The International Kissing Club (51 page)

Cassidy looked at her two friends in the room and thought of the one who was missing. Three months ago she would have thought nothing could tear them apart. Now, if they didn’t do something fast, they might never be back together.

The door reopened before she could say anything else and Ms. Vogel stepped back inside. “Girls, the school board has decided that an all-school assembly will be held on Friday to discuss Internet safety. It is required that you be present.”

Suddenly, Mei’s mother swept into the room, Callahan close on her heels. “The school board’s involved in this? Why?”

Callahan looked at her incredulously. “Well, uh, given the uh, contents of the page and the underage, umm, promiscuity and—”

“I’m sorry.” Mrs. Jones’s voice took on the tone she probably used in her gender-studies lectures. “Can you explain to me what they did that was so wrong?”

Cassidy’s mind boggled, and as she looked at Izzy and Mei, she realized they were right there with her. Mei’s eyes were popping out of her head and Izzy looked flabbergasted.

Only Callahan looked more stunned. “But the kissing and the boys and the Internet—”

“Yes,” Mrs. Jones said, “they kissed boys. Good for them. I’m glad they did it. I would much rather my daughter kiss a lot of frogs before she decided some North Texas toad was her prince. Of all the other trouble they could have gotten into, I can’t believe we’re even having a conversation about this.”

Callahan tripped over his tongue a few more times, his face turning redder by the second, but in the end he couldn’t stand up to Mrs. Jones’s cool logic. And as Mei’s mom escorted them out of the
conference room a few minutes later, Cassidy decided right then that if she ever got that basketball scholarship, she was majoring in feminist studies.

Cassidy knocked on the bedroom door. “Piper, it’s me. Please let me in.”

“Go away,” came the low, sad voice from the other side.

“Piper, come on. I want to talk to you.” No response. This was not good. But she wasn’t going to let Piper stay in her room and brood forever. “If you don’t unlock this door, I’ll just get a screwdriver and take it off the hinges. You know I will.”

At last she heard footsteps patter across the floor. “Are you alone, or is Benedict Arnold with you, too?”

“It’s only me, Pipes.”
Click
. Cassidy opened the door and peeked inside. The curtains were pulled tightly closed and the lights were all off except the glow of Piper’s laptop on the nightstand, making the bright pink walls of her bedroom look like a Hello Kitty tomb. Piper climbed back beneath the lump of blankets on the bed. Cassidy walked over and sat on the edge, looking at Piper’s puffy, splotchy face.

“Have you been to school?” Piper asked her.

“Yeah, we went today to meet with Vogel and Callahan. You should have been there. Mei’s mom kicked Callahan’s ass.” She deliberately refrained from mentioning Izzy by name just yet.
Better to ease into this
, she thought. Cassidy didn’t want to spook the gazelle.

“I know. My dad told me about the assembly.”

“Are you going?”

Piper shook her head. “I don’t plan to ever set foot in that school again.” She nodded toward her laptop. “I’m researching boarding schools in New England. And I’ve looked into getting my GED and going away to college early, instead.”

“Your parents would let you do that?”

“Are you kidding? My mother would walk me to Vermont in her
Louboutins if it meant she didn’t have to look at me for the next two years.”

“It’ll be okay, Pipes.”

“I don’t know about that. What did your mom say when she found out?”

“Well, she’s not pleased, but she’s not going to send me to boarding school, either. On a different note, my dad called and thinks I should start spending more time with him—you know, have a greater paternal presence in my life.” Of course, it was a little late in coming, but Cassidy wasn’t going to turn it down, either. Getting to know her dad was something she’d always wanted.

“Well, at least that’s one good thing to come out of this,” Piper said.

“You can’t run away this time, Piper. Believe me, I wish we all could, but unless you plan to leave Paris permanently, there’s not much you can do.”

“No, Germaine and my ex–best friend, Izzy, have made sure of that. Before this I was only an online joke, but now I’m an after-school special. My only hope is that they don’t hire Lindsay Lohan to play me in the movie.” Ah, now this was the Piper that Cassidy knew and loved—the drama queen. Things just might work out, after all.

“No, she can play your mom,” Cassidy told her. They both laughed. Cassidy took the opportunity of her somewhat lightened mood to talk about Izzy.

“Piper, Izzy feels really horrible about what happened.”

Piper’s eyes narrowed. “Are you taking her side about this too, Cass?”

“I’m not taking anybody’s side. I’m always going to be your friend. I’ve stuck with you this long, haven’t I? I just felt like she needed me more at that moment. I can’t say very much because it’s not my place, but you don’t know the whole story about Izzy right now. I’m not saying that what she did was right—far from it. But she had her reasons. She wants to talk to you, Piper. Maybe you should give her a chance to explain.”

“No. She hung out with Germaine. She made friends with Germaine, even knowing everything the Wicked Witch of the West has done to me. How am I supposed to just forget that?”

“Deep down, I think you know that Izzy would never want to hurt you. Germaine is a manipulator and she played on Izzy’s loneliness while we were gone. Think about it, Piper—Iz was just as involved in setting up and participating in the IKC as we all were. She’s been hurt by this as well. Don’t give up on her. She loves you.”

Piper looked like she was considering what Cassidy had said and Cass hoped maybe she’d gotten to her a little, at least enough to plant the seeds for a future reconciliation.

“Are we okay, Piper? You know I have your back, right? Always.”

Piper nodded. “I know you do. And I’m sorry you got dragged into Germaine’s campaign for Bitch of the Year.”

