After the Kiss

by Terra Elan McVoy

  after the kiss

  Also by Terra Elan McVoy

  Pure

  after the kiss

  Terra Elan McVoy

  Simon Pulse

  New York London Toronto Sydney

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events,

  real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places,

  and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any

  resemblance to actual events or locales or persons,

  living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition May 2010

  Copyright © 2010 by Terra Elan McVoy

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

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  Designed by Paul Weil

  The text of this book was set in Adobe Garamond.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  McVoy, Terra Elan.

  After the kiss / by Terra Elan McVoy. — 1st Simon Pulse hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In alternating chapters, two high school senior girls in Atlanta reveal their thoughts

  and frustrations as they go through their final semester of high school.

  ISBN 978-1-4424-0211-9 (hardcover)

  [1. Novels in verse. 2. Interpersonal relations—Fiction. 3. Moving, Household—Fiction.

  4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Atlanta (Ga.)—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.5.M48Af 2010 [Fic]—dc22 2009044220

  ISBN 978-1-4424-0217-1 (eBook)

  This one’s for Mundo and Sarge

  Camille

  new house #6

  pulling in the driveway all you can think is that this is the kind of house they were trying to duplicate back in charlotte: the real southern living deal—a big beautiful old (but newly renovated) house in an area they are calling the virginia highlands, with no hills to be seen and two states separated from virginia. there are brick-based columns across the wide front porch and a real swing and deep white rockers next to huge pots—vats really—full of what you are sure will be hydrangeas come springtime. it’s so stereotypical south (and so very, very far from the noisy cold of chicago) that you want to laugh, but inside the floors are real, dark, smooth, polished aged wood—not parquet like in dc or tile like in houston—and the rugs are just as lush as in the sf penthouse. there are no long hallways to slide down in your socks like the chicago apartment, but rooms leading onto rooms opening into other rooms like a russian treasure box or an alice in wonderland maze. you cannot believe how much space there is here: wide-wide everything so wide. how your dad’s company finds these places and what they pay for you to live in them you still can’t get dad to answer, but you are grateful and astonished every time. this will never be your real home, but it (like the last one, and the one before that) is certainly beautiful, and you know your new friends will (like always) be jealous of where you live, can already hear them (whoever they are) saying i wish i could be you in that gushing-awed way that leaves you cold, because no one ever wants the thrown-around rag doll with the threadbare smile. no one wants to be a girl who’s picked out her own embroidered heart, string by string, and left it for the birds to tangle in their nests.

  new homeroom #5

  the eyes have it. seventeen pairs of them already turning as you come through the door. you could be argus great defender of juno with all the eyes you have, the eyes you’ve collected from all these new homerooms, these new schools, these new doorways you’re always having to step through. you always wonder what you really look like to them, wonder what it would be to see out of all those different eyeballs ogling—green hazel blue brown brown flecked green—to get a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of yourself: forever always repeating only the surface and never having to look further in.

  new french teacher #3

  is a man this time which interests you because usually they are the same type of used-up–looking woman: a woman in a floral-print skirt with espadrilles or else dansko sandals, with pale skin that is smooth and soft-looking but also thinning and with its own share of wrinkles (sometimes about the eyes, sometimes about the mouth, always the furrow between the brows), blue eyes usually and long or short hair it doesn’t matter it is always dark and shot with gray. (and if she is blond, she doesn’t have fun.) but no today you walk in (the eyes all upon you) and you are bonjoured to your seat by a (blue-eyed, dark-haired, bearded) monsieur. tall and smiling (with wrinkling hands and pink but thinning cheeks) in his floral tie, he welcomes you with a nod and asks en francaise how comfortable are you with the language and when you answer back with your prepared little speech about reading camus in the original french this summer on your own for fun you see the same little glance of delight you always get with teachers: like a boy with a marzipan frog that has just leaped to life.

  the sunshine girl

  new-school day so far pretty smooth. there have been plenty of curious stares but no one’s snickered or snubbed, which you take as a good sign. two seconds into your third period though and the bright blonde in front of you whips around, sticks out her hand like a company CEO and chirps, hey i’m ellen. this class is awesome. there’s a waiting list so it’s amazing you got in. you’re going to love it. you hear yourself tell her your name is camille, you just moved from chicago, and then there’s something in the way she’s said it—something in her bright frankness—that just by looking at her yachting good looks and her hemp-bead bracelets you know that she’s right—that you will love this class, and not just because it’s about mid-twentieth-century literature. by the time the teacher starts, you have programmed each other’s numbers. by the time class is over, she has her arm linked in yours and is showing you the best shortcut, explaining what to expect from the rest of your schedule, saying it’s weird you’re the new girl in their final semester, but that everyone will love you. that you’re going to have fun. by the time the day is over, you have plans for the weekend, and—somehow—with nothing like the herculean efforts required in chicago, the role of atlanta bff is—just like that—filled.

