The Serious Kiss

by Mary Hogan

  Barbara kept walking fast. “No. My step mother works at Wal-Mart. My real mother lives in New York with her boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” I didn’t know what else to say, which was okay when I was with Barbara Carver, because she always did.

  “I’m hoping to follow in my mother’s footsteps and find a boyfriend who moves me to New York, too. I’d even accept Victorville or Palmdale. Just as long as it’s not here. And as long as he’s a real boyfriend, not one of those serial killers who pretends to be in love with you so you’ll get in his car. I mean, how low can you sink? Your first ever boyfriend is a serial killer?”

  I just looked at her. What do you say to that ?

  “The wrong side of the tracks is the real Barstow.” Barbara blathered on. “If you hurry, we can have lunch at my favourite spot.”

  “I brought lunch,” I said.

  “Not like this,” she replied.

  We continued downhill until we passed an old, long brick building.

  “That’s the Mother Road Museum,” Barbara said. “Boring, unless you like railroad stuff and Route Sixty-six memorabilia.”

  “What’s the big whoop about Route Sixty-six anyway?” I asked.

  “It’s like one long road almost all the way across the country. They call it ‘the Main Street of America.’ I guess it was pretty cool when they didn’t have freeways. Now, it’s just a way to get tourists to drive through small, crappy towns.”

  I nodded and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my hand.

  “That’s what I call Big Moe,” Barbara said, pointing to a huge, lumpy rock in the dry Mojave River bed across from the museum. “Little Moe is over there.”

  “You name rocks?”

  “What else is there to do around here?”

  I laughed.

  Barbara chugged over an old iron bridge across a nonexistent river. I couldn’t help but think she was incredibly fast for a chubette. I struggled to keep up. Along the way, she announced points of interest.

  “Rainbow Basin, down there, has lots of fossils.

  “Calico Ghost Town is an old miner’s town. Kind of hokey but interesting for newbies.

  “Ancient Aborigines once lived in that valley.”

  Amazingly, Barbara Carver made Barstow sound sort of interesting.

  When we finally got over the bridge, past the railroad tracks, Barstow changed completely. It felt like we were in a giant sandbox dotted with dried-up weeds. Where the other side of Barstow had seemed dead, this side seemed dead and buried. The houses looked more like sheds. There wasn’t a flame-broiled burger in sight. Instead, Barbara led me into a tiny shack with a hand-painted sign that read AQUI.

  “We’re here,” Barbara said. “Literally.”

  I knew enough Spanish to get the joke. Barbara knew enough to order, “Lo mismo. Para dos.” She explained that she eats there several times a week, always the same, always lo mismo.

  “What did you order?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  The smell of cilantro and onions made my mouth water. I forgot all about Nana’s sandwich, let life flow me to the only table inside. Outside, dusty construction workers sat at picnic tables in the sun or in their trucks, eating burritos and drinking cervezas.

  “I’m buying today,” Barbara said. “Next time lunch is on you.”

  I didn’t argue. Especially after I bit into the burrito she handed me. My mouth exploded with flavour. It was smoky and spicy, with grilled steak, melted cheese, fresh salsa, avocado, and lime. It tasted so good, I wanted to bury my face in the warm flour tortilla.

  “Welcome to my Barstow,” Barbara said, grinning while she chewed.

  TWENTY-TWO

  My family settled in pretty quickly. Which got me thinking about life in general. You sleep, eat, do homework, go to school, hang out, watch TV, go to bed. The details are the only difference. Which, of course, makes all the difference in the world.

  That night, I slipped into feeling sorry for myself again. I missed Nadine, Zack Nash, and even Greg Minsky. Barbara made me laugh, but she wasn’t my best friend. Best friends know all your secrets and love you anyway. I still felt too embarrassed to even invite Barbara over. I still had tons of secrets to keep.

  The big secret, of course – the whopper that no one in my family dared reveal – was the fact that my dad wasn’t much different now that he was sober. He guzzled colas instead of beers. He sat slumped in his chair all day, eyes bleary from watching non-stop TV. He grumbled at my mother, ignored us, told Juan Dog to shut up, burped. The father I once knew – funny, loving, there – was still gone. It began to look like he was gone for good.

