Kissing Kate

  It took me a second, and then I shook my head. “But I asked you, back when we first started hanging out. You said you were just friends.”

  “I know. Pitiful, huh?”

  I gazed at her, then half-laughed and half-sniffled. “God, aren’t we?”

  A man frowned at us as he made his way to one of the few remaining tables, and I grew aware of our half-finished drinks, which had grown cold. Aware, too, of how close we were sitting.

  “Can we get out of here?” I said.

  “Of course,” Ariel said. “We could go to my house, if you want, or we could go to the park. Want to go to the park?”

  She linked her arm through mine as we headed for the door. I felt sure that everyone was watching, but I didn’t pull away.

  CHAPTER 28

  I SAW KATE EVERY DAY in history, of course. She returned to sitting with Missy Colquitt, and I returned to sitting alone at the back of the class. On Thursday, Mr. Neilson asked her to distribute some work sheets, and she slid out from behind her desk and strolled to the front of the room. She wore soft black corduroys and a cranberry-colored sweater, and her hair was held off her neck with a thick silver clip. Mitch Kremer leaned forward and whispered something as she moved down our row, and she smiled and swatted him with the stack of handouts. When she got to me, she dropped her eyes. She placed a handout on my desk and moved on.

  That night I went home and thought about how stupid it was that we were ignoring each other again. I was still angry, and hurt, but pretending that she didn’t exist didn’t help.

  So on Friday, I got to class early and walked to her desk like it was the most natural thing in the world. “Hi, Kate,” I said. I held my books tight against my chest.

  “Hi,” she said. Her hand went to her earring, and she pushed the hook in and out of her ear. “Um, how are you?”

  “I’m okay. You?”

  She let her hand fall to her desk, and she glanced around the room. Missy had arrived and taken her seat, and most of the other kids had straggled in as well. “Great,” she said. “I’m great.” She smiled as if to say why wouldn’t I be? and I knew she was playing to an audience, even if she wasn’t aware of it.

  “Oh,” she said, widening her eyes as if something had just occurred to her. “I totally need your help with last night’s homework, because there were a couple of answers I couldn’t find. I mean, God, you’re a thousand times better at this stuff than I am.”

  I almost got sucked in. It would have been so easy. But feeling needed was one thing; having your own needs met was another.

  “They’re in the handout,” I told her. “You just have to look.”

  She stopped digging in her backpack and lifted her head.

  I hugged my arms closer around my books. “See you around.”

  That afternoon, Ariel and I drove to a bookstore in Little Five Points called Charis. Ariel had a cousin who worked there, a cousin who happened to be gay.

  “This isn’t a setup, is it?” I asked. “Because you already tried that.”

  “It’s not a setup,” Ariel assured me. “It’s just . . . why not, you know? Maybe you can talk to her about stuff.”

  “Oh, right. Like I can ask her if her best friend ever came on to her and then rejected her all in the same month, stuff like that.”

  “If you want,” she said, refusing to be baited.

  I took a right on Highland Avenue. “How’d you find out she was gay?”

  Ariel propped her feet on the dashboard. “It was at her twenty-first birthday party. We were having a fancy family dinner in her honor, and my aunt kept making these stupid remarks about marriage and babies and biological clocks. Tick-tick-tick, that kind of thing. So Jessica took me and Shannon up to her room and told us what a crock it was. And she told us that Taylor, her roommate, was really her girl-friend.”

  “Are you close, you and Jessica? I mean, that’s a big thing to tell someone.”

  “Pretty close.”

  “So what’d you say?”

  “I said I thought it was great. Shannon thought it was gross. But that’s Shannon for you.”

  I kept my eyes on the road. “Kate called me a dyke. Actually, she called me a ‘fucking dyke,’ which, now that I think about it, I’m not sure is possible.”

  Ariel snorted. She draped her arm out of the open window and flexed her fingers to catch the breeze. “She was just scared. Most people have no idea how to handle anything that’s different. You know that.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” I thought of Ariel’s dream, how she saw herself standing alone at the bottom of the world. “Doesn’t it ever get to you? The kids at school, how they . . .”