  on being the new girl: atlanta rules

  it’s not a bad thing that mom aims for smarts, beauty, and popularity in you. be glad for private school and advanced classes and intelligent teachers and the lack of neanderthalism in general. volunteer after school like last time. keep up the appearance, too. as was the case in sf and chicago, being good-looking still makes everyone want to know who you are, which means, at least, you don’t have to eat by yourself, and you have something to do on weekends.

  interchangeable friends: from chicago to atlanta

  bff roxy becomes bff ellen. paula and gregor become jessica and flip. mrs. haskell is mrs. capriola and mr. fenway is ms. clary, for sure. betsy is autumn and olive is now connor. there’s a gracen to avoid instead of a stephanie to sidestep, but also look out for
bryce and her flock of straight-hairs. dorie and willow are eager to include you just like molly and lucy. sam-paul-jordan-ted in photography class are just like whatever-their-names-were—football guys, enough said. and though it’s not like you’re looking, he-who-shall-not-be-named is still neither duplicated nor replaced, because there will never (you are certain you will make sure of it) be somebody like him again.

  Becca

  New Semester, Same Shit

  First period = guitar:

  me and

  a load of losers longing

  to learn Coldplay songs for

  the girlfriends they will never get.

  Mrs. Fram thinks

  we care about her theory

  but really we are waiting

  until she lets us outside

  where we can ignore each other and disappear

  in our own strumming.

  Period Two = Chemistry II,

  and it’s unclear how I

  learned enough to get here,

  here where I keep my head down and my pencil

  moving,

  mind fisting with formulas no one else grasps.

  Mrs. Baetz and I, we have an understanding—

  she concentrates on the other kids skimming

  a few dangerous inches below the surface,

  helping them get some oxygen,

  showing them how to paddle.

  Me I am simply stroke, kick, stroke—

  gliding through.

  Typing = hahahahahaha.

  I am in here with sophomores, and that’s enough.

  Mrs. Ference is

  a body filled with fluid,

  even the pouches under her eyes.

  I am

  listening for the squishy noise when she steps.

  If she were to be sliced open I know

  only wet blistery pus would pour out,

  and she would take a long time to drain.

  AP History and the walls fall away.

  I am

  on a magic carpet zooming

  along the winds of Mrs. Pasquarelli’s stories.

  I am lost in the forest of all she says.

  AP English next—

  my favorite room filled with the smell of dust.

  Mr. Burland is tall and strong and ready to lead us

  another semester with his words.

  He is the baton for a reluctant marching band,

  me the solitary tuba:

  important, essential, booming alone.

  Math goes in no poem.

  Math is a sentence

  to be endured.

  End the day with econ.

  I do not even know what we are supposed to be

  learning here,

  but I am gaining

  a prisoner’s understanding

  of the thickness of paint.

  Our teacher’s ramblings

  are an Olympic marathon

  and it is a class goal

  to distract her daily from her course.

  Econ is everything I detest in life

  boiled down into four cement walls.

  Econ is vapid.

  Econ is dense.

  Econ is oppressive.

  Econ is, purely, dumb.

  We do not even

  have a book in here.

  So there it is—

  three hundred and eighty agonizing minutes

  all told

  until the bell rings and everything becomes

  Alec,

  lost and counting the minutes too

  across town—trapped—

  in a different school.

  Reunion

  Freya flies into the courtyard

  gapped-tooth grin wide and high,

  overjoyed to be back from holiday break.

  How she knows so much

  so fast

  about so many people

  —not just

  at our school but over at Seymour and Ivy Glen—

  who probably don’t know

  how to spell her first name

  is sheer mystery,

  but if there’s anyone to know a thing about

  Freya will be the one to tell you first.

  She’s who took me to the Lake House.

  And when I met Alec

  a month later

  I was her fresh gossip

  for a week and a half.

  But I don’t

  tell her much.

  Her elbows are pointy

  and find rib cages easily.

