17 First Kisses Read online

  “We’re really very busy. We better get going,” I practically spit.

  Mrs. Dorland puts a hand over her heart. “Oh, well, we’ll see y’all later then.”

  I spot the door to the restrooms at the end of the aisle, and I somehow manage to get Mama inside before she breaks down. She retreats into a stall and locks the door behind her, but I can hear her sobs. She’s shut me out. All my hard work, the days of watching and hoping when she started taking pictures, when she started becoming herself again, all of it is about to unravel in the bathroom at Walmart. The door opens, and I turn, ready for a fight.

  “What?” I say through clenched teeth.

  Amberly looks at me with wide eyes.

  “Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else,” I mumble.

  She moves closer so we can whisper without Mama hearing. “They’re still out there.”

  “What? What are they doing?”

  “Pretending to be interested in SpongeBob lunch boxes so they can look at the bathroom door every two seconds.”

  I shake my head. Vultures. “I need to get her to the car.”

  Amberly eyes the stall where Mama is still weeping. “I think I can create a distraction. Count to twenty and then leave?”

  “That would be amazing,” I say.

  She heads back outside, a determined look on her face. I turn back to the stall. What if I can’t get her out of there?

  “Mama? Mama, let’s just go to the car, okay? I’ll drive home.” I hold my breath. She doesn’t answer, but the lock clicks open, and her tear-stained face appears. I put my arm around her and usher her to the door—I hope it’s been twenty seconds by now. Mrs. Tate and Mrs. Dorland and their carts are still there, but they’re turned in the other direction, staring slack-jawed at Amberly, who doesn’t appear to be doing anything more interesting than talking on her cell phone.

  I get Mama out a back exit and into the passenger seat of our car without anyone else we know seeing us.

  “Are you okay?” I ask. “It was horrible what they said to you.”

  She nods. “I know. I don’t want to talk about it, sweetie.” She curls over and buries her face in her lap, and I put the key in the ignition because I don’t know what else to do.

  There’s a tap at my window, and my breath catches in my throat, but it’s just Amberly. I get out of the car and close the door behind me. She holds out a bag.

  “I didn’t know if you needed the stuff in your cart or not.”

  “Thanks,” I say, checking the receipt so I can pay her back. “For everything. How’d you get their attention, anyway?”

  She blushes. “Oh. I just made a fake phone call detailing my favorite positions for”—she makes air quotes with her fingers—“fornication.”

  I giggle. “I wish I could have seen that.”

  Amberly nods at the car. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yeah. I mean, I hope so.” I fidget with the straps of the shopping bag.

  “I know what it’s like,” she says. “Hiding things.” She hesitates. “I know you like to talk to Megan about everything, but you can talk to me too, you know. I’d understand.”

  She’s frowning like she’s in pain, and I see the question behind her eyes, but I don’t have a good answer. Amberly’s my friend, but she’s my party friend, my talk-about-boys friend, my glittery-false-eyelashes friend. Megan is my serious friend. But then a million late-night conversations in Amberly’s bedroom come flooding back, and it hits me: Amberly’s serious friend is me. And she’s always offered up her secrets without ever asking for mine in return.

  She touches my shoulder and smiles before heading back inside. “It’s not a big deal,” she says.

  But it is, to me. I can’t stop thinking about it. Even in the days after, when I’m consumed with worrying about Mama, beating myself up over all the things I might have done differently to keep her from spiraling away from us again, thoughts about Amberly worm their way in. Why don’t I treat Amberly the way I treat Megan? Why isn’t she good enough to tell my secrets to? But I don’t like the way it makes me feel about myself to think about it, so I try to push those thoughts away.

  Luke is moving with the speed of a three-toed sloth. He’s been flirting with both of us for weeks (weeks!) and still nothing. Last week was the homecoming game, and Megan got crowned queen, which means her half of the pact is going pretty well. Now if only I could get my half of the pact to cooperate. I mean, I get it, it’s high school, and a rejection would be a complete humiliation, but man up already. I can only handle so much shameless flirting.

