Thirteen (7 page)

“Maybe it was a one-time thing,” I said. “Maybe she wasn't really trashed. Maybe she was just pretending.” I was babbling, and I wanted to stop. Even though I cared about Amanda, I didn't want to care right this very second.

Lars looked at me. His face was
right there
, inches from mine, and I knew this was it: the moment of the first kiss.

He leaned in. I giggled and drew back. My breathing grew shallow, and my heart drummed against my ribs, more out of nervousness than anticipation. Extreme, horrible, freak-out nervousness, the kind I occasionally experienced before having to give an oral presentation or introduce myself to a crowd of strangers.

Lars tried again. I turned my head from his. I didn't mean to—I
so
didn't mean to—but it was too much, being in the actual moment and thinking,
Oh, god, lips. His. Mine. Touching!

An anxious laugh made a very strange sound coming out of me. I could feel my smile go rubbery.

He leaned in. I pulled back. He leaned in further. I did a bob and a duck maneuver. It was bad. Bad, bad, bad. And the worst part of all was the doubt creeping into his eyes. He thought I didn't want him to kiss me, but I did!

“Winnie?” he said.

“Yes?” I squeaked. My cheeks burned.

“Hold still.”

He put his hand under my chin and bent his head toward mine. I squeezed shut my eyes. My heart tried to jump out of my chest.

His lips touched mine. Soft. Warm. Hesitant, and then not so hesitant, while all the time I was privately spazzing out. I was doing it! It was glorious! It wasn't hard at all!

And then came the tongue. At first it was gross, like a slug. I recoiled, but his mouth followed mine. His tongue kept at it.

Before I knew it, the slug-ness stopped seeming so sluggish, and my tongue went peeping out to meet his. Ack! It was interesting. Thrilling. Overwhelming.

His arm slipped around my waist. He pulled me close. This beautiful boy was kissing me and holding me close, and we were outside, and there was a party, and noise drifted over to us from people doing their party things. Music. Laughter. Squeals.

Lars paused to regard me.

“Hi,” he whispered.

“Hi,” I whispered.

We smiled, goofy and happy. He leaned back in, and my lips parted to meet his.

I would never be “never been kissed” again.

A
T TRINITY,
where I went to elementary school, graduation meant whooping and hollering and spazzy running around. When I thought back to our sixth grade ceremony, Alex Plotkin—gross, with a deep red stain around his mouth from fruit punch—flashed into my mind. I don't know why I thought of Alex Plotkin. I certainly didn't intend to think of Alex Plotkin. Like I said, gross.

But. The point was, graduation at Westminster was a far more formal affair, even for us seventh graders. First came a ceremony in Pressley Hall, with presentations and awards and a song or two performed by the chorale. Then a baked chicken lunch served with cloth napkins and glass glasses, instead of the plastic ones with ridges we usually used. We dressed up in fancy clothes. Iced tea or water were our beverage choices. No fruit punch. And instead of running around afterward, we mingled and chatted politely to everyone's parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters.

And, if we were me, we also squeezed our feet as squish-small as we could inside our beautiful new shoes, even though the damage was already done and blisters were on the rise. (And we refer to ourselves as the “royal we,” apparently. Which we found quite annoying and blamed fully on the endless graduation speeches.
“We're so pleased to announce…” “When we reflect upon this special occasion…” “We only wish we could say ‘we' a thousand more times…”
Enough already!)

So. Right. If we were me—which I am! I'm me, yay!—I would wish very privately for a Band-Aid, or at least for a good old-fashioned paper napkin to fold into a rectangle and shove into the back of each shoe. I'd sworn to Mom they fit perfectly, because I'd wanted them so bad. But they didn't, and now they were killing me.

Un-yay.

“I'm just so proud of these girls!” Mrs. Taylor said to Mom. Mrs. Taylor's daughter was Louise, a fellow Trinity alum. Louise and I weren't exactly buddies, but we'd gone to school together forever, so we weren't
not
buddies, either. Louise was like a nubbly stuffed animal lying on the floor of the closet. I wouldn't throw it away, but I wouldn't care if my cat, Sweetie-Pie, used it as a chew toy and kicked at it with her hind legs.

“I'm proud, too,” Mom said, putting her arm around my shoulder. Louise was off being flouncy with a girl named Trish, both of them angling for attention from a group of boys.

“They grow up so fast,” Mrs. Taylor said, as if no one had said that one before. It was the theme of the day:
They grow up so fast. Time just flies, doesn't it? How is it possible that our babies have finished seventh grade?

