And then, as though God was smiling on me, blessing this preacher’s kid with a night of dreams come true, the app dinged. There was a name and a picture.
“Who is it?” Ballard asked. “Did it land back on Sylvie, you lucky asswad?”
I looked across the circle, nervous and conflicted.
“Joan,” I said.
She wasn’t paying attention, her neck craned to see over my head.
Sylvie reached to tap Joan’s shoulder, but it was too late. The Thor of Moorhen High had made his way to the back deck.
“Wade,” Joan called. “We’re over here.”
“I’m leaving,” he shouted over the music. “Wanna come?”
“Sure,” she answered.
Joan tugged at Sylvie and Sylvie slid her feet into the sandals by her chair. She took her phone from my fingers and followed Joan to where Wade stood. The three of them disappeared.
The game was over.
In the silence between songs, I heard the chimes again. They sounded like bitter disappointment … and relief.
The evening went on and people moved all around me, but I stayed in my seat on the deck, watching those copper chimes. Something was niggling at the back of my brain, something important I couldn’t put my finger on.
Later, when I was driving Mom’s car home with five drunk people stuffed in the backseat (my meds made me the designated driver by default), my fingers flexed on the steering wheel. Flex, flex, flex.
And it hit me.
I walked into that bedroom twitching. But as soon as Sylvie’s lips touched mine, I was still. Not one tic while we were kissing.
Not. One. Tic.
Chapter Two
Sunday afternoon, Ballard showed up at my house after church. His family went to the early service at First Baptist. He’d already changed from church clothes into navy athletic shorts and an Auburn T-shirt. I motioned him inside and changed while he filled me in on the post-party gossip.
Girls are the ones with a reputation for talking about people, but Ballard could give them a run for their money. He knew things about people I’d have never figured out. Some of it he learned from his parents, who learned it from their friends, who were the parents of our classmates.
Moorhen is not a big town, and Ballard’s dad was born and raised here. He’s related to so many people, Ballard always has to ask if some girl is his cousin before he sets his sights on her. It sounds like a joke, but he asked a girl out once and discovered they were related. I’m the only one who knows about it.
“What about Joan and Wade?” I asked, keeping my tone casual. “Are they back together now?”
“What? Why?” Ballard thought I hated Joan. He was clueless about the part of me that found her fascinating, the part of me that desperately wanted to be cool enough to steal her attention away from Wade.
“Well, they left together, didn’t they?” I tossed my collared shirt in the direction of the hamper and missed.
Ballard shrugged. “They probably hooked up or something. Wade’s dating a girl from Montgomery. I met her last week, at the mall.”
I dropped into my desk chair and made no comment on Wade’s girlfriend activity. If I’d said anything, Ballard would’ve ragged me for it. He was always pointing out my prudishness and blaming it on my mom. She’s a minister, which is why we live in Moorhen. The United Methodist Conference sent her to start a church here when I was in seventh grade.
Also, it’s a well-known fact I hate everything about Wade Bond, from his stupidly deep voice to his dirty-blond hair. We’re talking about a guy who introduces himself by saying, “My name’s Bond, Wade Bond.”
How original.
Wade started mocking my tics the moment I appeared at Moorhen Middle School. He’d flap his arms like a chicken and cluck when I walked by. I used to do this little hop when I moved fast. My legs would jerk and it made me sort of jump in the air, like I was skipping happily across a meadow or some shit. Wade would link his arm in mine and drag me down the hall singing, “We’re off to see the wizard, the fucking wizard of Oz.” Real creative, that guy.
“What about you and Sylvie?” Ballard lay on my bed, absentmindedly spinning the propeller on a model airplane I hadn’t touched in years. It still needed its right wing.
“What about me and Sylvie?” My face went hot at the memory of raspberry lip gloss and mint gum, but I was a little bit pleased he asked. Ballard was the one who told stories about girls. I was the one who listened. It’s how our friendship had always worked.
