“Oh, good God,” Sandra said. “Winnie.”
I blushed, but the thing about Sandra and Bo (unless Sandra was in one of her moods) was that I could blush around them and still keep going.
“I just don’t understand what you do with your tongues,” I said.
“How many tongues do you have?” Bo asked.
“Ha ha,” I said. “One that belongs to me, one that belongs to someone else.”
“And who might this someone else be?” Sandra said.
I looked at her. She knew.
“I’m serious,” I said.
“You wiggle them around like this,” Bo said. He stuck out his tongue like a little kid and went bluh-buh-bluh-buh-bluh-buh.
Sandra shoved him. “That’s what you used to do, before I taught you the error of your ways.”
Bo pretended he’d been sizzled. “Ouch!”
I laughed.
“Just…be subtle about it,” Sandra told me. “You may not believe it, but it really will happen naturally, if you let it. But it’s not a jam-down-the-throat thing—ever.”
I nodded. No jamming down the throat.
“It’s more…soft. Like saying ‘hello,’ and then having a whole conversation, only not with words.” She glanced at Bo, and he held her gaze. There was something real in his eyes, something strong and true despite his constant teasing. How could I have ever thought they’d break up?
“Would you like a demonstration?” he asked.
“Bo!” Sandra protested.
He leaned forward and planted his lips on hers: smack. They toppled over, but he kept the kiss going. It made my “eek” feelings resurface, because it was such a personal thing to watch. And yet I did watch. My heart pounded, and my skin grew hot. Nervous giggles burbled out.
Bo released my sister, but only because she pushed him off. She sat up, flushed and trying not to smile, but not succeeding.
“Nice way to be a perv, Bo. You’re going to scar her for life.”
“Cause no other boy can live up to my extreme hunkiness?”
She snorted.
Bo grinned. “And that, little Winnie, is how you do it.”
This was what I wore to Bryce’s party when it finally rolled around: a denim miniskirt that fit really well as long as I was standing up (when I sat down, it required some yanking), a white T-shirt that was super faded and had a few splotches of paint on it from when Dad and I painted my dresser, and brown sparkly flip-flops. The miniskirt was to make my legs look good, and the paint-splotched T-shirt gave me a sexy, breezy kind of look. I hoped.
I painted my toenails sky blue and pink, alternating every other one. I put a flower decal on my right big toe and a butterfly on the left. I stroked my Rock Star glitter dust over my eyelids and applied clear gloss to my lips. I didn’t put on actual lipstick, because A) it always looked weird, B) what if it got on my teeth, and C) even though I knew guys kissed girls wearing lipstick all the time, I couldn’t get my head around it. Wouldn’t it taste lipstick-y? Wouldn’t it make the guy’s lips pink or red or whatever?
It was the same problem I had imagining breast implants—not that I would ever get breast implants or any kind of plastic surgery. Ever, ever, ever (I thought it was important to make this promise to myself now, before I turned thirty and got saggy and fat).
But with breast implants, just like lipstick, surely they’d be too obvious, wouldn’t they? Too un-real. Wouldn’t a guy want to kiss your real lips? And feel your real…?
Aye-yai-yai. Embarrassing!
But clear lip gloss was acceptable. It wasn’t waxy, and it tasted like mango. Big thumbs-up.
“You look good,” Sandra said in the car on the way to Bryce’s. Sandra, not Mom, was dropping me off, and I needed to remember that the next time she annoyed me. Much cooler to be dropped off by your seventeen-year-old sister in her golf-ball-yellow Beemer than by your mom in her silver Volvo.
“Do I really, or are you just saying that?” I asked. I jerked on my skirt. “Am I, you know, being too skimpy?”
“Dude,” she said, glancing at me from the driver’s seat. Her look said No, you aren’t. “There’s no need to be a skank, ’kay? I’m proud of you for having taste.”
I felt warm inside. She was my role model, after all: sexy for sure in her battered jeans and thrift store button-downs.
We arrived at Bryce’s house, and suddenly I didn’t want to get out. There were people in there—real live eighth graders—and they would look at me. They would talk about starting high school, and I would be the loser seventh grader. I might be the only seventh grader! Maybe it would be better to stay in Sandra’s slobby, pizza-smelling Beemer. Ooo, yeah! We could go get pizza! Sandra loves pizza!