  “Treat me like a freak? No.” She frowned. “Well, maybe. Sometimes. But I just remind myself that this is high school. It’s not forever.”

  That was true. Next year we’d be seniors. I glanced at her as she raked her hand through her hair, making it stand up in orange spikes. It struck me that being a senior with Ariel didn’t sound so bad.

  We found a parking space behind a vegetarian restaurant, then walked a couple of blocks until we came to a small store with a pink awning. A few feet from the door, I asked Ariel one last question. “What about Finn? Have you told him you like him?”

  “Not exactly.” A flush crept up her face, and she paused in front of the stucco storefront. “But yesterday we studied together up in my room, and I got him to paint my toenails. And then I painted his, and I told him what nice feet he had. You think that’s a big enough hint?”

  “He let you paint his toenails?”

  A smile tugged at her mouth. “It took some persuading.”

  I grinned. “I’d say you’re there, Ariel. Way to go.”

  We went into the store, and from behind the cash register a woman with long curly hair lifted her head. “Hey!” she said. She came over and gave Ariel a hug. She turned to me and stuck out her hand. “Hi, I’m Jessica. You must be Lissa.”

  “Hi,” I said.

  “You want some tea? Hot chocolate?” She scanned the empty store. “We’ve got the place to ourselves, so we can pretty much do what we want.”

  “Hot chocolate would be great,” Ariel said.

  “Sure,” I said. “Thanks.” I’d been worried that I’d feel strange around Jessica, like maybe I was being sized up. I’d also worried that she’d be wearing combat boots or a sleeveless undershirt, but she looked perfectly normal. She had dark brown eyes and a round, smiley face, and on the front of her shirt was the logo for Mr. Bubble.

  “I’ll stick some water in the microwave,” she said, “and I’ll call Taylor and tell her to come over. How long has it been since she’s seen you?”

  “I don’t know,” Ariel said. “Shannon’s birthday party?”

  “That’s right. How is Shannon?”

  Ariel rolled her eyes. “The same. Yesterday at dinner I was complaining about how the cheerleaders cheer for the boys’ teams but not the girls’, and she told me I was anti-American. She said I should just move to Germany if that’s the way I felt.”

  Jessica laughed and ducked to the back of the store.

  “She seems nice,” I said.

  “Yeah. Thank God there’s someone sane in my family.”

  Taylor arrived as Jessica was serving us our hot chocolate, and the four of us leaned against the front counter and talked about books and music and what movies we’d recently seen. Sometimes, while Ariel chattered away, I studied Jessica and Taylor from under my bangs. I liked how affectionate they were with each other: the way Taylor smiled and nodded when Jessica said something funny, and the way Jessica found Taylor’s hand on the countertop, covering it with her own.

  At one point a customer came in, and when Jessica slipped away to help her find a book, Taylor told Ariel and me about a ceramics class Jessica was taking. “She’s too modest to bring it up,” Taylor said, “but you should see the pieces she’s been glazing. She uses blues and greens and golds, mainly, and even though the designs are differ
ent, all of the pieces look good together.”

  “That’s so cool,” Ariel said. Her eyes were bright, and I could tell she was taken by the idea of the artist’s life.

  “Planning your next career?” I teased.

  “Maybe. I could do it!”

  We hung out for another half hour, and then Ariel pushed herself up from the counter and announced that we should go.

  “It was good seeing you,” Ariel told Taylor. She poked Jessica’s shoulder. “And you need to show me some of your pottery the next time you come over. Okay?”

  “Taylor—” Jessica said.

  “What?” Taylor said. “I’m not allowed to brag?”

  Jessica’s cheeks turned pink, but I could tell she was pleased. “You should come by more often,” she said to Ariel. She turned to me. “You, too, Lissa.” She held my gaze. “Ariel told me a little about what you’re going through—just a little—and if you ever need someone to talk to . . .”

  I could sense Ariel beside me, holding her breath.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I will.”

