The Last Best Kiss

  “Fine.” Lily dismisses him with a wave. “But get me a slice of pie, will you?”

  “What kind?” he asks, standing up.

  “Just pie,” she says. “Pie is intrinsically good.”

  “Is that going to be your whole lunch?”

  “Best lunch possible,” she says. “Since it’s pie.”

  “Anyone else in need of some pie?” Finn asks, glancing around the table. “Or anything else?” His eyes move quickly past me. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt and jeans. He used to wear polo shirts that were too small and shorts that were too big, but now his jeans and tee fit him well, slim enough to be flattering but not so skinny that he looks like he escaped from 2010.

  We all pass on the offer. Finn leaves the table, and Hilary says to her sister, “You can’t eat only pie for lunch.”

  “Just watch me.” Lily plucks her ukulele out of the tote bag at her feet and strums it, singing, “Pie is fine. It’s very nice/ Especially with lots of spice/ Like cinnamon and ginger too/ My sis would like it, but she’s a poo.”

  “Oh, well, that’s brilliant,” Hilary says. “Taylor Swift must be looking over her shoulder.”

  “She should—I’m breathing down her neck.” Lily strums a few more chords, humming along with them, then says, “So who here is already madly in love with Finn Westbrook?” She raises her own hand.

  Hilary lifts her hand with an uncertain waver. “I wouldn’t say I’m madly in love with him, but there’s potential for that.”

  “Did you see his eyelashes?” Lucy asks. “They’re longer than my thumb.”

  “They’re thick too,” Hilary says. “And he’s nice.” She takes a sip from her can of Diet Coke. “Mostly, though, he’s fresh blood. I am so sick of all the guys here.” She munches a carrot stick thoughtfully. “Also? He has a good body.”

  “He’s not muscular enough,” Lucy says. “I like guys who are built.”

  “I don’t,” Hilary says. “They look stupid in clothes. Finn looks good in his clothes.”

  “You’re totally in love with him,” her sister says.

  Hil shrugs. “Yeah, okay, fine.”

  “Too bad, he’s mine.”

  “She branded him last night,” Lucy says. “A big L S on his rump.”

  “How would you know what he has on his rump?” Lily asks.

  Lucy laughs. “Don’t worry—I’m not interested in this competition.”

  Finn comes back to the table with a full tray, ending the conversation. There’s an empty space next to me and one next to Lily. He takes the one next to her—to be fair, that’s where he sat before—and looks around. Four pairs of female eyes are watching him. “Why am I the only guy sitting here?”

  “You feeling lonely for some fellow testosterone?” asks Hilary. She must have flat-ironed her hair that morning, because it’s straight and silky. She’s wearing a floaty bohemian dress and Grecian sandals. She’s as classic a beauty today as Lily is a quirky one. “We could burp a lot if that would make you more comfortable.”

  “Tempting as that offer is . . .” Finn picks up a plate from his tray. “I got you a slice of pizza.”

  “I said I wanted pie.”

  “Pizza means pie. And you refused to be specific.”

  She pouts. “It wasn’t nice of you to be clever about this. Not when I’m desperate for a sugar rush.”

  He puts down the plate and picks up another, which he puts in front of her. “Relax—I also got you a slice of cherry pie.”

  “Hooray!” Lily says. She strums a tune on the uke and loudly sings, “Pie, pie, pie, pie, pie” in an ascending scale.

  “Oh, for god’s sake.” Her sister puts out a hand and covers the strings. “Everyone’s looking.”

  “Let them look,” Lily says, shoving Hilary’s hand away. “When are you going to realize that I’m not like you—I don’t care what other people think?”

  Finn points a finger at her. “I like you,” he says seriously. “Now give me back the pizza. I’ll eat it if you don’t want it.”

  She smiles, puts down the ukulele, and picks up the slice of pizza in both hands. “Changed my mind,” she says. “Pizza first. Then pie.”

  “Glad I got myself a sandwich too, then.”

  Hilary asks Finn whether Sterling Woods—our school—has changed much since he was here in ninth grade.

