The Kissing Diary (3 page)

“Head over heels in hate,” said Rosie glumly. “He called me Goldtwit and Half-wit.”

“Nasty!” said Sarah. “And he rhymed!”

“Maybe you should try liking Eli,” suggested Summer. “Didn't you have a crush on him in the fifth grade?”

“Not anymore,” Rosie answered, wondering why Lauren wasn't saying a word.

“Picture him gone,” said Sarah. “My mom had a patient who wanted to go on a diet, and she hypnotized him into believing that cockroaches were crawling on his chocolate ice cream. He lost thirty pounds. Hey, I know what! Picture liquid Drano poured on your heart when you think about Robbie!”

“My heart's not a toilet!” Rosie protested. How perfect for Sarah to suggest a cleaning product, with a neat-freak psychiatrist for a mother.

Summer said in a worried voice, “Wouldn't Drano kill her?” Everyone but Rosie burst out laughing.

“My mother won't even let me try coffee,” said Rosie, “so Drano's out!” Lighten up, she said to herself, but happiness was hard to fake. She looked over at Lauren, sitting quietly on a pillow. “What do you think I should do?” she asked.

Lauren hesitated. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I don't think picturing Drano will work. But best friends speak the truth, and I have to say it. Forget about Robbie.”

Tears sprang to Rosie's eyes, and Sarah, the only twelve-year-old who carried tissues with her, gave Rosie one.

“I know you like him.” Lauren grabbed Rosie's hand. “But if you had spinach in your teeth, I'd tell you. He was mean all day, and you really didn't do anything wrong, did you?”

“No,” said Rosie, wiping her eyes.

“But Rosie doesn't like spinach, do you, Rosie?” said Summer, desperate to cheer her up. “She hates anything green.”

“Speaking of green,” said Sarah, “Mary Katz ordered this gross-smelling green dish at Sal's the other day.”

“Nasty,” said Summer. “Just like her.” Summer didn't like Mary any more than Rosie did. Mary had called her
dumb
in the third grade, which had morphed into
Dumb and Dumber Summer
for the whole year.

“It was broccoli rabe, and it smelled disgusting,” said Sarah.

“If we're going to forget about anyone,” said Summer, “let's forget about Mary. Besides, Rosie, you eat green! You ate lime Jell-O at my house the other day!”

“Robbie eats Jell-O every day,” said Rosie. So much for forgetting about Robbie Romano.

“My sister says, sometimes if you ignore the boy, he'll come back,” said Lauren forgivingly.

“Like a boomerang,” said Summer, which was no help at all, as Rosie envisioned Robbie whizzing through the air and knocking her over.

“He can't come back. I never had him in the first place,” Rosie said.

“Like in
The Wizard of Oz!
” said Summer. “Dorothy says, ‘If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with!' I love that show!” Summer wrinkled up her forehead. “Then again,” she said, “Robbie hasn't ever been in your backyard, has he?”

“He used to say hello and goodbye, which was way better than being hated!” Rosie reached for her eleventh vanilla wafer.

“Ask your brother what he thinks,” said Lauren. “He's a boy. While you're at it, find out if I should ask Tommy Stone to the dance.”

“Talk to Jimmy?” said Rosie doubtfully. Certainly she could ask him about Tommy Stone. Lauren's crush was Robbie's opposite. Perhaps that was why she and Lauren got along. Lauren liked boys who were outgoing and funny, although Rosie secretly thought that they were noisy show-offs. Take Tommy, for instance. When he walked into the cafeteria, you knew he had arrived. He made barfing noises standing over the sloppy joes until somebody laughed, usually one of the boys in his little trio, either Tony Baskin or Eddie Duval. Or he'd take Eddie's baseball cap, jam it on Tony's head, and say, “Much better! A fashion plus.” If someone dropped a plate and it landed with a clatter, Tommy was the first one to hoot and holler until everyone joined in. Rosie couldn't see herself liking a hooter or a hollerer. She liked the quieter boys who surprised her with their funniness. The ones who didn't try so hard to be noticed.

Rosie reached for the cookie box and ate her twelfth vanilla wafer. She closed the box. Thirteen cookies would be a mistake. She had had enough bad luck.