“Hey, Sandra, you want to—”
“No. Get out,” she said.
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!”
She leaned over me and opened the door. “Off you go, baby bird. Fly away! Have fun!” She used her foot to shove my thigh, leaning against her own door for leverage.
“Sandra!” I protested. I couldn’t believe she was shoving me out of the car. I scooted out quick so that no stray onlookers would see.
“Bye!” she called as she zoomed away.
Traitor fink evil sister. I would not remember her giving-me-a-ride kindness the next time I was annoyed with her after all. My heart pounded, and I could only hope that all the anger/embarrassment/adrenaline would give my cheeks a lovely glow. Why, look at Winnie, people would think. How healthy! How vibrant!
Well, nothing to do but bite the bullet, so I lifted my chin and walked confidently to Bryce’s front door. You are at the beach, I said, my trick to get the proper saunter down. You are strolling on the beach and you are happy, happy, happy.
I lifted my hand to knock, but the door opened before my knuckles made contact.
“Winnie! Hey!” Steffie said. She knew me just barely from being Cinnamon’s neighbor, though she stretched out the “hey” as if we were far closer. “I thought you were Farrin, but that’s okay. Come on in!”
“Okay, cool!” I chirped. Ugh. “Okay, cool”?! Okay, stupido. Okay, total dorky-o.
“Lars is back there,” Steffie said, pointing deeper into the house. That made me feel good, that she would know to connect me with him.
I wandered through the crowd, looking at all the skin, smelling all the perfumes and colognes. Ty had recently started wearing cologne. It was so cute. He was jealous of Mom’s perfumes, so she got him this pine-scented spray-on cologne from the Body Shop. Whenever he used it, he puffed out his chest like a baby rooster.
An eighth grader named Cheri bumped into me and said, “Oops, sorry!” But she didn’t look sorry. She pretty much didn’t look at me at all.
I wished Cinnamon was here. Not Dinah, who would twitter and vibrate and smile in a petrified way. It would be excruciating. But Cinnamon would be an excellent party pal.
In the TV room, I spotted Lars playing a game on Bryce’s Xbox. He was doing the full-body thing, holding the controller in front of him and lunging first to the right, then at full-tilt back to the left. He kept up a continuous back-and-forth with Bryce, throwing out phrases like, “Oh, yeah? Not so fast, loser!” and “Your ass is grass!”
He was very, very boy.
“Um, hi,” I said, walking over and standing by the sofa.
Lars glanced away from the screen. His face broke into a smile. “Winnie! Hey, girl!”
Crashing sounds splattered from the TV, and Bryce leaned back and punched a fist into the air. “Yeah!” he crowed. “Take that, sucka!”
On the screen, a metallic blue car burst into flames.
“Oops,” I said. I felt bad for making Lars lose, especially since Bryce was now up on his feet and doing a hip-circling, churn-the-butter victory dance.
“Oh yeah, I’m the king, oh yeah, I kicked your booty!” Those were his brilliant lyrics.
“Just getting your confidence up,” Lars retorted, standing up and smacking Bryce’s head.
“C’mon, Win. Let’s bounce.”
Bryce hooted, and Lars smacked him again. He took my hand and pulled me away, and my insides soared. He was holding my hand! He was holding my hand!
“You found the place all right?” he asked as we walked.
I was really too hand-focused to answer, but I managed to nod. “Um, yeah. Well, Sandra did. She Mapquested it.”
He nodded back. His fingers were strong. He was so incredibly adorable. “You, uh, want something to drink?”
It filtered into my consciousness that he’d led me to the kitchen, where two liter bottles of soda lined the counter. Behind the counter was Bryce’s mom, doing the serving.
“Sure,” I said. Bryce’s mom wouldn’t spike the soda—not hardly. “A Sprite, please.”
We chitchatted with Mrs. Thorton, and that was easy. The talk-politely-to-grown-ups thing was always easy for me.
“Well, check ya later, Mrs. T,” Lars said—so cute! Mrs. T!—and the two of us went into the living room and stood by a wall. We drank our drinks. We smiled at each other. Lars moved his head to the music. Kids laughed and chattered, and from another room, I heard Steffie squeal. It was quite distinctive, her squeal. It was meant to make people notice.