  CHAPTER 29

  SATURDAY MORNING DAWNED bright and sunny. I kicked off the covers, but stayed in bed, stretching my arms above my head.

  “Lissa?” Beth called. She knocked on my door. “You awake?”

  I yawned.

  She came in and perched on the edge of the mattress. She was wearing her new necklace, along with two purple barrettes.

  “Nice barrettes,” I said.

  “Do they match?”

  “They do. You are the fashion queen.”

  She craned her neck to look at herself in the mirror over my dresser, then turned back to me. “So. Jerry and Sophie are taking Nikki and me to the zoo because it’s such a nice day out, and you know they have baby koalas now.”

  “Who, Jerry and Sophie?”

  “The zoo. But you can only see them once a day when the zoo people feed them, because they’re nocturnal.”

  “The zoo people are nocturnal?”

  “Lissa! Do you want to come or not?”

  “Sounds fun, but Ariel’s coming over at eleven o’clock. Say ‘hi’ to Nikki for me, though.”

  “Okay.” She got up from the bed.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She turned around.

  “What about Vanessa?”

  “What about her?” She lifted her eyebrows, then spun on her heel and strode out the door.

  “So,” Ariel said. She grabbed my hands and pulled me into the den, then sat next to me on the sofa and bounced up and down. “Guess who just happened to kiss me last night?”

  “No way!” I said.

  “Way! Although technically I kissed him, but he didn’t seem all that upset about it.”

  “Ariel, that’s awesome,” I said. I felt only a ping of jealousy. It was just that I wanted that for myself one day: to be into someone and have whoever it was be into me, too. “So what did he say? Was he surprised?”

  “Not as much as you might think. I mean, there we were watching the movie, and then wham! I was all over him.” She grinned. “But then he told me he’d wanted to do the same thing ages ago. It’s just that we’d been friends for so long, and he didn’t want to mess things up.” She flung herself onto the cushions. “God, what a beautiful boy.”

  I smiled. I was glad she was happy, but I couldn’t help thinking that only a week ago, Finn had tried to kiss me. Was that a bad sign, that he could go from one person to the next in such a short time? Then again, I’d done pretty much the same thing by fleeing to Kate on the very night he’d taken me out to dinner. Oh, well. So we both had someone else in mind when we tried each other out. Was that really such a crime?

  A lightness filled my chest as I realized that I could think about this—about Kate—and not fall to pieces.

  “What about you?” Ariel said. She nudged my leg with her foot. “You seem like you’re in a good mood, too.”

  I turned toward her, bringing myself back to the moment. “As a matter of fact, I am.” I paused. “I had another lucid dream last night.”

  “Lissa! You stud! I’ve been trying and trying, and I still haven’t had one. So tell me about it!”

  “Well, it was weird. But wonderful, too.” I leaned into the sofa. “First I had this icky dream—not a lucid dream, just a normal dream. It was a dream I used to have a lot, even way back when I was a kid. But for a while I hadn’t had it, and I’d hoped it was gone.”

  Ariel seemed confused.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s kind of complicated.” I backtracked and told her what had happened when I was five, how I was supposed to be waiting for Mom outside Service Merchandise, but instead I almost got myself kidnapped.

  “And for years I had these awful dreams about it,” I said, “which I guess isn’t so surprising. And then for a while the dreams went away. But in the last few weeks that same dream came back, and it got mixed up with other stuff, too. Like one time Ben Porter and Rob Lynch were in it, leaning against a car and laughing at me.”

  “Yuck,” Ariel said.

  “And another time I dreamed about a kid from my elementary school, this girl named Cookie Churchill. She was, like, luring me farther into the parking lot.”

  “Cookie?” Ariel said.

  “Yeah. We used to be friends, sort of, but sometimes she’d be mean to me, too. Like if I got upset about something, she’d say, ‘What’s your prob, little snob?’ And one time she told the whole class my toenails were gross.”

  “So why’d you hang out with her?”

  “I don’t know. I honestly don’t.” I shrugged. “I guess I still liked her, even though she made me feel like crap.”

  Ariel looked at me in an odd way.

  “What?” I said.