  That night, I lay flat on my bed, face down, and – even though I tried not to – cried myself to sleep.

  Each week, I spent part of my allowance at Aqui. Unbelievably, I didn’t get fat. The explosion of blubber I feared, once I let myself actually eat, never materialised. My stomach stopped growling – that was the biggest change in my body. Pretty soon, it dawned on me that food wasn’t the enemy after all. Over eating was. I could actually have breakfast, lunch, and dinner and not turn into my mom! Unless, of course, I ate like a lumberjack or a fast-food fiend, and I was neither. Feeling healthy actually felt good.

  Getting to know Barbara Carver felt good, too.

  “Popularity in high school doesn’t mean squat,” she said one day on our way to Aqui. “Just ask Johnny Depp. They used to call him Johnny Dip.”

  Barbara didn’t care what anyone thought of her. She told me, “It’s a choice you have to make. Are you going to give some dumb teenagers power over your self-esteem? Or are you going to empower yourself and become whomever you want to become?”

  When she wasn’t cracking me up, she was saying deep stuff like that. And using cool words like “empower” and “whomever.” I’d never met anyone who had so many things to feel insecure about but felt totally secure anyway. Just hanging out with her made me start to see things differently. Like, my happiness just might be in my very own hands. Even when bad things happened, I didn’t have to be depressed forever.

  Incredibly, life’s Master Plan was flowing me into a less stressed-out space. Though Nadine was a hundred and forty miles away, my serious kiss was light-years away, and my former self was a quickly fading memory, I had Barbara and burritos and air-conditioning and Nana’s cooking and Juan Dog’s huge, silky ears.

  TWENTY-THREE

  You’d think I would have been thrilled to get out of school for the day; you’d think I would have been honoured to make Desert Valley High’s Most Promising Students list so quickly. But the truth was, my new high school was filled with so many dunces, I could get straight A’s with my brain tied behind my back. And the field trip they gave the thirty of us on the list seemed like homework to me. A geology walk? Through a humongous rock formation called Devil’s Punchbowl? Right next to the San Andreas Fault? Why couldn’t they reward our brain power with a bus trip in the other direction – to Las Vegas?

  “Wear hiking boots and layered clothing,” Mr Rhinehart, the Earth Sciences teacher and leader of our expedition, said. “It’s a six-mile hike, one thousand feet up, and you may be cold as we climb but hot as we chug along.”

  Six miles of chugging? Near one of the biggest earthquake faults in the world? I was not looking forward to it. Even though Barbara was also one of the Promising Students, I’d rather contemplate my bright future at the Tanger outlet mall.

  “Everybody on the bus!” Mr Rhinehart wore shorts and thick socks and heavy boots. His legs were tanned and muscled, very hikey looking. The first-aid kit he strapped to his backpack didn’t make me feel any happier about hiking through desert rocks. He wasn’t going to suck snake venom out of my thigh, was he? He wouldn’t have to make a splint out of an old tree limb for my broken arm, would he?

  “Let’s sit in the front!” Barbara was excited about the adventure. Her backpack was weighted down with two fat burritos from Aqui.

  Sittin
g next to Barbara, smelling the burritos already, I watched the other smarties board the bus. They weren’t just freshmen. Which is a real clue about my school – out of four grades, only thirty kids were considered “promising.” Almost all of them were too nerdy for words.

  Except him. Him. The guy I’d seen across the quad watching me with his black eyes. My heart lurched as he got on the bus.

  He wore a heavy green army surplus jacket over baggy camouflage pants. His hair was thick, tar black, and in an overgrown buzz cut. His skin was smooth milk chocolate. A silver cross dangled from his right earlobe. Everything about him was exotic, scary. He even had a black tattoo circling his upper arm. I’d seen it before when I spotted him at school hanging with his Latino homeboys.

  As he passed me on the bus, I felt his stare burn through my skin. His eyes were dark caves. You couldn’t look in them very long without falling in and flailing around for air.

  “On the way, we’re going to play Geology Jeopardy!” Mr Rhinehart said. Barbara and I groaned, but several kids behind us clapped and squealed.