“The year? I think she’s going for Lifetime Achievement.” They both giggled. “It’s going to be all right, Piper. I don’t know how, and I don’t know when, but it will be. I promise.”

Chapter 31
Izzy

Damn it. Cassidy and Mei were right. She had crossed a line. Kissing Tanner was bad enough, but in everyone’s eyes, the real betrayal had been letting Germaine manipulate her. For years, Izzy had sat on the bench, watching Germaine torment one of her best friends. She’d had front-row seats to the spectacle, so she should have known better. Instead, she’d let that witch drag her down into the mud.

God, it sucked being the one to screw up.

All she knew was that she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes Germaine had when she’d separated herself from them all those years ago. She wasn’t going to let one argument drive her away from her friends. She wasn’t going to cling to pride and her own sense of self-importance. Whatever it took, she was going to make this right with Piper.

On the bright side, she finally knew how to do it. That girl loved nothing like she loved drama. And Izzy hadn’t spent the past five years watching chick flicks without learning a thing or two about grand gestures.

That afternoon, the second school let out, she raced to the parking lot and waited by Jackson Grosbeck’s aging Camaro. Cherry red—naturally—with black racing strips, the car wasn’t new enough to be cool or old enough to be classic—it was the perfect vehicle for a
douche like Jackson. She recognized it because it was practically a permanent fixture in front of her own house.

When Jackson saw her waiting for him, his face split in a cocky grin. “Hey, Izzy,” he said as he swaggered over.
“¿Como esta?”

Then he shot a tobacco-stained loogey onto the ground near her feet. Oh, yuck. This had better work.

“Hi, Jackson.” She tried to swallow back her natural disgust. “I need a favor.”

“Anything for you, baby.” He stepped over the loogey and edged in on her. “You lookin’ to earn some points?”

Points? Boy, he thought a lot of himself. If she had to kiss him, the rest of IKC would probably
subtract
points. And she so couldn’t afford to go negative.

She backed up a step. A big step.

“You’re the one who … um, acquired the pig Piper kissed, right?”

“Yeah.” He frowned, his pea-sized brain working overtime. “Hey, I heard you and Piper had some big catfight. You want to make her kiss another pig? ’Cause I was thinking, you might mix it up. Like, make it a goat next time.”

“Yeah. Right. You’re a real evil genius,” she deadpanned. He actually smiled at her, clearly too obtuse to recognize sarcasm. “But I need a pig. The biggest, ugliest pig you can find.”

“What about a chicken?” he asked.

“No, not a chicken.” Jeez. Couldn’t people get bird flu from kissing chickens? “I’m not doing a stage version of Old McDonald. All I need is a pig. Can you get me one or not?”

He looked disappointed for a moment, then he leered at her. “What are you going to do for me in exchange?”

Ugh. Could he be more transparent?

Thank God she’d anticipated his skeeziness and had a response ready.

She smiled sweetly. “For starters, I
won’t
tell my dad you asked me to
chupa tu verga
.”

Jackson stared blankly at her for a second, no doubt entranced by a female actually taking about his … um, endowments, but then her words sank in and he frowned. “Come on.” He gestured toward his car with a surly nod. “I’ll take you there.”

A few minutes later, they pulled up in front of a decrepit ranch house a few blocks from Cassidy’s. They crossed the overgrown lawn to the front porch, where a couple of aluminum lawn chairs sat. The screen door had fallen off and was propped against the siding. If Jackson had brought her to some sort of crack den to sell her into slavery, she was going to beat him to death with a folding chair.

She rang the bell, and a moment later Tanner opened the door.
Holy crap
.

“Isabel?” He looked about as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “What are you doing here?”

“You live here?” The question just popped out of her mouth.

“Yeah,” he said, like he was stating the obvious. “Why?” Only then did he notice Jackson standing behind her. “What—”

“Hey, she made me bring her,” Jackson hurriedly explained. “She wants a pig.”

“A pig?” Tanner asked.

“
The
pig?” Izzy demanded at the same time. “Wait!
You’re
the guy who got the pig that kissed Piper?”

“Hey, I’m outta here,” Jackson interrupted. “He’s the guy. Izzy, are we good? You’re not gonna tell your dad?”

“Yeah, whatever,” she muttered to him. A bigger fish had just landed in her frying pan. “
You’re
the guy who got that first pig?” she asked again, her voice escalating.

Tanner crossed his arms over his chest defensively, then scrubbed a hand across his chin. “Yeah. I’m the guy. But I didn’t know what Jackson was going to do with it, I swear. He said he just thought it would be funny to have a pig at the festival. He paid me two hundred bucks to do it, and I needed parts for my truck. I swear to God I didn’t know what he had planned.”

Izzy swallowed a lump in her throat. She looked at this sad little house, so worn down and miserable. She thought of the farm that Tanner’s parents had spent their lives building. The land out there was beautiful, even if the house wasn’t in much better shape than this one. It made her sad that Tanner had to live here, away from his parents, just so he could play football for her dad and maybe get a decent scholarship. Suddenly the ten bucks an hour his parents had paid her seemed like too much.

Tanner looked like he wanted to say something else, but she held up a hand to stop him. “Look, I believe you.”

He might be a jerk who would kiss one girl while dating another—and she wasn’t even going to get started on the injustice of
that
double standard—but there was a sort of chivalry to him. He wasn’t a guy who would purposely belittle a girl. Charm her pants off and crush her heart without blinking an eye, yes. Humiliate, no.