Lauren changed the subject. “Can you believe Mrs. Geller is ruining the weekend with a project?”

Sarah sighed. “Build a castle. It sounds so messy. My mother's going to freak. Why can't we just draw one?”

“I'm going to build mine out of sugar cubes,” said Summer.

“I'm going to write a letter of protest,” Rosie said, shaking her head. Just a few hours before, in history class, the teacher had given them an assignment to build a medieval castle and label its parts. History wasn't Rosie's favorite subject, but she sat next to Robbie, so it was the highlight of the day. He mumbled so low that she could barely hear him, “She's got one color missing in that Crayola box called a brain.” Rosie laughed so loudly that everyone looked. Everyone but Robbie, who cast his eyes at the ceiling, examined the floor, doodled in his notebook, or stared straight ahead. When Rosie bumped into him later in the hallway, his blank stare was so chilling that she didn't exist.

“Mrs. Geller ruined the weekend all right,” said Rosie, thinking that more than her weekend had been ruined.

*   *   *

The rest of the week wasn't much better. Robbie continued ignoring Rosie. Rosie continued to mope. She never even bothered telling her mother about the history project due Monday morning. On Saturday, Rosie informed her that she needed art supplies to build a castle and label its parts.

Mrs. Goldglitt fumed. “Now you're telling me? How the heck do we build a castle? With clay? Popsicle sticks? Papier-mâché? I'm not an architect, for heaven's sake.”

“I'm going to be doing it,” Rosie said. “‘Be inventive,'” she read off the assignment sheet. “‘Use any material you like.'” Was it her fault she couldn't drive a car to the art store? Was it her fault that Mrs. Geller didn't give a flying fig about ruining her weekend?

“You're going to do it? With what?” said her mother, instructing Rosie to wipe off the table and make the labels while she went to the art store. Then she stormed out of the house, returning an hour later with poster board, cardboard, oaktag, cans of spray paint, a matt knife, and a sealed bag of clay that was supposed to harden when it dried.

Rosie propped a picture of a medieval castle against a vase of dried flowers and began rolling strips of clay to make the base of the castle. Placing a piece of poster board on a magazine, Rosie drew a line marking the edge of the first wall, and picked up the matt knife.

“You'll cut your finger off,” her mother barked, grabbing the knife out of her daughter's hand. Mumbling to herself, she began cutting, but the knife veered off to the side. With more huffing and puffing than Rosie thought was necessary, her mother rummaged through a drawer in the desk in the living room and found a wooden ruler. Her face was getting redder by the minute, and when the matt knife caught against the edge of the ruler, Rosie thought her mother would have a stroke.

“This is how I get to spend my day off?” shouted her mother, running downstairs to the basement and yelling upstairs, “Call your father and ask him if he took the metal ruler! I'm not buying another one!”

“Mom, take it
easy!
” Rosie called to her, but before she could dial, her mother was upstairs, grabbing the phone from her. She punched in the numbers and said, “Bob? I need the metal ruler to help your daughter with her damned project.” Then she said, “I'm not swearing, I just need the damned ruler,” followed by, “Please, Bob, no lectures, I'm at the end of my rope.” There was a silence, and Rosie's mother turned to her and said grimly, “Go downstairs and look in Dad's workroom and it should be in the drawer with the missing handle.”

She muttered thank you into the receiver, and Rosie found the ruler, and work resumed. Her mother managed to cut a straight line without lopping off her finger, and they anchored the pieces of card in the clay. Then Rosie unrolled a roll of paper towels so that they could use the cardboard tube for the turret.

“Isn't it too small?” said Rosie, risking another explosion from her mother.

Mrs. Goldglitt took one look and threw it in the trash can, while Rosie rolled a piece of oaktag into a cylinder, taping it together.

“Good,” said her mother grudgingly.

By this time, Mrs. Goldglitt's lips had formed a permanent frown as she fashioned another piece of oaktag into a cone that the two of them taped to the top of the tower. Rosie carried the castle carefully outside and went back for the cans of spray paint.

“I'm having a cup of coffee,” said her mother. “You're on your own.”