  I’m always tempted to bring up our trip, but we’re never alone, and the last thing I need is for Megan and the rest of the school to hear about it. Luke never mentions it either. Maybe it didn’t mean anything. I can’t help but wonder if he’s forgotten.

  When I slide into my desk in AP English, Luke’s already there, bent over last night’s calc homework.

  “Hey, what are you doing this weekend?” I ask, busying myself with rearranging the insides of my book bag so I stay casual.

  “I’ll probably stop by Buck’s party tonight. You going?”

  “Yeah. I’ll probably get dragged to that. I really want to see that new zombie movie, though.” Hint. Hint.

  “Oh, yeah? I’m not big into horror movies, but let me know if it’s any good.”

  “Okay, sure.”

  Ugh. It’s been like this for weeks. I keep clubbing Luke over the head with hints, and he keeps missing them. Or maybe he isn’t missing them. Maybe he doesn’t like me. But he hasn’t asked Megan out either. He can’t not like either of us. Can he? I’m still pondering this when the bell rings almost an hour later. Whoops. Good thing I’ve already read Fahrenheit 451.

  “I’ll see you at soccer on Sunday,” Luke says. “And, uh, I hope someone does end up dragging you to the party tonight.” He smiles at me for way longer than you’re supposed to if you just want to be friends.

  Every time I think about giving up, something like this happens. Every freaking time.

  Kiss #8 xoxo

  Ninth Grade

  “Elizabeth Jenkins, you come down here right now. You are way too little to be climbing trees that big.”

  Libby doesn’t reply. She just grins at me from her branch at the top of Sarah’s peach tree, chirping and chattering like the squirrel she’s pretending to be. My parents get freaked out by the amount of time she spends in the fruit trees (well, they would if they were home more), but I understand. It’s a magical place. Not magical enough to keep me from getting irritated at her right now, though.

  “C’mon, Lib, please. Dinner’s almost ready and . . . if you come down now, we can have a special dessert after.”

  I regret my promise even as I’m making it, because I know there is no such dessert. It works, though. Libby’s ears perk up at the mention of sweets, and she shinnies down the tree like a little monkey. Her skinny legs wrap around my waist. Her arms hug my neck.

  “Hungry,” she says.

  “Me too.”

  I wobble to the house with my five-year-old sister balanced on my hip. Something is wrong, and I can smell it even before I open the back door. Thick gray-green smoke billows from the kitchen. Libby and I hack and cough as we take in the disaster that is—was—tonight’s dinner. It is a split-pea-soup explosion.

  Green slop shimmers in puddles on the floor, drips like tiny stalactites from the ceiling. The pressure cooker spews angry bubbles—its lid has been catapulted to a patch of linoleum by the trash can. The counter underneath it and the wall behind it look like a Pollock painting.

  I am in over my head.

  I call Megan. After the whole boyfriend-stealing incident in eighth grade, she and I became friends again pretty quickly. For forty-eight hours, she and Britney and Amberly and I paired off on opposite sides of the lunch table like there was an invisible line between us. Amberly sided with me because she can’t stand “home wreckers” (when she was seven years old, her
dad ran off with the Piggly Wiggly checkout girl). Britney sided with Megan, but then she’d always been closer with Megan, so it wasn’t a big surprise.

  Then Megan heard about what happened with my mom and Timothy. She was the best friend I could have had. Sam came to my house every day for the four months Timothy was in the NICU and tried to distract me with soccer and video games, but sometimes you just need to talk to a girl about stuff. And while Amberly is great with boy drama, Megan is better with problems of the life-shattering variety. She just showed up in my room two days after Timothy was born and said, “I heard,” and those two words opened a floodgate within me, and I told her everything while she hugged me tight. Eventually we got around to talking about Eric too, and she told me how sorry she was. Amberly told me I didn’t have to forgive her yet, that it was crazy for Megan to do what she did, and if I wanted to keep on ignoring her, Amberly would give her the silent treatment right along with me. But it suddenly didn’t seem as important as having my best friend propping me up while I tried to stand strong for everyone else.