“Oh come off it, you know what about you and Sylvie. Sylvie never kisses high school boys, at least not any we know. And when she suddenly decided to try it, you landed in a bedroom with her. Door locked.”
“We didn’t lock the door,” I said, fingers flexing on the arms of my chair.
He threw a pillow at me, and I ducked so it hit the wall and landed on my desk, pencils and game controllers scattering noisily.
“How far’d y’all go, man? I’m dying over here.” Ballard grabbed his chest like his heart might give out.
My mouth twisted. Ballard didn’t point it out.
“I didn’t have any tics,” I told him, my realization from the night before bouncing from brain to lips. “When I was kissing Sylvie, they all stopped.”
“Seriously? Is that normal?” Ballard sat up on the bed.
“How would I know? I never kissed anyone before last night.”
“You’re sure, though? Maybe you’re so used to them, you didn’t notice.”
“Uh-uh,” I said. “My fingers didn’t flex in her hair or anything. They were bad last night, because I was nervous.”
“I know. Your foot was jerking before y’all went upstairs.” If he still noticed my tics after all these years, everyone else must’ve noticed them too. If I could just hold still, I could fit in with the other guys, be the kind of guy that might win Joan Pearson.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “I was afraid my mouth would do something weird when we were kissing, ya know? Like she’d feel my lips go all funny.”
“But they didn’t?” Ballard asked.
“They didn’t. We kissed, and I didn’t even think about Tourette’s. I don’t know how long we were in there, but it was the best however many minutes of my life.”
Ballard gave a serious nod, and in this conversation, it was clear why we stayed friends even after our shared interests veered in wildly different directions. Ballard was a good listener when he wanted to be, and he knew me better than anyone.
We were both quiet for a while, Ballard spinning the propeller and me thinking about Sylvie. Or not about Sylvie, only about how it was to be with her, my muscles not commandeering my focus.
Ballard broke the silence with, “Did she let you touch her boobs?”
I picked up the pillow from my desk and lobbed it across the room. It hit him in the head. “He shoots. He scores.”
Laughing, Ballard popped the pillow behind him and leaned against the headboard. “Maybe it’s a treatment?”
“A treatment?”
“Yeah, a therapy method,” he said. “I mean maybe kissing could stop your tics, like your meds, but better.”
I shook my head. “Nah, the tics came back in the car driving home. Not bad, just how they are when I drive, subdued but present. And it might’ve been a fluke. I mean, I’ve never kissed anyone else. Maybe the next time I kiss a girl, my whole body will jerk and she’ll run screaming from the room.”
I was making a joke, but I also sort of meant it. The idea of having sex one day made me sweat and shake all over. I could develop tics involving just about every muscle in my body, so why not that super important muscle I’d need in full working order … My bat would need to stay steady if I ever expected to hit a homerun. I found no unembarrassing way to explain my fear, so I kept it to myself.
Ballard paused his propeller spinning and cocked his head to one side.
I knew that look. My best friend had an idea. It might be a good idea, but i
t would still land us in trouble. And it would probably be worth it.
“What we have here is a hypothesis,” Ballard said.
“Man, quit it. We’ve got one more day before school starts. I don’t want to do science.”
He held up a hand to silence my protests. “We have a hypothesis that says kissing makes your tics stop. Right?”
I sighed, resigned. “Right, a hypothesis.”
“That’s step one of the scientific method.” Ballard grabbed a notebook from my bedside table. “Got a pen?”
I tossed him a pen. “That’s not step one. You skipped two steps.”
“Okay, smart-ass, what’s step one?”
“Step one is purpose,” I said. “And step two is research.”
“Fine. The purpose is to treat Tourette’s. Or pause it. Or whatever the hell you want. Calm your body. That’s our purpose.”
He had me. I was listening.
“Research is done. Making out with Sylvie was research, and if that was the kind of lab assignment they handed out in class, I would be the geekiest damn nerd in Moorhen.”
I couldn’t help but agree. If any of my classes involved following consenting girls into empty bedrooms, I’d be way more willing to hit the books.