  “You heard what you just said, right?” She waited, then raised her eyebrows. “You still liked her, even though she made you feel like crap?”

  “Yeah, well, I was in third grade. Give me a break.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” she said. “Cookie doesn’t remind you of anyone? Someone who isn’t in third grade?”

  “Ariel, I have no idea what you’re—” I stopped. Blood rushed to my face. “Oh. Oh, God, I didn’t think about it like that.”

  “In your dream it was Cookie, but I bet it was really Kate.”

  “Wow, that is so weird,” I said. I thought about it for a second. “But yeah, they both treated me the same, didn’t they? That kind of freaks me out.”

  “Tell me about it,” Ariel said. “I had a dream like that about Mickey Mouse, when actually it was my dad.” She leaned forward. “Okay, so keep going. What ended up happening?”

  “Well, last night I had the dream again,” I said, “and when I woke up, I just got mad. Because why should I keep having a dream that makes me feel so awful?”

  “You shouldn’t,” Ariel said.

  “Exactly. And then I thought about this chapter from my dream book, how the author says you can re-enter a dream on purpose and turn it into a lucid dream. You’re supposed to think about the dream as you slip back to sleep, telling yourself that the next time you have it, you’ll realize you’re just dreaming. And then you can deal with it however you want. You control the dream, instead of the other way around.”

  I checked her expression. I felt jumpy, but I wanted to make sure she was getting it. “So that’s what I did,” I said. “And it worked.”

  “Are you serious? Lissa, that’s amazing!”

  “It really kind of was,” I said. I drew my legs up on the sofa, folding them beneath me. “I closed my eyes and let myself drift off, thinking about the dream the entire time. And then there I was, standing in the middle of the parking lot. The same parking lot as all the times before. And it was hot, and the sky was blue, and I had that creepy feeling on the back of my neck, you know? Like something terrible was going to happen.”

  “Because something terrible was going to happen,” Ariel said. She shivered. “That is so spooky, Lissa, that you rea
lly did walk off with that guy.”

  I pushed my hair behind my ear. “So . . . I was in the parking lot, and all the cars were, like, really bright. I can’t even describe it, just that they weren’t like regular cars. And I was standing there, feeling all edgy and wondering what I was supposed to do, when someone called my name.”

  “Ooo. Was it Cookie, who was really Kate?” She slapped her knee, a series of excited pats. “That would make sense, wouldn’t it? That instead of, like, this dangerous guy, you were being drawn toward the whole Kate situation?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Except whoever it was called out from behind me, not in front of me. And at first I told myself, No, you can’t turn back now. You’ve got to go forward, you’ve got to face whatever it is you’re so afraid of.”

  “You are so brave,” Ariel said.

  “Yeah, well, but then I heard the voice again.”

  Ariel frowned. She looped a strand of hair around her finger. Then her eyes widened and she asked, “Was it. . . your mom?” She said it gingerly, as if afraid of overstepping.

  “For a second I thought so, too. But it wasn’t.”

  “So who was it?”

  I swallowed. I remembered how my heart, in my dream, had started pounding like crazy when at last I turned around. “It was me,” I said. “Me when I was five, with my hair in two long braids.” I tucked my legs in closer. “I was standing outside the store, and I was safe after all.”

  “Oh, wow,” Ariel said.

  “Yeah,” I said. I suddenly felt embarrassed. “And then I woke up. And I knew things were going to be okay.”

  She gazed at me in this proud way. A little teary, even. “So the scary stuff was Kate,” she said. “Kate and Ben and—I don’t know. Even me, I guess, pressuring you to be someone you weren’t. That’s the horrible fate you’ve been marching off toward all this time, even though deep inside you knew you shouldn’t.”

  I stared at my jeans.

  “But you called yourself back,” she said. “You called yourself back, and you were finally able to listen.”

  My throat tightened, and my lower lip got that trembly feeling of wanting to cry. I thought about Mom, who used to stand behind me and fix my hair. Like corn silk, she would say, weaving the sections with her fingers. How long had it been since I’d thought of that?