  When the casserole parade ended and my parents still practically lived at the hospital, cooking fell to me. Oh, sure, I could microwave Hot Pockets and do things like grate cheese and chop vegetables when my mom cooked, but I had no idea how to cook an entire meal by myself. I called Megan for advice, and sometimes she came over when things went seriously wrong. Like today.

  When she arrives, she takes in the kitchen with a mixture of horror and amusement.

  “What’d you do?”

  “I just wanted to make split-pea soup. Something went wrong with the pressure cooker.”

  “You think?” She only laughs at me a little before pulling out ingredients for chicken and pasta while I grab a mop.

  “Is it just you and Libby or am I making enough for everyone?” she asks.

  “Everyone, please,” I say as I scrub the mop against the ceiling while simultaneously trying to dodge falling globs of soup. “Mama and Daddy are on their way back from another doctor’s appointment at Children’s, but they got stuck in traffic.”

  Megan frowns. “How’s he doing?”

  “He has another cold.” I check to make sure Libby isn’t listening. “It’s pretty bad this time.”

  “Poor little guy.”

  Megan pops the chicken into the oven and boils tortellini on the stove.

  “What about my dessert?” asks Libby.

  Crap. I totally forgot about that. How come little kids have such a good memory when it comes to promises? Megan raises her eyebrows at me.

  “I promised her dessert so she’d come down from Sarah’s tree and eat dinner,” I whisper. “But we don’t have anything.”

  Megan’s eyes spark. She smells a challenge, or maybe that’s just the lingering odor of pea soup. “Do you have sugar and eggs?”

  I nod.

  “Then we can make meringue. Libs, you can be my meringue girl.”

  “Okay!” Libby bounces with excitement while Megan sets her up on a stool with a mixer she has to hold with both hands.

  “You have peanut butter,” Megan calls from where she’s rustling around in the pantry. “I’ll use that to make the filling. Now we just need a crust.”

  This actually does present a problem. We’re out of flour. But Megan manages to overcome even that hurdle, whipping up a crust out of some butter and a half-empty box of chocolate-chip cookies. I’m telling you, that girl is the MacGyver of cooking.

  Megan and I make plans for my birthday next week and then she goes home, and Libby and I are just eating our last bites of dinner at the kitchen table when I hear the front door open.

  “We’re back,” calls my mom from the foyer.

  “We’re in the kitchen,” I call back.

  I put together a couple of plates for my parents as they make their way to the kitchen, my mother holding Timothy and my father trailing close behind with Timothy’s oxygen tank and apnea monitor. The monitor connects to a band around his chest with sensors to alert us if he stops breathing. A spaghetti-thin tube passes oxygen into the prongs under his nose, held into place by a stripe of adhesive tape on either cheek. That’s all people can see the first time they meet Timothy.

  When I look at him, I see round, blue eyes like mine, Sarah’s contagious smile, and a shock of jet-black hair. He’s the only one of us who got my dad’s hair.

  “Thank you for making dinner.” Mama looks around at the food. “I thought you were making soup.”

  “Oh, we decided chicken and pasta sounded much better.” I smile at Libby, and she lets out a burst of giggles.

  “Here, let me hold him so you can eat,” I say, trading her a plate for my baby brother.

  “Tim Tam!” I squeal. That’s right. I nicknamed my brother after an Australian chocolate cookie. Grammy special orders them for us because she has a crush on Hugh Jackman. “How’s my boy? How’s my boy?” I touch my nose to his and make silly faces until he laughs his beautiful baby laugh. His chest catches in the middle of his next peal of laughter. His little upturned nose wrinkles, and he forces out a cough. A horrible, wet sound that makes me feel like I can hear things inside his lungs ripping.

  “What did the doctors say?” I ask my parents.

  Libby stops attacking her second piece of peanut-butter pie and waits for their answer.

  “We have to keep him on the oxygen and the monitor all day while he beats this infection,” says my dad. “As soon as he’s in the clear, they’ll move him back to nights and feedings only.”

