17 First Kisses (12 page)

My dad crying is the scariest thing I've ever heard. It means the world as I know it is spinning out of control. But even so, I can't cry. I've never had to cope with something this big, so I keep it swallowed down inside.

When I walk into school the next morning with Sam, I try to avoid everyone I know on the way to my locker.

“Hey, Claire. I am so sorry,” says Amanda Bell, who has the locker next to mine.

She gives me a pity smile and pats me on the shoulder while I shove some books onto my locker shelf.

“For what?” How could she know?

“You mean you don't know yet?”

She smiles again, but this time it's more smile, less pity. I seriously doubt she knows anything life-shattering.

“Amanda, I have no idea what you're talking about.”

I slam my locker shut. I am so tired of girl drama. I have real things to worry about. I couldn't give a crap if someone called me a bitch or bought the same shoes as me or whatever Amanda is going on about.

“Well,” says Amanda, who seems determined to milk this moment. “I just can't believe Megan would do that to you,” she calls over my shoulder.

A bolt of fear shoots down my spine, but I keep walking. What did Megan do?

When I round the main hallway, I know exactly why Amanda was pretending to feel sorry for me. The first thing I see is their hands. His hand. Her hand. Their fingers wound up together like laces on a shoe. I almost don't believe it, but there they are, prancing down the hall together like he isn't my boyfriend. And holding hands!

Everyone else in the hallway stares, first at their hands, then
at my face. Like they're waiting for us to have a Wild West showdown.

I take two steps in their direction before veering into the girls' bathroom. All I can think is,
But that's
my
boyfriend.
Amberly and Britney burst through the door behind me.

“OMG! Are you okay?” asks Amberly.

“I don't understand. Why is he holding hands with her?” It is almost a relief to let this drama consume me. To let it be the only thing I think about at school today.

“She's his girlfriend,” says Britney.

“This is cuh-razy,” says Amberly. She puts her arm around me.

“Since when?” I try to think of the last time Eric and I were together. “He was my boyfriend at lunch on Friday.”

Britney winces. “Since Friday night. When I spent the night at her house, we went to the carnival with him and his friend. Eric and Megan got stuck at the top of the Ferris wheel, and she told him how much she missed being his girlfriend, and then she kissed him.”

My jaw hits the floor. “She stole my boyfriend?”

“Technically, you stole hers,” replies Britney. “They went out in sixth grade. So you can't be mad at her.”

I don't know if I will ever understand how girl code works.

I wait for Megan to come into the bathroom and apologize, but it doesn't happen. When I work up the nerve to venture into the hallway, Megan and Eric are talking by his locker, and all of eighth grade is still watching. Their eyes burn into me as I walk
up to Megan, still in a handhold with
my
boyfriend, and ask, “Did you really do what B said?”

Megan's lips purse. She gets a hurt look in her eyes like
I've
done something to
her
by confronting her about it.

“Yes. Eric and I still have feelings for each other.”

“Oh.”

Eric, of the feelings, is looking everywhere except at me. I don't know what I expected from them, but this isn't it. I feel like such an idiot. Whispers rustle like insect wings in every corner. Everyone is laughing at me, or worse, pitying me. Anger and hurt well up inside me like competing storm fronts. I rush to the nearest exit and shove the door open. How could he do this to me? How could
she
do this to me? I wander to the bleachers in front of the football field and plop down. A few minutes later, Steven Lippert appears. Normally I would tell him and his stupid tuba to get lost, but today I'm too upset to care.

“This always happens,” I say, half to myself, half to Steven.

“What does?”

“Boys always choose her over me. They always like her better.”

I cover my face with my hands and cry through my fingers. My life is so much more screwed up than that, but this pain is a manageable pain. If I give in to the other kind, it might be stronger than I know how to handle. He pries my hands away and holds them over my lap.

“I like you
much
better. And I think you're prettier than her too.”

“You do?” My voice comes out pathetic and squeaky. I gaze up at him like he's the sole source of hope left in the world.

