17 First Kisses
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Advance Reader’s e-proof
courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers
This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Dedication
dedication & acknowledgments t/k
Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Title
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Chapter
1
Finding a guy to kiss in this town is next to impossible. First of all, I have to find a guy who isn’t secretly pining over Megan McQueen, the most popular girl in school and my best friend.
And second of all, I live in Pine Bluff. Which would be fine if I wanted to kiss guys who chew tobacco and wear flannel. But I don’t.
Tonight, however, I may have to make an exception. I weave through the crowd at Wranglers, a country bar that has teen night once a week, careful not to be taken out by a rogue line dancer in the process. I’m looking for the boy in the white cowboy hat, the one Megan pointed out a few minutes ago. I find him leaning against the rails of the mechanical-bull arena. He’s actually pretty cute, in a Pine Bluff kind of way. The type of guy who would have no trouble getting a girl. I don’t see why he had to lie.
I strut right up to him. And lick my finger. And touch it to his shirt. “Let’s get you out of those wet clothes.” I wink as I say it.
For a split second he looks terrified, and the words Abort Mission flash in my head, but then a lazy smile spreads across his face. I’ve got him.
“I’m Claire,” I say, unsure if we’ve ever officially met, even though we go to the same school.
“I know who you are. I’m—”
I put my finger over his lips, leaning in close so I can whisper in his ear, “I know who you are too.”
I take him by the hand. Lead him to a bathroom that says Fillies on the door.
He stops short. “What if someone’s in there?”
“It’s empty. Trust me.” I push him in first, locking the door behind us. The telltale ring-shaped silhouette of a tobacco tin marks his back pocket. He dips. Ew, I hope I can pull this off without kissing him.
I press him against a wall of cold tiles, a southwestern mosaic the backdrop to this seduction. Cowboy Hat tilts my chin up, but just before my lips touch his, I pull away.
“I can’t do this.”
His eyes are hungry and confused. “What?”
“I can’t hook up with you,” I say, tucking my brown hair behind my ears. “I mean, I want to. So badly.” I rake my fingernails down his chest. “But I can’t. Megan’s my best friend.”
“Megan?”
“Because you guys had sex, right? At Britney’s party last weekend?”
That’s what everyone’s saying, anyway. Even though they were only in Britney’s pool house for five minutes. Even though Megan swears they didn’t. She has first period with his vengeful now-ex-girlfriend, Amanda Bell, and it’s been really awkward.
He glances from side to side like he’s expecting ninjas to pop out of the ventilation system. “Amanda said I had to.”
“Sleep with Megan?!”
“No! I was just talking to her about how stressed Amanda’s been about homecoming nominations. When Amanda found out, she got so pissed. She said I had to say all that stuff, so Megan would be the Angelina and she could be the Jennifer.”
I frown. “But why would she break up with you if she knows you didn’t do it?”
“I think she’s going to take me back next week.” He shrugs. “Um, are we gonna hook up now?”
A laugh sputters from my mouth, but before I can say anything, Megan’s voice rings out from the handicapped stall. “No. You’re not.”
She swings open the door.
Cowboy Hat looks like he’s going to be sick. Good thing we’re already in a bathroom. “Oh, crap.”
“‘Oh, crap’ is right,” says Megan, pushing buttons on her phone. “Your little confession is going to hit Facebook. Right. Now.”
We run out of the bathroom before he can process what happened.
“You were amazing.” Megan can’t stop grinning, and I’m so glad. The last time I saw her this upset was after Chase Collins. She gave him her heart and her virginity on a platter. And he dumped her. She’s totally over him now, but still. The Chase-Megan era was epic.
“Well, you owe me. Especially for that ‘wet clothes’ line,” I say.
Then I run face-first into Amanda Bell.
“Slut!” she screeches, throwing a cup of what smells like Diet Coke at me. “I saw you go in there with him.”
Amber droplets soak into my shirt, trickle down my arms. Everyone within a ten-foot radius turns to see what the commotion is. Megan marches up to Amanda, their faces inches apart. She’s very intimidating for someone so petite.
“Listen. Claire didn’t touch your boyfriend, and neither did I. And your pathetic little plan to win homecoming isn’t going to work, so stay away from me and my friends or I will ruin you.”
I’m really glad I’m not Amanda right now. Whenever that tiny wrinkle appears between Megan’s eyebrows, it is a signal to be very, very afraid. Don’t get me wrong. I love her like she’s my sister. But when Megan and someone else want the same thing, it gets . . . ugly.
“Whatever.” Amanda glares at me before walking away. “You’re still a slut.”
I wince. I thought I was past this. I’ve never even had sex. I’ve kissed thirteen guys. Thirteen. And somehow that makes me a slut for life.