  Libby and I sigh in unison. We’ve been dreaming of the day when we can pick him up without any equipment attached to him. When he can join us for our picnics in the fruit grove and help us spread the blanket so a corner points at each tree. Although you could hardly call Timothy’s a tree. We planted a Rainier cherry because Rainiers are Mama’s favorite fruit. They’re the sweetest, rarest, most delicate cherries, but if the temperature goes too high, or the wind blows too hard, or the rain rains too hard, they don’t make it. Their chances at survival can change by the hour. My parents think none of this matters, but I feel like I have to look after that tree. Like their fates are connected, like in E.T. or something.

  “Well, that’s okay. You’ll be off the oxygen soon,” I tell Timothy. “Say ‘I’m tough. I’m tough.’”

  He can’t say real words yet, but his grin shoots arrows through my heart.

  “It’s time for his medicine now,” says Mama. She takes her empty plate to the kitchen. There’s a rustling sound as she searches for the right bottle.

  I have a new level of respect for my mom. In the eleven months since he was born, she’s become an expert on his condition—he has bronchopulmonary dysplasia, which means his baby lungs look like they’ve got emphysema. She keeps the house hospital-grade clean so he won’t get sick. She keeps track of everything. His diet. His schedule of medication. His physical therapy. The never-ending string of doctors and specialists. She has dedicated her entire being to taking care of my baby brother.

  Sometimes one thing can happen that makes everything else you think about someone shift. Timothy was that one thing for Mama and me. He made me see that she’s more than just some beautiful southern flower that Daddy picked. She’s tough and smart and she cares so much. And now, when she looks at me, I feel like she sees the things I am instead of the things I’m not. We’ve never been closer.

  My mom comes back with the medicine, and I hand Timothy over so I can start on the dishes. With Sarah away at school most of the time, and Mama and Daddy always at the hospital, I have to be another grown-up in my house. I don’t mind. I would do anything for that kid.

  “If I marry Chase, and you marry Corey, we’ll be sisters!”

  Megan emits a high-pitched squeal and practically pulls my arm out of its socket to get me over to the seats Amberly and Britney have saved. Her other hand points toward second base, where the boy I’m supposed to marry is leading off.

  “There’s just one flaw in your
plan,” I say. “I’ve never even talked to him.”

  “Like it matters. We’ll fix that after the game.”

  We take our seats on the butt-numbingly hard bleachers, and Megan cheers for her boyfriend, a senior and one half of The Collins Twins. By dating one of them she has cemented her position as the most popular girl in the freshman class, and probably for the rest of high school. Corey is still single, and prom is approaching, which is why I’m watching a baseball game in a sundress instead of jeans. I feel like such a phony. But I’m not the only one. Girls in makeup, big hair, and what passes for trendy dresses in this town pack the stands so they can stalk, er, watch the team. They probably don’t even know what a shortstop is.

  “I still can’t believe you’re dating Chase Collins,” gushes Britney.

  Megan grins. “I told you. I can get any guy in this school.”

  Chase Collins isn’t just any guy. He’s six feet, two inches of blond-haired, green-eyed daydream material. So is his brother Corey. Although, even though they’re identical twins, Chase is the hotter one. I think it has something to do with the semivacant look constantly plastered on Corey’s face. Chase slides into home and, after he slaps the red dust off his thighs, turns toward the stands and blows a kiss to Megan.

  “He’s so romantic,” she says. Her voice is flippant like it always is, like Chase is a new handbag she’s showing off, but her eyes give her away. She watches Chase Collins walk to the dugout like her heart is straining with every step he takes away from her. I’ve never felt that way about anyone.

  “So, what do you think of Corey?” Megan says, as if I’m supposed to be able to tell if someone is my soul mate by watching him play baseball.

  “He’s all right.” I think back to earlier today, when this guy Tanner who sits across from me in math was tapping out a drumbeat on his desk. He winked when he caught me looking. “I kinda like this guy in my geometry class. Tanner Walsh.”