  “I’ll give you a geologic answer,” Mr Rhinehart continued, “and you raise your hand if you know the question. Be sure to phrase it in the form of a question.”

  The Guy sat at the back of the bus. I found myself wishing we’d sat at the back, too.

  “It divides time into eons, eras, periods, and epochs,” Mr Rhinehart began, as the bus left dusty Barstow for our destination an hour and a half away.

  “What is the geologic time scale?” someone shouted.

  “Raise your hand, please. But that’s correct!”

  I swivelled around to see who got the answer right, but ended up locking gazes with The Guy. He didn’t smile, didn’t nod or wave. He just stared at me with his bottomless black eyes, and my whole body went numb.

  “It uses decay to determine the numerical ages of rocks.”

  By the time we reached Pearblossom, California, and the Devil’s Punchbowl Visitor’s Centre, I practically had a graduate degree in geology.

  “What is radiometric dating?” someone in the middle of the bus shouted.

  Barbara was asleep next to me. I gently tapped her shoulder.

  “We’re aqui,” I said, knowing she’d wake up faster if I used the Spanish form of “here” and the name of her favourite restaurant.

  “¿Aqui?!”

  I was right. Barbara woke up instantly and said, “I’m starving.”

  “Everybody out of the bus and in a line,” said Mr Rhinehart. “Five-minute bathroom break, then we’re hitting the trail.”

  I looked around. I didn’t see anything that resembled a punchbowl, satanic or otherwise. All I saw were rocky hills and tufts of scrub. And a long, uphill trail. The Guy stepped off the bus and walked toward me. A zap of electricity suddenly shot down my arms. It seemed as though he was about to say something, but Barbara tugged my sleeve and said, “C’mon. If we don’t go now, we’ll have to use the devil’s toilet bowl.”

  By the time Barbara and I started up the hill, The Guy was way ahead.

  “Look! The devil’s pebble! The devil’s dead branch!”

  Barbara cracked jokes the whole way. As usual, she walked superfast.

  “Isn’t that the devil’s dirt clod?”

  As I raced to keep up, the cool air and Barbara’s dumb jokes lifted my spirits. I guess some emotions are like menstrual cramps. When they first appear, they make you feel like curling up in a ball. But if you gut it out, they fade enough for you to ignore them and get on with it.

  “Stay on the trail, kids,” Mr Rhinehart yelled over his shoulder at us. “You don’t want to disturb any snakes.”

  “Snakes?” I gulped, staring at the ground.

  Barbara chugged on up the trail.

  “Rattlesnakes?” I asked.

  “And others,” she shouted over her shoulder.

  “Others?” I hurried to catch up.

  “Copperheads, sand boas, corals, kraits, mambas, vipers, probably. That kind of thing.”

  Two of the other Promising Students looked like they wanted to run back to the bus. Like me, they were hoping their promise wasn’t about to end in a place where the devil served punch.

  “Don’t worry,” Barbara said, panting, “Snakes are more afraid of you than you are of them.”

  “Chickens.”

  I jerked my head up. The Guy stood a few feet ahead, standing on a small boulder jutting out from the side of the trail. He said, “Snakes prefer chickens over humans.”

  Barbara groaned. “Yeah, like there are chickens roaming free all over Pearblossom.”

  He didn’t blink. He just stared down at me and said, “Or rats, rabbits, mice, prairie dogs – anything they can eat in one gulp.”

  Jumping down from the boulder, he stood so close to me I could smell his skin. It not only looked like milk chocolate, it smelled like it, too.

  “Unless it’s a python,” he said, not moving one inch away from me. “They can swallow a deer . or you. If you see a python, run.”

  “There aren’t any pythons around here, Warren,” Barbara said, exasperated. “Are you going to get out of her way or what?”

  “Or what,” said Warren, flashing his black eyes at me.

  My heart thumped so hard I was sure it would hammer his chest. Barbara knew him.

  “Who’s your friend?” Warren asked Barbara without taking his eyes off me.

  “She’s not a mute,” Barbara scoffed. “Ask her yourself.”