  He thinks about that, chewing quietly. Another change—the old Finn was a messy eater, too enthusiastic about sharing information and stories to wait until his food was swallowed to talk. He’s learned table manners somewhere in the last few years.

  When he’s done with that bite, he says, “This place looks the same. But it feels different to me. For one thing the freshmen look like little kids. Not that I’m one to judge: I was one of the smallest kids in my class.”

  “Oh, right.” Lily gestures at me. “Anna said you were really short.”

  Great. Thanks for bringing that up, Lil. I mumble something about how I never said that exactly, but Finn just shrugs. “She’s right, I was.”

  “Who did you hang out with?” Lily asks him. “Do you still have friends here?”

  “Josh Starr was probably the guy I was closest to, but he doesn’t go here anymore.”

  “He went to boarding school, right?” Lucy says.

  “Yeah, his family’s got this Exeter tradition. But I was wondering about Otis Chan, who was another good friend. I hadn’t heard from him for a while, so I tried to track him down when I knew I was moving back, but his old phone number didn’t work. And I haven’t seen him. You guys know what the story is?”

  “He dropped out of school last year,” Lucy says. “I mean, not permanently, but he’s in rehab and won’t graduate with the class.”

  Finn flops back in his chair, staring at her. “You’re kidding me.”

  “She’s not,” Hilary says. “He was a total stoner.”

  “You could smell it on him,” Lily says. “Even at, like, eight in the morning.”

  “That’s crazy,” Finn says. “He and I spent a ton of time together. He was one of the most anti-drug people I’ve ever met.”

  “He got over that,” Lucy says drily. “And he wasn’t a social smoker—he was one of those alone-in-your-room kind of burnouts.”

  “That’s so weird. When I knew him, all he wanted to do was play Dungeons and Dragons.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s not such a huge leap from that to being a stoner,” Hilary points out.

  “I guess.” Finn shakes his head. “Man, I hope he gets his act together. That’s really sad.” He sighs and slumps his shoulders. “So I guess I don’t have any good friends left here.”

  “Don’t worry.” Lily pats his arm. “We’ll be your new friends. You’ll like us even better, I promise.”

  “Will you play League of Legends with me and then go to the Apple Store?” he asks. “I’m a total nerd.”

  “Sure,” she says. “If you’ll go to thrift stores and used-vinyl-record stores with me. I’m a total hipster.”

  Hilary rolls her eyes and groans at this, but Finn just nods and assures Lily that it’s a deal. They’ll be there for each other.

  I stay pretty quiet during lunch. It’s all too weird for me. There’s Finn sitting at our table, and half the time I’m thinking, He’s completely different—I don’t even know this guy, and the rest of the time I’m thinking, Oh my god, it’s him, and he hasn’t changed at all. It’s the small things—the head movements and the way his grin spreads across his face and the large, soft brown eyes and the quick shifting in his seat with sudden enthusiasm—that haven’t changed.

  But he doesn’t look at me the way he used to.

  Actually he doesn’t look at me at all.

  There’s a polite flicker of attention in my direction when one of the others says something to me and I respond, but he turns back to the others as soon as possible.

  Meanwhile, there are my friends, all laughing with him and listening to him and flirting with him—and
don’t think the irony escapes me, that this is the exact same guy who three years ago no one looked at twice.

  Except for me. I looked at him more than twice back then.

  And then I looked away.

  And now he’s the one looking away. Not in a rude way—no, he’s been extremely polite to me. Far more polite than he is to the others. Like we’re strangers who’ve been thrown together through mutual acquaintances. Like he knows the other girls much better than he knows me. Like I’m the newcomer.

  I stay quiet during lunch because I’m afraid I might cry, right there in front of everyone. Or throw up. Or fall on the floor, kicking and screaming. I can’t talk much because I’m focusing on not doing any of those things.

  I wonder if I should grab him and pull him aside at some point and let him know how bad I feel about what happened in ninth grade. Just put it out there. Maybe an apology would make things less weird between us. Maybe he’d even forgive me. Maybe that’s all he’s waiting for.

