Second Kiss (9 page)

“So,” he continued, “have you found any prospects? Are there any kids that are maturing at the same rate as you?”

I let out a discouraged sigh. “Not really. I may be stuck with Clarissa and Nina until I graduate from high school.”

Jess shook his head. “Not possible. Even when you have friends that you want to keep-it’s hard to stay close throughout the years. There are so many new kids coming in from other schools. There are so many different class schedules and activities to be a part of. You naturally drift away from your best friends and start hanging out with the kids that you’re around the most.”

I looked up at Jess. His face was so close to mine. “What about you and me?” I whispered. “Are we going to drift apart?”

Jess met my questioning eyes, and I could feel his cool breath on my lips. “No. We’ll never drift apart. You need me too much.” Then his face squinted into the smile that I always loved the most. The smile that I felt I owned and never, ever wanted to give away.

Jess looked down at my shivering hands. “I better take off. You’re freezing.”

I loosened my tight grip on his arm, and we both stood up to our feet. Jess yawned as he stepped off my porch and looked back up at my house with a thoughtful expression. “You want to know why I didn’t want to go inside your house tonight?”

I stood quietly next to him, waiting for him to continue.

He looked back down at me with his tired, sad eyes. “I was afraid that if I went in, I would never want to leave.”

I returned his sad expression and wished that there was something more I could do to help him. I couldn’t imagine what it must have felt like for him to not want to go home.

Jess began to cross the grass toward the side of my house, but before he left he turned around once more.

“Gem, maybe you could try to just be a normal ninth grader tomorrow, huh? No big catastrophes.” He chuckled lightly into the night air.

I sauntered tiredly toward my back door. “When are you going to realize that I’m not normal, Jess?”

He started leaving again, and as he did he said, “I take it back.” He was still laughing softly, but there was a seriousness to his tone. “Don’t change a thing.”

The next day at school was uneventful, as was the day after that, and the day after that. Nina waved at me from her new group of friends for the first week or so of school, but eventually the wave became a head nod, and even that eventually disappeared. The deterioration of our friendship was two-sided, though. I made as much of an effort to keep it going as she did. I usually crossed paths with Clarissa about twice a week. She was locker partners with a girl who wore black fingernail polish and baggy pants. Eventually Clarissa started to look just like her and the three other girls they hung out with. By mid-October we could pass each other in the hall without even realizing it. Going through a whole day of school barely talking to anyone wasn’t a big deal anymore. In fact, it happened more often than not.

For the first few months of school I avoided going to my locker as much as possible. I decided that the only thing that could make it more impossible for me to make friends was to be seen hanging out in the eighth-grade hall. Unfortunately, I had a massive science project due in third period, and unless I wanted to lug it around with me through all my classes, I was going to have to make the voyage to my loser of a locker.

I kept my head down toward the ground the entire time I was in the eighth grade hall. I figured maybe this way no one would notice me and it would be as though I was never there. I had never been to my locker before, so I still had to look at the tiny piece of paper I was given with the locker number and combination. I peered from the corner of my eye at the lockers until I came to the one that was assigned to me. With my head still down, I hurried to the locker and hastily turned the lock according to my jotted down combination. I was still staring at the floor and about to open my locker when a familiar pair of shoes appeared no more than a foot away from me. The shoes were white running shoes-Nike brandwith gray accents and a green Nike logo on the side. I knew those shoes anywhere. They belonged to Trace Weston.

What in the world was Trace Weston doing in the eighth grade hall? He was one of the most popular guys in school! I slowly peeked up at him from just beneath my eyebrows, and sure enough it was Trace. He was standing at an open locker just two down from mine, unloading his backpack.

It wasn’t like this was the first time I had seen him all year. We had second-period German together. But I of course had never said anything to him, not with the way he had rejected me at last year’s Valentine’s dance. And I was sure he thought I was a total loser and wanted to have nothing to do with me. I quietly stuffed my project into my locker, hoping-more out of habit than out of real desire-that he would say something to me. But he never did. He zipped up his backpack, threw it over his shoulder, closed the locker, and walked away.