“You want to go outside?” Lars asked.
“Sure,” I said. I was Miss Ace Vocabulary, apparently. Want to go bash your head in a wall? Sure!
In the cool night air, I felt more normal. It was a more level playing field: less eighth graders, more nature. Or houses. Whatever.
“Kinda crazed in there,” Lars said, squeezing my hand as we ambled into the Thortons’ backyard. Darkness wrapped around us. “Sorry.”
“No,” I said. “It’s a great party. It’s sweet that Bryce’s parents would throw it for him.”
“You should have been at Brad’s last weekend,” he said. “Now that was really crazed.”
“Oh, yeah?” He and I had never talked about it, so I played dumb and pretended Cinnamon hadn’t given me the scoop.
“A lot of people got wasted. A couple of seventh graders, even.”
I tried to gauge his opinion.
“You know that girl Amanda?” he asked. “Long, blond hair?”
“She used to be my best friend,” I told him.
He seemed surprised. “For real?”
“Well…yeah.” It was odd that he wouldn’t know this piece of me. But he’d only met me this year, after Amanda and I had already gone our separate ways.
He shook his head. “She was trashed, man.”
“Nuh-uh. Amanda?”
“Uh-huh. Guys were laughing at her.”
Oh no. It alarmed me, this vision of Amanda that in no way matched the Amanda I knew. Cinnamon said she’d only had one wine cooler.
“Are you sure it was Amanda?” I asked. “Are you absolutely positive?”
“She’s the skinny one, right?”
Compared to Gail and Malena, Amanda was definitely the skinny one. My hopes fell.
We reached a stone bench built into a wall at the far end of the yard. Lars sat down, and since I was still holding his hand, I sat down, too. He let go of my hand and put his arm around my shoulder. My pulse skyrocketed.
“She needs to watch out,” he said. “If she’s doing this now, what’s she going to do in high school, you know?”
“Maybe it was a one-time thing,” I said. “Maybe she wasn’t really trashed. Maybe she was just pretending.” I was babbling, and I wanted to stop. Even though I cared about Amanda, I didn’t want to care right this very second.
Lars looked at me. His face was right there, inches from mine, and I knew this was it: the moment of the first kiss.
He leaned in. I giggled and drew back. My breathing grew shallow, and my heart drummed against my ribs, more out of nervousness than anticipation. Extreme, horrible, freak-out nervousness, the kind I occasionally experienced before having to give an oral presentation or introduce myself to a crowd of strangers.
Lars tried again. I turned my head from his. I didn’t mean to—I so didn’t mean to—but it was too much, being in the actual moment and thinking, Oh, god, lips. His. Mine. Touching!
An anxious laugh made a very strange sound coming out of me. I could feel my smile go rubbery.
He leaned in. I pulled back. He leaned in further. I did a bob and a duck maneuver. It was bad. Bad, bad, bad. And the worst part of all was the doubt creeping into his eyes. He thought I didn’t want him to kiss me, but I did!
“Winnie?” he said.
“Yes?” I squeaked. My cheeks burned.
“Hold still.”
He put his hand under my chin and bent his head toward mine. I squeezed shut my eyes. My heart tried to jump out of my chest.
His lips touched mine. Soft. Warm. Hesitant, and then not so hesitant, while all the time I was privately spazzing out. I was doing it! It was glorious! It wasn’t hard at all!
And then came the tongue. At first it was gross, like a slug. I recoiled, but his mouth followed mine. His tongue kept at it.
Before I knew it, the slug-ness stopped seeming so sluggish, and my tongue went peeping out to meet his. Ack! It was interesting. Thrilling. Overwhelming.
His arm slipped around my waist. He pulled me close. This beautiful boy was kissing me and holding me close, and we were outside, and there was a party, and noise drifted over to us from people doing their party things. Music. Laughter. Squeals.
Lars paused to regard me.
“Hi,” he whispered.
“Hi,” I whispered.
We smiled, goofy and happy. He leaned back in, and my lips parted to meet his.
I would never be “never been kissed” again.
June
AT TRINITY, where I went to elementary school, graduation meant whooping and hollering and spazzy running around. When I thought back to our sixth grade ceremony, Alex Plotkin—gross, with a deep red stain around his mouth from fruit punch—flashed into my mind. I don’t know why I thought of Alex Plotkin. I certainly didn’t intend to think of Alex Plotkin. Like I said, gross.