  A jolt of electricity now shot through my entire body. I could feel the hairs on my arms stand up. I thought my heart would leap out of my chest and bounce down the trail.

  “Who are you?” he asked me, grinning.

  “Libby,” I squeaked, suddenly aware that the trail was on a cliff. Just then, in a flash, I realised how far I could fall if I let myself.

  “Hello, Libby. I’m Warren Villegranja. My friends call me Warrenville.”

  PART THREE

  Warrenville

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I couldn’t sleep. My bedroom window was wide open; the cool night desert air chilled the room, made me snuggle beneath my blankets. Juan Dog softly snored at my feet. The whole trailer park was asleep. But I just stared out the window, at the blue sliver of moon, and thought about him.

  “Pocahontas,” Warrenville had said to me at school, the day after our field trip, suddenly appearing behind me at my locker. “Did you read about Pocahontas yet?”

  I muttered, “I don’t think so.”

  “The movie version is full of crap.”

  “Oh.” Not knowing what else to say, I focused on shoving books into my pack. Not that I needed them, but my hands were trembling and my knees felt like Silly Putty.

  “The truth is, she was only nine years old when she was kidnapped by the Jamestown colonists. She didn’t look anything like the babe Disney created.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And her name wasn’t even Pocahontas. That was her nick name. Like P. Diddy or something. Her real name was Matoaka.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Why does everyone have to lie? That’s what I want to know.”

  I froze. Did he expect an answer? Had he caught me in a lie? Had he heard about my dad?

  “Adults say they want you to tell the truth, but even that’s a lie,” he went on. “No one wants to hear what’s really going through a kid’s head. They would freak out. Freak out.” Then he asked me, “Wanna get something to eat?”

  I’d never met anyone like Warrenville before. He was fifteen, a sophomore, but he seemed more like twenty. His mom was dead, he told me. His dad worked for the state, sixty miles away in San Bernardino.

  “You like tacos?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I like tacos.”

  “Follow me.”

  Truth be told, I would have followed Warrenville anywhere.

  In silence, we crossed the iron bridge to the “bad” side of town. I figured we were going to Aqui, but Warren led me into
an even smaller shack with no sign on it at all. A bell on the door announced our entrance. An old lady with kinky grey hair emerged from the back and burst into a smile the moment she saw Warren. He hugged her. They spoke Spanish. When I asked if she was his grandmother, he said, “She’s everybody’s grandmother.”

  Warren ordered goat tacos.

  “Goat?” I asked.

  “Trust me,” he said. Then he sat down at the only table in the place. Too nervous to eat anyway, I shrugged and sat across from him.

  “Let me guess,” he said, narrowing his eyes at me, “you think tacos taste like the food you eat at Taco Bell.”

  “Well, um, yeah.” I mean, it’s called Taco Bell.

  “Today, you eat a real taco.”

  At that moment, the grey-haired lady trudged over and set two plates in front of us. Steam rose up to kiss my face. It smelled like lamb and cilantro.

  “Try one,” Warren said.

  I swallowed. Then I picked up the warm, soft corn tortilla, folded it over the hot meat, and took a bite. The fresh lime juice intensified the flavour of the roasted goat. The tortilla tasted like flat cornbread. It was fantastic.

  Warren smiled. I smiled, too. Together, we ate six goat tacos, drank mango juice, and said almost nothing. Which, bizarrely, felt exactly right.

  When I got home from school that afternoon, the refrigerator was gone; our living room looked like a living room. Dad had left a note that read, “I’m off to find a job.” Rif was in his bedroom doing homework. But all that wasn’t the most extraordinary part of the day. Barbara was with me. I was feeling so happy about Warren, I decided to swallow my embarrassment and let Barbara see where I lived. I wanted to practice opening up instead of closing down. So I held my breath, bit the inside of my cheek, and led my friend into the asylum.

  “You have a pool!” Barbara squealed, as we hopped off the bus and walked under the arch that read WELCOME TO SUNSET PARK.

  Mim waved from her chaise longue as we walked by. “Come for a swim,” she shouted.

  “No, thanks,” I said. Then, Barbara stunned me by asking, “Why not?”