I grew anxious for the holidays. They were something to look forward to, even when everything else in my life was uninteresting.

The four weeks before Christmas dragged on slowly. Yet as much as I wanted Christmas day to arrive, I dreaded its coming. As soon as Christmas was here, it was almost over, and so was the magic. Christmas morning came too quickly, leaving Bridget sneaking down the stairs at the crack of dawn-even before my parents were awake-to look at her presents. I would never sneak down early. I wanted to prolong that final moment of seeing all the presents magically laid out as long as I possibly could. Bridget never saw anything anyway. My parents were smart enough to not put out the most special, unwrapped gifts until they had woken up, shooed Bridget back up to her room, set up the tree and stockings, and made the final touches. Only then did they allow us to come downstairs to officially start Christmas.

When the time finally arrived, I held tightly to the banister and closed my eyes. I didn’t want to see anything until I was standing in the midst of the magic and could breath it all in. Bridget ran down in front of me and squealed at her presents. When I was seven and she had run down in front of me, she had yelled excitedly, “Gemma, you got a bike!” I cried for twenty minutes over the surprise being spoiled. She never made that mistake again. When I finally felt the landing underneath my slippered feet, I uncovered my eyes to see the most beautiful room in the whole world. It was hard to believe that it was the same old living room I saw every day when I walked down the stairs. Mom had lit candles on top of the fireplace, and the fireplace itself was burning perfectly bright. Dad had turned on Christmas music, and “The Little Drummer Boy” was playing on the stereo system that Mom had given him last Christmas. I could smell cinnamon sticks and clover simmering on the stove in the kitchen, and the carpet even felt softer than usual as it squished beneath my feet. The tree shimmered, and the new twinkle lights Mom had put on it just two weeks before made it come alive. To add to the perfection of the room, the window behind the Christmas tree was slightly frosted as big puffy snowflakes covered the ground outside, leaving a beautiful blanket of white.

When all the presents were torn open and the magical room had suddenly turned into a war zone of ribbons and tissue paper, we slowly moved into the kitchen, where my dad made us all omelets and hash browns while Mom poured us steaming hot chocolate with whipped cream on top. When breakfast was over and the house was quiet, I knew I only had an hour or so before my grandparents and everyone else in our family showed up. Dad was sitting at the kitchen counter with Mom as they tried to figure out the new laptop computer he had given her. And Bridget was in the living room taking the tags off all of her new clothes. This was my one chance to give Jess his present. I quietly crept to the front closet, grabbed my coat, hat, and mittens, and snuck out of the house without being seen. I ran lightly across our snowcovered front yard toward Jess’s house, toting a brown package in my left hand. It was still snowing, so I held my hand up in front of my face to shield the flurries from getting into my eyes. The snow was coming down hard now, and it was impossible to see more than two feet in front of me. There was a shocking difference between the cold, brisk morning air and the thrilling warmth that I had just left.

I watched the ground in front of me as I trudged through the cold wetness, making sure to not trip on the curb that led me into the street and the next curb that led me to Jess’s front yard. As I worked my way across the snow in front of Jess’s house, a sharp, flashing red light just to my left caught my eye. I stopped walking as I squinted in the direction of the light. A strong gust of wind blew, and a million tiny snowflakes floated away in a miniature cyclone across the snow, clearing my view of the red light for an instant. In that moment, I saw a black-and-white police car-the flashing red lights silently blaring on top of it as though someone had hit the mute button. The police car was parked in Jess’s driveway. The motor was running, but it didn’t look like anyone was inside the car. I stood frozen, piecing together the sight before me when I heard a screen door slam shut in front of me. Through the blustering snow I could make out the image of a large male police officer standing just outside of the screen door, looking down at something in his hand. He didn’t seem to have noticed me standing twenty feet away from him. I was still squinting at him through the snow when he lifted his gaze toward me.

“May I help you?”