  I can’t do it now—not with Hilary and Lily fighting for his attention. But later that day I see him walking alone between classes, so I call out to him and he turns. For a second I swear he looks happy to see me—and then his face goes blank so quickly, I wonder if I imagined that. But he waits politely enough for me to catch up.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hi,” he says. Warily.

  “Do you have a sec?”

  “Not really. Class starts in two minutes.”

  “This will take less than that.” I move to the lockers on the side, so we’re out of the way of the kids streaming by. “I just wanted to say that I’m glad you’re back.”

  “It’s good to be here,” he says evenly.

  “And also—” God, this is hard. I take a deep breath. “Also, I know things got a little weird between us back in ninth grade, and I’m sorry for whatever part of that was my fault.” There. That’s enough, right? It’s obvious what I’m referring to—and that I’m apologizing. I raise my eyes to his face, hoping to see it soften.

  “Thank you,” he says, without meeting my gaze. He shifts his binder from one hand to the other. “I’d better get to class.” And he walks away again.

  So much for an apology making everything okay again. Maybe I should have said more.

  Or maybe I should have said less. Like nothing at all.

  I actually touch my cheeks, because my face feels so hot from the inside that I figure they must be radiating heat, but they feel normal. I walk to class quickly and stare at the teacher with burning eyes and hold myself together until school’s over and I’m alone in my room at home. Then I let it in—I let in the self-loathing and regret that come from knowing I threw away and kicked to the curb something I wish I still had and can’t ever get back.

  I let it all wash over me, and hope that there’s something cathartic in feeling this awful.

  As the week goes by and it becomes clear that Finn Westbrook is going to be a permanent addition to our table and that my attempt to apologize didn’t change anything, I force myself to get used to having him there. What choice do I have? It still hurts to see him sitting there and feel no connection at all, but the hurt burrows down deep, farther away from the surface. After a while I don’t have to worry that I’ll burst into tears. I’m able to join in the conversation. I laugh even. I watch him get more and more comfortable with my friends, watch him tease them casually and easily.

  He doesn’t tease me. Not ever.

  He says hello to me and also good-bye, and between the greeting and farewell is a world of indifference. He basically treats me the way I treat my great-aunts: he’s polite and not the slightest bit interested in me.

  Or at least that’s how it looks and feels.

  But deep down I think he’s mad at me.

  Deep down I think he might actually hate me.

  I guess I’ll just have to get used to that too.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  three

  A couple of weeks into school, Phoebe invites a bunch of people to watch the Video Music Awards on the enormous flat-screen TV at her house this coming Thursday night. Hilary can’t go to the party, because the twins’ dad is a music producer, and she’s actually going to the VMAs. She and Lily take turns going as his date.

  “I’d rather be with you guys,” she says the Saturday before the party. The five of us are at In-N-Out Burger—Phoebe, the twins, Lucy, and me.

  Lucy looks up from the hamburger she’s dismembering—she never eats anything without taking out some of it and rearranging the rest, partially because she’s a picky eater and partially because she’s a control freak—and says, “Fine, you go to Phoebe’s, and I’ll take your place. Shall I tell Beyoncé you say hi?”

  “It’s not like I get to really talk to her or anyone else who’s famous,” Hilary says. “At best we, like, shake hands.”

  “If you complain one more time about going . . .” Lucy says.

  “Yeah, stop complaining,” Lily says cheerfully. “You got to buy a new dress.”

  “It’s just not fair. I wanted to go last year and you got to, and I don’t want to go this year and I have to.”

  “All right, that’s it,” Lucy says. “Should we tell your father I’m his date for the evening, or should I just surprise him?” She pulls out a piece of tomato, inspects it, scrapes something off of it, then sticks it back on the hamburger.

  “He won’t notice,” Hilary says. “He can’t even tell me and Lily apart, and look at us. Just look at us.”