“Much.”

Steven scoots closer and kisses me, his hands still holding mine in between our stomachs. He leans me against the bleachers like he knows what he's doing. And I let him. His words and his confidence make me forget what he looks like and what I think about him—before and during the kiss. But as soon as our lips pull apart and my eyelids flutter open, it hits me.

I have kissed Steven Lippert.

I take in Steven's greasy brown hair, the constellation of acne covering his forehead, and the orange chunks stuck in his braces. I remember reading somewhere that a kiss transfers from ten million to one billion bacteria, and it occurs to me that my mouth tastes faintly of Cheetos. It is all I can do not to projectile vomit.

I make the face girls make in horror movies when they expect to see their one true love but instead see a flesh-eating monster. Then I run away from the bleachers like a legion of zombies is chasing me. When I reach the edge of the field, I cut through the woods to avoid the rent-a-cop, and even when I hit the main road, I keep running. All four miles home. I fling open the front door, my hair sticking out every which way, my face red and tear-stained, to find my big sister Sarah playing Candyland with Libby on the living room floor.

“Hey. I drove home from Athens this morning and checked Libby out of school. I'm staying the whole week,” Sarah says.

I sink onto the rug in front of her. I love that Sarah doesn't mention that I'm not supposed to be home from school yet or that I look like I've had a run-in with a leaf blower.

The next day, my dad takes us to the hospital to see Mama and Timothy. At the entrance to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (I learn pretty quickly it's called the NICU), Daddy pauses.

“Are you ready?” he asks.

I nod.

He nods back and kisses me on the top of my head. “You're my one, Claire-Bear.”

Then we stand over the sink and scrub scrub scrub our hands with soapy water until they're pink and shiny. I put on a yellow hospital gown, gloves, and a mask and follow my dad inside. Sarah and Libby are staying with Mama because Libby isn't allowed to see Timothy yet. They can't risk exposing a micro preemie to her little-kid germs, and also it might be too much for her.

Now that I'm inside, I'm glad Libby stayed back. The NICU gives me the same uneasy feeling I get when we sing Christmas carols at the nursing home. All the bodies, hooked up to the machines, fighting to stay alive. That scares me. But if it's scary to me, I can't even imagine what it's like for Timothy. I have to be brave for him.

I take a deep breath and hold my dad's gloved hand for courage—as long as he's here, I can handle this—and we weave past beeping monitors and nurses with clipboards. They talk about things like “surfactant” and “bilirubin,” and I file away
the words to be googled later. I peer into Timothy's incubator. Everywhere there are tubes. A tube that carries food through his nose and into his stomach. A tube that disappears into a hole in his throat and pumps his lungs for him. The spaces on his fragile body that are covered with tubes and monitors outnumber the spaces where skin peeks through.

He doesn't even look like a real baby. More like a doll. A two-pound doll with waxy red skin, arms and legs no thicker than my fingers, a fine coating of hair, and eyes that are still fused shut.

He's beautiful.

I pull out the smiling pictures of our family Dad asked me to bring and tape them to the sides of his incubator so he won't feel so alone. Then I reach my hand through one of the holes and rest a few fingers on top of his head.

“Hi, Timmy. I'm Claire. I'm your sister,” I say. And after my dad walks away to talk to a nurse, I whisper, “Fight hard, because we love you.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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I
throw my arm around Sam's shoulder and in the process practically clobber him with the coffee cups I'm holding. “Guess what!”

He ducks, and some of the coffee spills through the little spout in the lid onto the pavement next to his car. “You're not coordinated enough to hug someone while holding hot beverages?”

“Ha-ha. No. My mom's feeling better. It was just a slump. She took more pictures of Megan yesterday. You should have seen her—she looked so different.” I sigh a happy, contented sigh, and grin until it feels like my face is going to fall off.

Sam's face matches mine. “Hey, that's awesome.”

“Right? Oh, here, I brought you a latte.”