Rosie painted the water a pretty shade of blue. The sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze blowing, and she was nearly done. A cardinal flew by, and Rosie smiled at the flash of red. She had the rest of the weekend to have fun with her friends. They'd go bowling soon, and have lunch at Sal's, maybe browse next door at the pharmacy. Life wasn't so bad. Why let someone like Robbie Romano ruin her day?

Rosie took the cap off the final can and began spraying silver paint on the castle walls. The wind picked up and sent the spray traveling in the opposite direction. Rosie looked down at her favorite pair of jeans. They were speckled with color. She started screaming just about the time that Tommy and Eddie and Tony were passing by. Tommy the Hooter began laughing hysterically, pointing at Rosie. The two boys joined him, marionette puppets following their leader in his stupid dance.

Mrs. Goldglitt opened the door, wearing the daisy top that Lauren had worn to school the day before. She glared at the boys, her arms crossed as if she were Rosie's prison guard. Was it the look on her face or the skimpy top on a grown older woman that scared the boys away? Rosie would never know the truth, because she would never ask the question, never, never, never, in a million years.

*   *   *

On Sunday morning, Rosie walked into the dining room, where the castle sat drying on pieces of newspaper. She screamed for the second time that weekend, a bloodcurdling noise that brought her mother and Jimmy racing down the stairs in their pajamas. Mrs. Goldglitt stared at the wrecked castle. The clay had dried, but the walls had collapsed and fallen over. To Rosie's horror, a tear trickled down her mother's cheek.

Mrs. Goldglitt ran upstairs, threw on her tightest jeans and her high-heeled boots, and said, “Come with me,” between clenched teeth. They drove to Home Depot, and Mrs. Goldglitt walked briskly up and down the aisles until she found a man wearing a Home Depot badge. Then she proceeded to bore him with the castle saga, except that Rosie knew he wasn't bored, by the way he stared at her mother's animated face. Something was happening, the lipstick, the makeup, the sparkle in her mother's eyes. He was jumping through hoops now, and would have built a house out of bricks and mortar for her if he'd been asked. Rosie heard the man say, “Call if you need me, my name is Tim!” Mrs. Goldglitt's laugh floated across the nails and ratchets as she walked away saying, “Thank you so much, Tim, but we'll be fine.”

Rosie's mother was cheerful in the car, but as they approached the house, she grumbled out loud, “This project of yours cost me a hundred bucks! I have half a mind to write your teacher a letter! Gas, art supplies, your jeans, what else?”

“Your bad mood,” said Rosie, looking sideways at her mother, who started to laugh. Thank goodness for Tim, Rosie thought, but she didn't dare say it.

Rosie used electrical tape, Big Shot Mr. Fix-It Tim's idea, to fix the walls. It looked downright tacky, but she didn't care. The weekend had finished with a nasty bang. She went upstairs and wrote in her diary:

Sunday night

If I had the nerve to write to Mrs. Geller, this is what I'd say:

Dear Mrs. Geller,

Thanks so much for wining my weekend and for making my mother go nuts and broke with your stupid project. It certainly was appreciated.

Sincerely yours,

Rosie Goldglitt / otherwise known as

Rosie Gold-pissed-off / also known as

Rosie Gold-bitter that the weekend was wined

P.S. I wonder what Robbie did for his project? Most of all, I wonder if he'll hate me on Monday morning.

4

Rosie Makes a Decision

Rosie's mother apologized at the dinner table on Monday.

“For what?” said Jimmy, eating forkfuls of macaroni and cheese as if he hadn't eaten for three days.

“Let her speak,” said Rosie, deciding in an instant that her mother should explain her horrible behavior.

“For acting like a nut all weekend, Rosie. I was terrible.” Mrs. Goldglitt toyed with her salad. “It was … stressful.”

“Oh,” said Rosie, thinking that it wasn't much of an explanation.

Her mother continued. “Sam didn't call when he said he would, and by Saturday I hadn't heard from him, and … I was upset and I took it out on you.” She sighed.

“It's scary, Mom.”

“You're scary,” said Jimmy. “Is there any more mac and cheese?”

Mrs. Goldglitt jumped up, despite Rosie's telling him to get it himself. “What's scary?”

“You sound like me,” said Rosie, forming an
R
for Robbie with the remainder of the noodles on her plate.

“I'm back in the dating game,” said her mother. “Which means I'm back in high school all over again.”