His voice was grim and the expression on his face was serious. My stomach wrenched in pain.

“I-I’m looking for Jess. Is he here?”

The police officer took a deep breath and lowered his hands to his sides. “Are you related to the family that lives here, young lady?”

I motioned toward my house without losing eye contact with the police officer. “No. I live across the street. I have a present for Jess.” I squeezed the package and wondered if the man I was talking to even knew who Jess was. I tucked the package away in my coat.

“Well, the boy’s not here,” he spoke matter-of-factly and looked back down at his clipboard, which he was now resting on his large belly.

“Where is he?” My voice sounded loud. I sensed that the police officer would have preferred that I just left.

He didn’t look up. “Sorry, ma’am, but I can’t give you any details. Not unless you’re family.”

My heart was racing, and an uninvited pressure started pulsating against my neck. “Is he hurt?” My voice choked on the words.

The officer lowered his hands and the object he had been examining once again and then looked around himself as though making sure that we were alone. He stepped off the porch toward me into the falling snow and then stopped when he was a foot or so in front of me. He spoke this time in a much lower tone.

“Your friend is all right, but his mother is hurt. They’re both at Mountain Lakes Medical Center.” He stood up a little straighter and checked his surroundings once more. He looked at me with piercing but kind eyes. I nodded my head and turned toward my house. I ran as fast as I could over the same footprints I had made just moments ago. This time, however, I made only half the amount of prints as I leaped toward my front door.

Forty minutes later Mom and l walked through the revolving doors into the main lobby of Mountain Lakes Medical Center. The roads were slick, so we had to drive slower than usual. It was the longest car ride of my life. I eagerly stepped to the front desk and asked the receptionist where we could find Caris Tyler. The receptionist was older-in her fifties maybeand she looked tired and not happy to be working on Christmas morning. She looked at me wryly as though a fifteen-year-old girl in a hat, scarf, and mittens had no business talking to her.

Mom assessed the situation and stepped toward the desk. “Yes, we’re looking for our friend Caris Tyler. She was brought in this morning-we believe.”

The receptionist showed no more kindness toward Mom than she did to me. “What was she brought in for?”

“We’re not sure,” Mom answered sheepishly. She remained calm and friendly despite the receptionist’s disrespectful demeanor.

“Is she having a baby? Or surgery? Tonsils? Gall bladder? Hysterectomy? This is a big hospital, and we have a lot going on in here.”

“No, she’s not here for surgery. We’re not sure what happened, but the police were at her house this morning, so there could have been some sort of an emergency.” I could tell Mom was growing impatient, but she forced herself to maintain a calm voice. “Do you have any way of telling us where someone might be by just knowing their name?”

The receptionist cleared her throat and defiantly turned toward the computer in front of her. It was just our luck to have to deal with someone so rude on Christmas morning. I swear that lady must have looked at that computer for five minutes before saying another word. She finally cleared her throat again, and without looking up from the screen, she said, “Tyler, Caris.” She pronounced it wrong. She pronounced the first part of her name like a car that you drive. “Looks like she’s in the ICU on the third floor.”

I didn’t know what the ICU was, but I could feel Mom tense up beside me. Her voice was shaking but also demanding as she asked, “Where is the nearest elevator?”

The receptionist-now showing the slightest glimmer of sensitivity-pointed down the hallway to our left. Mom quietly thanked her between her gritted teeth and grabbed my hand hard as she led me toward the direction that we were told to go. When the elevator doors opened on the third floor, a big white sign appeared in front of us with the letters ICU. It didn’t take me long to see the words printed just under the letters-Intensive Care Unit.

Intensive care? Why was Jess’s mom here? The nurse that was stationed at the ICU desk was much kinder than the woman in the front lobby. She directed us toward Caris’s room, and my breath got lost in my stomach as we approached the door.

Mom looked down at me with weary eyes. “Gemma, why don’t you wait out here? I’ll take a look and make sure everything is okay, and then I’ll come get you, okay?”