Ty sighed loudly and wormed his way between me and Mom. He was in that mood of leaning against everybody and refusing to bear his own weight.

“How long till we go?” he complained.

“Ten hours,” I told him.

“Nuh-uh.”

“A while,” Mom said, nudging him off her leg. “Go lean on someone else.”

“Can I have another brownie?”

“Sure,” Mom said. “Get your dad one while you're at it. Find him and take it to him.”

Ty weaved through the crowd to the dessert table, and Mrs. Taylor clucked.

“Such a sweet boy,” she said.

“Sometimes,” Mom said.

“Isn't he in Joseph Strand's class?” Mrs. Taylor said, her voice taking on an
isn't-it-tragic
tone. I stopped adjusting my shoe to listen.

“It breaks my heart,” Mom said. Unlike Mrs. Taylor, she didn't sound fakey, which was one of the reasons I was glad to have her for a mother. And even though she often made eye-rolling remarks about all three of us kids, we knew she loved us to distraction.

“What breaks your heart?” I asked.

“A little boy in Ty's class,” she said. “He has—”

“Winnie! Ellen!” Mrs. Wilson cried, breaking into our circle. Mrs. Wilson was Amanda's mother, and, like Amanda, she was beautiful. Both had Alice-in-Wonderland blond hair, although Mrs. Wilson's was chin-length, while Amanda's fell halfway down her back. Both had petite, curvy figures, the sort that made grown-ups tell Mrs. Wilson she looked twenty-five and made the junior high guys call Amanda “hot.”

“Ellen, can you believe it?” Mrs. Wilson said. “Our little girls—starting eighth grade!”

“
Mom
,” Amanda said. “We have three whole months first.” I hadn't noticed her because it was so crowded, but there she was behind her mother, looking gorgeous and sylph-like in a long, black skirt and black cami. A “sylph” is a mystical creature kind of like a fairy, made mainly of air. I'd learned that from one of Dinah's fantasy books. Amanda had always been tiny, but lately she'd been looking downright wispy. She also wore a lot more eyeliner. Like, on purpose. Dark, thick lines not meant to be ignored.

“Hey, Amanda,” I said.

“Hey, Winnie,” she said.

It was so weird. I knew this person—I'd shared
blood
with this person—and yet here she was a stranger in front of me. Not a complete stranger…and yet not a battered stuffed animal, either. Louise was dismissible. Amanda? Never.

The grown-ups kept talking, and Amanda stepped to the side to disassociate herself from her mother. The tilt of her head prodded me to join her.

“So,” she said. “Are you and Lars going to, you know, have a good summer?”

It surprised me that she knew about Lars. Then again, that was silly. I knew stuff about her.

“Actually,” I said, “he's going to be in Prague all summer. His dad got a fellowship.”

Amanda grimaced. “That sucks.”

“I know.” Lars had told me just last week, and my heart had plummeted. But I'd quickly sensed that I was more bummed about it than he was, so I'd tried to check my emotions. “Wow, Prague, that's so awesome,” I'd said to him.

But it
did
suck. It totally sucked.

“So will you try to stay together?” Amanda asked.

“Of course!” I said without thinking. And then doubt crept in. Wouldn't we? What other option was there? Was Lars thinking there was some other option?

Amanda must have picked up on my worry, because she said, “Cool. You guys are cute together.”

“Thanks,” I said. I flashed to the Amanda-in-the-hot-tub story, but couldn't make it match up with the flesh-and-blood Amanda in front of me. Except
kind of
I could. I just didn't want to.

“Are you…seeing anybody?” I said, feeling immediately idiotic for the way my question came out. What was I, her grandmother?

Still, maybe the hot tub guy was her boyfriend. Maybe he wasn't then, but was now, and she'd had a crush on him and that's why she'd kissed him.

She shook her head and smiled wryly, like she was a loser. Which she was so not. She had to know that. But sometimes beautiful girls pretended otherwise, which I suppose was better than being snotty.

“Well…” I said.

We stood there. The silence stretched out, making my brain feel panicky.

“Your shoes are
gor
geous,” she finally said. “Where'd you get them?”

“Saks,” I told her, feeling a flush of pleasure. If Louise had complimented my shoes, I wouldn't have had the same reaction.

“I love them,” she said.

Dinah and Cinnamon ran up, giddy and giggling. Each grabbed one of my arms.

“Winnie, you've got to see this,” Cinnamon said.