“Thanks.” I hand him one of the cups and he starts to take a
sip but then pauses. “Is this the skinny kind? Because you know I—”

“Yes, Sam. I know you're a stud now.” I pinch at the nonexistent fat on his waist, and he sucks in his breath and twists away from my fingers with a sheepish expression. Oh. Maybe he's still self-conscious about his body and it's not okay for me to joke.

“So, how's everything with Amanda?” I ask.

“Good.” He practically blushes, and it is kind of adorable. “We went to the movies this weekend. I really want to ask her to be my girlfriend, but I don't know if it's too soon.”

I shrug. “You could ask her on a couple more dates first. If she says she's busy without suggesting another day for a date, that might mean she's not interested. If she says yes, she probably wants to be your girlfriend.”

I can't even believe I'm giving Sam tips on how to prolong his relationship with that drink thrower, but she's different around him. She's so nice it's hard to believe she's the same person.

“Cool.” He blushes again, and the first bell rings and we hurry inside before we're late to homeroom.

A few weeks later, Mama asks me to go to Walmart with her after school. That's right. She is voluntarily leaving the house to go somewhere other than group and she wants me to go with her. She still isn't back to her old self—her old self would have required a full face of makeup and a flatiron before a Walmart outing—but I'm ecstatic.

We grab a cart and pick up some laundry detergent and
vitamins before heading to the school-supplies aisle. On the way, I see Amberly restocking scented candles in her blue Walmart vest, and I wave. Mama is picking out some things for Libby, and I'm telling her about Sam's new girlfriend, when I see two women from church—Mrs. Tate, who has blue hair and not in the cool way, and Mrs. Dorland, who has wrapped her cart handle in tissues and still looks uncomfortable touching it. Both of them cooked dinner for us a couple times after Timothy. I try to herd Mama toward the Crayola markers, but before we can get much farther down the aisle, I hear, “Yoo-hoo. Lily?”

I close my eyes. Here we go. There are two kinds of southern church ladies who come to your house in times of crisis. The first are kind-hearted saints, angels bearing casseroles. The second are like Mrs. Dorland and Mrs. Tate.

They bustle over wearing bobcat smiles. “I thought that was you, Lily,” says Mrs. Dorland. “I was just telling Arnette here, ‘I think that's Lily Jenkins.'”

“She sure was,” says Mrs. Tate. “How are you doing, Lily?”

My mother's smile in return is fragile. “I'm good.”

She was barely ready to come out in public. She certainly isn't ready for
Them
.

“Lord, Lily, I can't remember the last time I saw you out and about,” says Mrs. Tate.

“I know. We hardly even see y'all at church, since, well,
you know
,” says Mrs. Dorland.

Yes. That's right. Throw it in her face that her son died and she hasn't been handling it well. Heartless hag.

“Well, I guess that's right. We, uh, we—”

I glance at Mama. Her chin quivers and she is blinking furiously.

Mrs. Tate attempts to pull her face into a look of concern, but her eyes are bright, and I can see exactly what she's thinking.
Lily Jenkins. Out in public. And crying. Isn't this a juicy piece of gossip!
I am this close to ripping out her blue hair.

I step in between her and Mama so I'm right inside Mrs. Tate's personal bubble and then I glare at her, and at Mrs. Dorland too for good measure, for two long, uncomfortable seconds, because I want them to know that I know. With any luck they'll spend their afternoons telling their friends about that angry Claire Jenkins instead of about Mama.

“We're really very busy. We better get going,” I practically spit.

Mrs. Dorland puts a hand over her heart. “Oh,
well
, we'll see y'all later then.”

I spot the door to the restrooms at the end of the aisle, and I somehow manage to get Mama inside before she breaks down. She retreats into a stall and locks the door behind her, but I can hear her sobs. She's shut me out. All my hard work, the days of watching and hoping when she started taking pictures, when she started becoming herself again, all of it is about to unravel in the bathroom at Walmart. The door opens, and I turn, ready for a fight.

“What?” I say through clenched teeth.

Amberly looks at me with wide eyes.