  “My dad never calls me by the right name,” I say. “Only by my older sisters’. Sometimes he’ll call me ‘honey’ really awkwardly. He’s not the honey type, but it gets him out of having to remember my name.”

  Phoebe says, “All parents have trouble with names. I’m an only child, and my dad sometimes stops and says, ‘Uh, you.’”

  I nod, but our family situations are totally different. She once told me that her parents cried so hard at her middle school commencement that her mother burst a blood vessel in her eye and had this weird red spot in all of the photos they took that day. And that was just middle school. I can’t wait to see what happens at our high school graduation—maybe she’ll explode.

  “Oh, hey, Anna?” Phoebe says. “Speaking of your father . . . I keep meaning to ask—is it true he does alumni interviewing for Stanford?”

  “And self-interest rears its ugly head,” Lily says. She’s drinking a chocolate milk shake for her lunch, said that was all she wanted, although she keeps sneaking fries from the rest of us.

  Phoebe flushes. “Shoot me for caring where I go to college.”

  I say, “He’s not interviewing this year—he’s not supposed to when he has a kid applying to colleges.”

  “He got your oldest sister in, right?”

  “Molly would have gotten in anyway. She’s totally brilliant.”

  Phoebe raises her eyebrows skeptically. “Maybe. But I bet it didn’t hurt that your dad is a major alum. Can you just tell him it’s totally my first choice and ask him if he has any advice?”

  “Sure,” I say. “But I honestly don’t know if it will help.”

  “Ask for me too, while you’re at it,” says Hilary. Lucy echoes her.

  “It can’t be everyone’s first choice,” Phoebe says, annoyed.

  “It would be, if I thought I could get in,” Hilary says. “Anyway, it’s not Lily’s. She wants to go to Bard or Vassar. Right, Lil?”

  Lily doesn’t respond, because she’s already rising to her feet and calling out to the guys behind the registers, “This music sucks! Can’t you play something good?”

  “No,” one of them calls back, laughing. He’s young and cute. “We don’t get to choose it.”

  She draws closer. “If you could, what would you play?”

  “I don’t know. The Shins, maybe?”

 
They talk about music for a while, and somehow it all ends in his slipping Lily a free order of fries when his boss is looking the other way.

  On Tuesday I’m working alone in the art room after school when the assistant art teacher comes in. She’s never actually taught me—I’ve only had classes and independent studies with the main art teacher, Mr. Oresco, who’s round and balding and whose praise means everything to me—but Ginny Clay arrived this year to teach a new class called Digital Art and to sub for Mr. O when he’s sick. I doubt she’d have gotten hired if she hadn’t been a Sterling Woods alum: she graduated from here the year before Molly, which means she’s barely out of college and doesn’t look much older than most of the students. She doesn’t act much older either—she’s a giggler, and she’s blond and very pretty, but from what I’ve heard about the class she teaches, she’s not actually that good at either computer science or art. A lot of the students are way ahead of her in both, and they all say she just sends them over to the computers and sits at the front of the room reading magazines while they use various programs. If someone has a question, she usually asks another kid to help him out.

  She was captain of the volleyball team her senior year here, when Lizzie was on the team. The two of them were friends, so I’ve known her for years. Because I’m her friend’s little sister and she’s now in a position of authority at school, she seems to think it’s her obligation to criticize and advise me.

  I do not enjoy when she does either.

  “Hey, Anna!” Ginny spots me and pounces with delight. She’s wearing tiny volleyball shorts and a shrunken tee and has her blond hair pulled up and back in a neat ponytail. She’s also the assistant volleyball coach for the girls’ team, but it’s not like this outfit is required or anything—she must just like showing off her perfect body. The senior volleyball coach wears a tracksuit and a whistle.

  I’m drawing at a table. I don’t use an easel unless a teacher makes me. When I was a kid, I always drew standing up at our dining room table, and I guess the habit of working that way stuck. Mr. Oresco says I’m going to destroy my back if I don’t switch over to easels and I know he’s right, but I get so lost when I’m drawing and painting that I don’t even notice if my back starts to ache.