But. The point was, graduation at Westminster was a far more formal affair, even for us seventh graders. First came a ceremony in Pressley Hall, with presentations and awards and a song or two performed by the chorale. Then a baked chicken lunch served with cloth napkins and glass glasses, instead of the plastic ones with ridges we usually used. We dressed up in fancy clothes. Iced tea or water were our beverage choices. No fruit punch. And instead of running around afterward, we mingled and chatted politely to everyone’s parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters.
And, if we were me, we also squeezed our feet as squish-small as we could inside our beautiful new shoes, even though the damage was already done and blisters were on the rise. (And we refer to ourselves as the “royal we,” apparently. Which we found quite annoying and blamed fully on the endless graduation speeches. “We’re so pleased to announce…” “When we reflect upon this special occasion…” “We only wish we could say ‘we’ a thousand more times…” Enough already!)
So. Right. If we were me—which I am! I’m me, yay!—I would wish very privately for a Band-Aid, or at least for a good old-fashioned paper napkin to fold into a rectangle and shove into the back of each shoe. I’d sworn to Mom they fit perfectly, because I’d wanted them so bad. But they didn’t, and now they were killing me.
Un-yay.
“I’m just so proud of these girls!” Mrs. Taylor said to Mom. Mrs. Taylor’s daughter was Louise, a fellow Trinity alum. Louise and I weren’t exactly buddies, but we’d gone to school together forever, so we weren’t not buddies, either. Louise was like a nubbly stuffed animal lying on the floor of the closet. I wouldn’t throw it away, but I wouldn’t care if my cat, Sweetie-Pie, used it as a chew toy and kicked at it with her hind legs.
“I’m proud, too,” Mom said, putting her arm around my shoulder. Louise was off being flouncy with a girl named Trish, both of them angling for attention from a group of boys.
&
nbsp; “They grow up so fast,” Mrs. Taylor said, as if no one had said that one before. It was the theme of the day: They grow up so fast. Time just flies, doesn’t it? How is it possible that our babies have finished seventh grade?
Ty sighed loudly and wormed his way between me and Mom. He was in that mood of leaning against everybody and refusing to bear his own weight.
“How long till we go?” he complained.
“Ten hours,” I told him.
“Nuh-uh.”
“A while,” Mom said, nudging him off her leg. “Go lean on someone else.”
“Can I have another brownie?”
“Sure,” Mom said. “Get your dad one while you’re at it. Find him and take it to him.”
Ty weaved through the crowd to the dessert table, and Mrs. Taylor clucked.
“Such a sweet boy,” she said.
“Sometimes,” Mom said.
“Isn’t he in Joseph Strand’s class?” Mrs. Taylor said, her voice taking on an isn’t-it-tragic tone. I stopped adjusting my shoe to listen.
“It breaks my heart,” Mom said. Unlike Mrs. Taylor, she didn’t sound fakey, which was one of the reasons I was glad to have her for a mother. And even though she often made eye-rolling remarks about all three of us kids, we knew she loved us to distraction.
“What breaks your heart?” I asked.
“A little boy in Ty’s class,” she said. “He has—”
“Winnie! Ellen!” Mrs. Wilson cried, breaking into our circle. Mrs. Wilson was Amanda’s mother, and, like Amanda, she was beautiful. Both had Alice-in-Wonderland blond hair, although Mrs. Wilson’s was chin-length, while Amanda’s fell halfway down her back. Both had petite, curvy figures, the sort that made grown-ups tell Mrs. Wilson she looked twenty-five and made the junior high guys call Amanda “hot.”
“Ellen, can you believe it?” Mrs. Wilson said. “Our little girls—starting eighth grade!”
“Mom,” Amanda said. “We have three whole months first.” I hadn’t noticed her because it was so crowded, but there she was behind her mother, looking gorgeous and sylph-like in a long, black skirt and black cami. A “sylph” is a mystical creature kind of like a fairy, made mainly of air. I’d learned that from one of Dinah’s fantasy books. Amanda had always been tiny, but lately she’d been looking downright wispy. She also wore a lot more eyeliner. Like, on purpose. Dark, thick lines not meant to be ignored.
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