“Step three. Our hypothesis is kissing pauses your tics.” Ballard made notes in his neat block handwriting. “I barely passed science, so go ahead and tell me if I’m wrong, but isn’t step four experiment?”
“Bingo.” My nerves vibrated under my skin. I could read the smirk forming on Ballard’s face.
“So, here’s the plan. You are going to kiss another girl. And, because one girl doesn’t give us a whole lot of data to analyze, you’re going to kiss another. And another. And another. You’re going to kiss any girl you can until we have an answer.”
“There’s a problem here,” I interjected.
“What?” Ballard looked up from his paper.
“In sixteen years of life, I’ve gotten exactly one girl to kiss me, and that’s only thanks to a stupid phone app.”
“Good point.” Ballard chewed my pen. Gross.
“Unless you can convince everyone to play kissing games all the time, I’m screwed.”
“How about you leave the girl acquisition to me? I’ll land you some chicks. You kiss them.” Ballard spun the pen around his fingers.
“And how will you come up with all these girls?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But I’m Ballard Keighley. I can always get girls to like me, so I just gotta figure out how to do the same for you.”
Mom poked her head in the room a few minutes later. “Hey, Ballard, wanna stay for lunch?”
She’d changed out of the yellow dress she’d worn to church and into an old T-shirt and jeans. The tiny cross tattoo on her wrist peeked out beneath her watch.
“Sure, Mrs. Luckie,” Ballard said. “Thanks for inviting me.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon playing Minecraft, a game Ballard would never admit to liking anywhere outside of my house. Ballard didn’t have to be cool around me. He could just be Ballard.
Once Ballard headed home, I was left to think about his plan for a kissing experiment. It was intriguing, but also not likely to work. If my best friend went around asking girls to kiss me, that would be humiliating on so many levels.
I was sure stopping my tics was the key to my (lack of) girl problems, but I was also sure Ballard’s experiment wasn’t likely to end well for me.
Chapter Three
The first day of school was underwhelming. Ballard and I were excited to be upperclassmen, but nothing about Moorhen High was different from when we were underclassmen, as far as I could tell.
Except for Sylvie. Not Sylvie herself. I spotted her hanging around outside the auditorium before first period. She wore a red T-shirt, knotted at the waist, and one of those long skirts the girls were all into. It had a tribal print and hugged her hips real nice. Ballard caught me looking.
“There are rumors,” he said.
I tore my eyes from Sylvie’s tiny waist. “Rumors about what?”
“People saw you go into a bedroom with Sylvie.” He grinned.
“It was a game,” I reminded him. “No one will ever believe Sylvie likes me.”
Ballard shrugged. “They’re saying you got lucky. Pun intended.”
Of course the pun was intended. Kids had always loved to twist my last name into all sorts of phrases. That first day of junior year, “Luckie got lucky” was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. Guys who normally ignored me altogether nodded in acknowledgment when I passed them in the hall.
“Nothing happened,” I said again and again. I said it to Ballard, to Case, to Michael, and to every guy who smirked and offered me a high five as they passed my locker.
In the couple of minutes I spent kissing Sylvie, I went from lame loser to validated member of the man club, but I wasn’t comfortable with it. My newfound status was built on Sylvie’s battered reputation, which my gut told me wasn’t okay. It made me angry, and I didn’t handle anger well. It felt overwhelming and I spent a lot of that day taking deep breaths and fighting to keep my frustration in check.
“It’s no big deal,” Sylvie said when I broached the subject in math class, the Thursday after the party. “The people who matter know it’s not true. And the people who don’t matter … well … they don’t matter.” She was doodling a flower on the edge of her worksheet, but she paused to offer me an encouraging smile.
“I just don’t like people thinking I’d use a girl, or that you would—”
“I get it, Stephen, I do. You’re a good guy, but you can’t control what other people think. Do you think I’m a slut?”
My cheeks burned. “No, of course not.”