“It's Alex Plotkin,” Dinah said. “He's stuck in a high chair.”

“He's stuck in a…what?”

“A high chair,” Cinnamon said, yanking me so that I lunged forward.

I made a stab at resisting, because I felt rude for abandoning Amanda. But there were two of them and one of me—not to mention the promise of Alex in a high chair. I didn't know the cafeteria even had high chairs. Maybe the cafeteria ladies got them out just for graduation lunches?

“Um, guess I'll see you?” I said to Amanda.

“Bye, Winnie,” she said as if she were amused. As if Dinah and Cinnamon were laughable, as if seventh graders in high chairs had stopped being interesting years ago. It was the only glimpse I'd had, during this particular exchange, of her icky “popular” persona.

But I glanced over my shoulder as I was being dragged away, and her expression threw me. She didn't look condescending. She looked sad.

 

Lars and I met at the mall a couple of days later. He was flying to Prague the next morning, so this was our good-bye. He took me to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. Well, actually we met there, since both of us had to be dropped off. Still, it was very date-ish.

Over Thai chicken pizza, we made small talk. I found myself picking at my food instead of digging in wholeheartedly like my normal piggy self, and I despised myself for it. I am
not
one of those girls who cares about weight and eats only salad and keeps the conversation focused on the boy and his interests because that's how to get a man.

But my stomach was tight, and eating seemed overly messy and complicated. Picking and nibbling proved easier.

Also—and this was something I didn't know how to make sense of—it was kind of seeming like maybe we didn't have so much to talk about, Lars and I. At least, not when we were away from school and our other friends. I despised myself for that, too. For not being better at all this. For not knowing how to just…get over myself.

“So,” I started, determined to get our date on track. I was not a boring blob. “In Prague, will you learn to speak…” My words tapered off as I realized I didn't know what language Prague people spoke. Well, not Prague people. Praguians?

“Czech,” Lars supplied. He took the last slice of pizza. “I don't know, maybe a little. But we'll only be there for three months.”

Three months, right.
Only
three months.

“I hope there will be some other American kids there,” he went on. “Or not even American, just kids who speak English. Someone to hang out with.”

“Maybe you'll meet some British kids,” I said. “Or Australian! Eh, mate?”

He grinned. I loosened a little.

“Australia rocks,” he said. “Did you know they have wombats?”

“Plus the most poisonous species of jellyfish in the world.” I'd read it in Ty's
National Geographic Kids
magazine. “If you get stung by one, you're dead in forty seconds.”

Lars ripped off a bite of pizza, shaking his head. “Man. I wish we were going to Australia instead of Prague.”

“But Prague'll be fun, too,” I said, sort of hoping he'd disagree.

He chewed and swallowed. “Yeah, I hear you. Getting to see any part of the world is cool.”

I sighed. He was right: it would be cool. I was the uncool one, needy and sad.

He reached over and touched my face. “I wish you were going to be there, though.”

“Really?” My pulse raced. He touched my face! In the California Pizza Kitchen!

He grinned and tossed some bills on the table. “Ready to get out of here?”

I fumbled for my wallet. “Do you want me to…I mean, can I…”

“Your money's no good here, babe,” he said.

“
Babe
?” I said.

He laughed. So did I. He stood up, grabbed my hand, and pulled me out of the booth. “Let's go. Aren't we supposed to meet your sister soon?”

But Sandra wasn't due to pick me up for almost an hour, which I was pretty sure he secretly knew. He led me to the outside parking deck, and he kissed me behind a concrete pillar. And kissed me and kissed me. My back pressed against the cool concrete. His lips were soft. He tasted like Thai peanut sauce.

 

In Sandra's Beemer, I asked her whether Lars and I would make it. I wanted her to reassure me that everything would be the same, only better, when he returned.

“Winnie, you're in seventh grade,” Sandra said, as if that was some kind of answer.

“Not anymore,” I replied.

She rotated her iPod dial and selected her “Mellow Yellow” playlist. Was this her way of telling me to chill? I
wanted
to chill. I wasn't being unchill on purpose. Didn't she get that?

“If what you guys have is real, it'll last,” she told me. “If not, it won't.”

“Gee, thanks.”

She shot me a look. “But worrying about it will only make things worse. You can't be desperate, Winnie.”

“I know!”

“I'm just saying.”

“I
know
.” My lips felt puffy from kissing. I loved that feeling. I gazed out the open window and wondered if Lars was thinking about me the way I was thinking about him.