“Hey, you know that’s not true, right?” Megan says as she wipes me down with napkins.
I nod.
“Good. But I’m still not letting her get away with it.” She walks over to where Amanda is riding the mechanical bull. In a skirt. “Tell Amanda to check her Facebook,” she says to one of Amanda’s friends.
We’re about to leave when Megan pauses to pick up a pair of black sandals. The pair Amanda was wearing before she took them off to ride the bull. Megan shoves them into a nearby trash can with a wicked grin.
When I wake the next morning, the trundle bed is empty. Megan sleeps less than any human I know. On my way downstairs, I hear a shuffl
ing in the kitchen. Something smells ungodly good.
“Do you want cream and sugar?” I hear Megan ask someone.
“Yes, please,” Mama answers.
She’s awake already. Which means today could be a good day.
I peer around the corner. Mama sits at the kitchen table in an old bathrobe, her hands fragile and jittery. Megan gently sets a mug in front of her, her other hand hovering over my mother’s shoulder like she can’t decide whether to squeeze it.
The oven beeps.
“I made quiche,” says Megan. “Do you want some?
“I’m not hungry right now.” She’s not eating. Which means today could be a bad day. “I’ll eat something later when I’m at my group,” she adds.
If she’s going to group, it’s definitely a good day. As good as it gets anyway.
I walk into the kitchen. “I’m starving.”
Megan and I scarf down plates of her quiche Florentine, which tastes every bit as good as it smells.
quiche Florentine (noun)
1: Spinach, onions, Gruyère cheese, and egg baked inside a crust so magically flaky you’d swear it was made by pastry elves instead of my best friend.
2: Something Megan just whips up for breakfast in the morning. On a whim.
Mama drifts into the living room with her coffee mug and stares out the bay window, a ghost lurking among the curtains.
“How is she?” Megan asks.
I look down at my lap. “The same.”
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she says quickly.
I nod, grateful.
Mama used to be like one of those moms from the black-and-white TV shows, the kind that only exist on the TV Land channel and in small southern towns. Sometimes I want to shake her and yell, Why can’t you be like you again? But we never had the kind of relationship where I talked to her about serious stuff. And we don’t live in the kind of house where you yell and cry about your problems out in the open.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s part of the reason she’s like this. She kept her feelings hidden, and they ate her from the inside out.
“So, thanks for helping me last night,” Megan says.
“No problem. It’s probably the most exciting thing that’s happened to me all year. Which is pretty sad. I am literally going to die of boredom.”
“You are not. Hey, I need your help with something.” Megan holds up a couple of shirts that she brought over yesterday with her overnight bag. “Do you think this BCBG top says, ‘I’m a really good dresser but I’m friends with everyone’ or do you think it says, ‘I’m snobby and I’m judging your ugly shoes’?”
“I don’t know.” It’s not like anyone at school will recognize the brands anyway. We live in the town that fashion forgot. I mean, yes, we get magazines like everyone else, but looking through them is like trying to read a book in a foreign language. Like flipping through an Ikea catalog and finding that spoflugin = coffee table.
“Claire!” Megan snaps her fingers. “This is important! Nominations for homecoming court are tomorrow.”
“You know you have no competition, right? You could show up to school dressed in holey jeans and everyone would be like, ‘Oh, Megan’s gone for a distressed look. I wonder where I can get those.’”
She giggles.
“Why do you care what people at school think of you, anyway?” I ask.
“Because. If I’m going to do something, I’m going to be the best at it.”
I think about soccer. And my grades. I get it.
My grades are my ticket out of here. I know it sounds like a simple thing: Leaving Pine Bluff. Going away to school. But you’ve got to understand. This place is like quicksand. It sucks people in and never lets them escape. Girls with big dreams find themselves knocked up and married to a construction worker before you can say “dashed hopes.” Even people like my parents, who got out and went to school, came back. I am never coming back.
“So,” Megan says, breaking me out of my thoughts. “What you were saying about being bored and all? I think we need to make another pact.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Because I can’t handle another year of your whining.”
“Hey!” We both burst into giggles.
Megan and I are always making pacts. Some silly, some vitally important.
Pact #1: We will be best friends forever (sealed with a pinky swear in seventh grade).
Pact #2: We will never let each other kiss dorky boys (decided after I confessed the whole horrible experience with Steven Lippert).
Pact #3: We will escape from Pine Bluff and live out our dreams in the wide world beyond (we went through a poetic phase in tenth grade).
Pact #4: We will do everything we can to remedy our reputations as sluts/bitches (made after the Yoko Ono Incident—we’ve pretty much fixed our reps since then).