“Okay, then. You matter. They”—she gestured around the classroom—“don’t.”
“But I want to fix it, Sylvie. They shouldn’t get to assume things about you or judge you.”
“You’re right. They shouldn’t. But I don’t need you to fix things for me. I’m not a damsel in distress. You are already telling them nothing happened. Keep doing that. I will keep doing that too.”
Thanks to that conversation, I was more myself by lunchtime. It wasn’t okay, no, but Sylvie was right. We were both honest about what did and didn’t happen in that bedroom, and she didn’t need me to protect her.
We sat down at a table in the cafeteria, where Joan and Sylvie were hunched over their phones, comparing Instagram photos, and Case was helping Andrew with Algebra II homework.
“Wanna bike Lost Bridge today?” I asked Ballard before biting into my sandwich.
I have to study,” he said. “Chem quiz tomorrow. But we need to talk soon. I’ve been working on a plan for our kissing experiment.”
As if on cue, Case glanced up, caught my eye, and said, “Luckie got lucky” with a grin.
I flipped him the bird and turned back to Ballard. “No, I’m not going to kiss a bunch of random girls. I’ve heard ‘Luckie got lucky’ enough to last a lifetime.”
“No one has to know. Trust me.”
I wanted to trust him. I first met Ballard in the guidance office. He was in trouble for goofing off, nothing unusual, and I was visiting a counselor about something in my 504 plan. A 504 plan is the pile of papers outlining different ways I get help because of Tourette’s syndrome, like being allowed to take my exams in the library, away from other kids. My processing speed and style is different than a typical student’s, and I have a lot of trouble blocking out sensory stimuli. I know it looks like “special treatment” to a lot of people, but those people have never lived inside my head.
Anyway, Ballard asked me straight up, “Why do you keep flinging your arms out?”
I told Ballard I had Tourette’s. He said, “That sucks.” I appreciated the assessment. No pity and no making fun of me. A week later, we ran into each other in the old mall parking lot, both of us using the decrepit sidewalks as bike paths.
We’ve been friends ever since.
So, I wanted to trust him, but I’d learned not to trust anyone with a “great idea” sure to get me in trouble. I always get caught doing the stupidest things. It’s never worth it.
Example: The worship pastor’s daughter, Erin Mielke, once convinced me it would be fun to light all the candles at church and play séance while our parents were in a meeting. The old lady who found us about had a heart attack.
“You never want to ride anymore,” I complained, crumpling up a soda can and ignoring his appeal for trust.
“We’re getting too old for bike riding.” He shoved a fry into his mouth and I sighed. I didn’t feel any older than I did sophomore year, and we rode our bikes plenty then, but at least we were off the subject of kissing experiments.
“Hey, Stephen,” Joan called down the table.
“Yeah?” I turned in her direction.
“Did you write down the page numbers for English?”
“Sure. You need them?”
She nodded and I pulled a binder from my backpack, flipping until I found where I wrote the assignment.
“Can you just take a picture?” Joan asked, leaning across the table to pass me her phone.
I snapped a photo of the page and handed back her phone, our fingers brushing in the exchange.
“Thanks.” She smiled at me, and I smiled back. My fingertips felt warm where they’d touched her skin. I wondered if maybe I could stop the hating her part of my brain and just like her.
Maybe.
After school, Ballard and I walked to the parking lot, passing Wade leaning on his silver Lexus. We gave him a wide berth, but just the sight of him made my insides churn.
Ballard still didn’t want to ride so I pedaled toward the river alone. It wasn’t as good as kissing, but biking did keep my tics mildly under control.
I was halfway across the Tallapoosa Bridge when I spotted Joan behind the wheel of her pink Volkswagen Beetle. The car was way too cheerful for her, with its painted-on eyelashes over the headlights and a Ping-Pong ball happy face bobbing on the antenna.
I dropped my feet to the concrete and watched her go past, her hands gripping the wheel so tight I could see the tension from a mile away.
Kiss and Repeat Page 2
