue, or doing the monster mash with the cougar club that hang out at the Rothschild’s. For some reason I didn’t really think he’d be hanging out on the fringes of the park with the other teenagers, playing Truth or Dare and I Never and getting wasted on stolen booze.