Megan clears her throat. “Pact number five will be all about making something different happen. So for you, that means meeting a new boy. Someone worth breaking your no-kiss streak for.”
“Sounds good to me. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to win queen for homecoming and prom.”
“You’re on homecoming every year.”
“Yeah, but this is more than just homecoming court. This is queen. For both homecoming and prom. People almost never get the double crown.”
I snort. “I can’t believe we’re about to make a pact about the double crown.”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Your half of the pact is about boys, and you’re mocking me about prom queen?”
I hold up my hands. “Fair enough.”
“Anyway, you know how much I love winning. So. Pact number five: I will make something different happen this year,” says Megan, as we arrange our hands in the pinky-swear position.
“Pact number five: I will make something different happen this year,” I repeat. Then I add, “Before I die of boredom.”
Kiss #1 xoxo
The Summer Before Second Grade
My first kiss was with the most popular guy in school. For most girls, in most towns, this would be a good thing. Not for me.
Every high school has that popular boy who is not only an all-American athlete and devastatingly hot, but also a genuine, nice guy. Well, Buck isn’t like that. I mean, yes, he is good at sports, and he does look like an Abercrombie model (for a parallel-universe Abercrombie that sells rebel flags and jorts), but he’s a jerk. He’s the guy who still thinks it’s funny to tape “I play with my instrument daily” signs to the backs of the band kids. He’s the guy who tried to crawl through the ceiling Mission: Impossible-style to place a video camera over the girls’ locker room (fortunately, he crashed through the tiles and landed on a desk in Mrs. Frankowski’s history class). He’s that guy.
Every time I see him, I ask myself why (Why?!) my first kiss had to be with him. It was the summer Megan McQueen moved into the neighborhood.
I’m with the boys riding our newly de-training-wheeled bikes, while the other girls play with Megan’s Barbie Dream House on a blanket in her driveway. Our subdivision is one of the very first developments in town, the kind with nearly identical houses arranged neatly among the dogwood trees. We circle the cul-de-sac, sometimes popping feeble wheelies, sometimes letting go of the handlebars for a hot second. Then Buck gets the genius idea that we should try to ride down the Hill.
In reality this hill isn’t even that steep, but in my seven-year-old eyes it looms like Mount Everest. Many a kid has ridden up the Hill, only to have to turn around and walk their bike back down in shame when they chicken out. It is common knowledge that Glenn Baker’s big brother broke his leg on the Hill. The youngest person to ever make it down was a third grader, and a biking prodigy at that.
But before we know it, all five of us are at the top, staring down in petrification at the meanest stretch of blacktop we have ever seen.
“Who wants to go first?” Buck waits for one of us to respond. “Nobody?”
> My best friend, Sam, looks from Buck to the street, then back again. “I don’t think this is such a good idea.”
“Well, we knew you weren’t going to try it. You wouldn’t make it ten feet. Chunker,” says Jimmy, his chest puffed out.
“Do you want to try it?” asks Sam.
Jimmy’s chest deflates. “No.” He doesn’t want to look like a wuss in front of Buck, so he adds, “What about you, Glenn?”
“No way. I’m not doing it. That’s how my brother broke his leg. Mom would kill me.”
“Fine. I’ll do it.” Buck hikes one leg over his bike.
“And I’ll go next,” I say.
Jimmy laughs. “CJ, you can’t do it. You’re a girl.”
“So. I’m still tougher than you.”
Before Jimmy can reply, Buck kicks off. Our eyes glue themselves to his bike as it plummets down the Hill. He is going fast. Maybe too fast. I cringe. Just when I think his bike will skip over the curb and into Mrs. McQueen’s azaleas, he pulls his handlebars into a turn that sends him careening in the opposite direction across the blacktop without falling. He’s done it. The four of us jump up and down and holler.
I decide to push off before Jimmy can start in on me. My bike gathers speed quickly until the neighborhood whisks by in flashes. My hair whips around against my face. My heart rate is going off-the-charts crazy, but as long as I don’t crash or pee my pants, this will be a raging success. I can’t let the fear take over, or I will crash. After what seems like an eternity of free fall, I slingshot around the cul-de-sac and skid to an ugly stop beside Buck. No crashing. No peeing.
“You are the coolest girl I know,” Buck says, which is pretty much the highest compliment you can get from a seven-year-old boy.
I blush and look at my sneakers, and when I look up again, Buck’s face is right in front of mine. He kisses me. Right on the lips. Right in front of everyone. I think maybe he is my boyfriend now. I can’t stop smiling. Until I hear it.
“Ah-woo-woo.”
Followed closely by the K-I-S-S-I-N-G song.
And “Buck has a giiiirlfriend.”