  Wednesdays

  I like Wednesdays because

  usually Mr. Burland is in a good mood and

  lets us read parts of our work out loud.

  Also we won’t have a math test

  until Thursday and

  there are no chemistry flash cards due.

  On Wednesdays I can wear jeans

  or a skirt

  and neither one means I am being

  too done up

  or

  am just jonesing for the weekend.

  Wednesdays are the middle of the balance beam

  —they are halfway through the plate of lima beans—

  they are you-are-almost-to-Saturday-but

  you don’t have to have plans yet.

  Everyone likes Wednesdays.

  (They are betterthanMonday and

  notasimpossible as Thursday.)

  But Wednesday-oh-Wednesday

  you are really my favorite because

  there is no such thing as baseball practice and

  as soon as the school bell rings I

  am in my car and

  driving to his arms.

  Doing Homework

  When I tell Mom I am going to Alec’s

  to “do homework”

  I really am.

  But first I will

  take my shirt off and he will take off his

  and we will lie on his bedroom floor

  —the mauve paisley rug, smelling of old fishermen

  and hiking boots—

  sharing earbuds, listening

  to Kings of Convenience, Iron and Wine, Satie,

  letting

  our fingers trace each other’s rib cages.

  Our breaths fall one, then another.

  He will roll over then and

  lift my giant, over-thumbed Norton—

  flip open to a random page of poetry and

  just read.

  My eyes will roll back in my head, my breath

  will swell and slow.

  At some point his reading will become kissing me

  and the floor will fall away.

  Then, after

  —and only then—

  can we pull our shirts back on,

  become mundane.

  The Lake House

  Saturday night and

  you can’t see anything the lights are so dim, but

  there is a pulse in this party

  —shadows shifting off shoulders—

  and whenever you catch a stranger’s eye it is smiling.

  Alec is

  with me for what could be all night long

  after a week of have-tos,

  and clipped-off time.

  He is dizzy

  and drawling

  and I am

  not really drinking this beer, just

  standing here

  talking to Freya

  with Patrick somersaulting in the corner of my eye;

  there is

  a good song playing

  and Eric-Stewart-Tyler

  are across the room, conspiring;

  a laugh happens in the kitchen right before

  —there

  Alec’s finger in my belt loop,

  just—that.

  Like the snap of fresh sheets or

  the moment your pencil breaks in class it is

  so clear and sharp,

  I feel it—

  his way of saying

  Iloveyou
r />   without saying anything

  in the middle of the room.

  Absence Makes the Heart Grow Fonder

  It’s not like

  I’m ignored.

  But at

  these weekly parties full of so many people

  —some we know and

  three-quarters we don’t—

  sometimes he needs

  —sometimes we need—

  to take a step

  and create some distance,

  to back off (he says)

  and have some space.

  There are still

  these tendrils between us:

  a glowing magical lasso

  connecting our eyes and elbows and hips.

  When he moves

  I feel them pulling me

  —even across a room

  I’m not in.

  Sometimes it’s good, allowing a chasm between us,

  though I more sense than see him

  squinting across the distance.

  Still, he knows

  I am always here, waving

  from the other side.

  Secret at the Lakeside

  Away from the crowd,

  in the marsh and the mud,

  he kisses me,

  and the egrets

  —crouched in dark trees across the water—

  are slim white ghosts

  in all that black.

  Clasped hands,

  breathing

  we can see the birds

  —dreaming so wildly—

  they have to hold perfectly still

  just to keep from careening

  from the branches.

  Hickeys

  —are little vampire footprints

  telling me

  he was here

  and

  here.

  Camille

  the bees

  the first few mornings you stand back and watch the dance and buzz of your friends—the bees all flying around and together, looping in wide circles of conversation: flight patterns from flower to flower and face to face, zooming and arcing, together and back, forward and sideways. your eyes swim your head vibrates with the incessant hum of them in all their crazy, complicated backs-and-forths. autumn goes to connor talks to ellen hugs simon with flip moving to dorie then back to ellen who finds simon again, meanwhile willow pecks jessica who flits to parker talking to connor laughing at dorie, while autumn fake-slaps flip then looks at you, with four more bee boys joining in—your teeth tingling with the sound of them. even after a week it is hard to see the center, hard to find the queen—they are all quivering around together and back, this constantly moving-talking-laughing hivemind of smooth clean rich hippie faces, content to weave and walk together, making what you figure must, eventually, amount to honey.