Kissing Ted Callahan (and Other Guys)

by Amy Spalding

  I just decide to do it, so I ask if I should just stop by so I can finish our conversation and see the dog.

  She says yes.

  Luckily this time the dad-type guy isn’t working, since I guess Saturday nights are pretty slow. So it’s just us, and we talk about everything, her family, my family, dogs, music, school, seriously, anything you can imagine we probably talked about it. She has to walk all the dogs before the overnight guy shows up, so I help out, and once she’s off I suggest we get coffee at the Brite Spot and she says yes to that, too.

  We drive separately which is kinda disappointing but once we get there we’re back to talking nonstop. She is seriously amazing, so the whole time I’m working up how I’m going to kiss her once we leave, but I can’t because we have to sort of naturally split up to get to our cars. Next time I will figure out how to kiss her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  When I get home on Sunday afternoon, I ignore Mom and Dad, who are making a big production out of making homemade salsa in the kitchen, and head straight for my room. Googling “Sydney Jacobs” doesn’t make her less adorable or well dressed or famous. I try “Sydney Jacobs + Garrick Bell” and results spew out like molten lava from a volcano.

  It turns out I am far from the first to notice Garrick’s shaggy hair because tween girls have been raving about it, on top of his “kissable lips” (well…!), “sweet smile” (not inaccurate), and “awesome sense of style” (not taking your side on that one, tweens, not like I’m one to talk) ever since Garrick was Sydney’s date to the Kids’ Choice Awards earlier this year. There are MULTIPLE IMAGES of the two of them on the silly orange-not-red carpet being all coupley and happy.

  In lieu of documenting this, I print out three of the pictures to paste into the Passenger Manifest once I get it back from Reid. Then I go downstairs and turn on the TV to see if I can catch Sydney in action. Of course eJenni is on. The studio audience or laugh track goes nuts for her, and she looks great in an awesome jacket and nicer jeans than the United Front think jeans need to be. I feel like a goober in comparison.

  Ashley walks into the room and stares at the TV screen. “Why are you watching this?”

  I try to think of a reasonable explanation that does not involve any Garrick-kissing. I change the channel to MSNBC and shrug.

  “Just worrying about our crumbling American society.”

  Ashley makes a face. “There’s an America’s Next Top Model marathon on. Can I watch that instead?”

  With a heavy sigh I agree, but then I stick around to at least watch the makeovers. Watching beautiful people cry about their hair is way preferable to thinking about Sydney Jacobs any longer.

  * * *

  At school the next morning I wait for the crowds to part and for me to be revealed as a Garrick-kissing, Nerds-having, science-learning fool who thinks she’s entitled to the kind of boys celebrities sleep with. But it’s just Monday.

  “Hey, Riley,” Ted says as I head from my locker to chemistry. My cartoon heart does a cartwheel.

  “Hi.” I try to sound calm.

  “Sorry you can’t join Fencing Club.”

  “Me too!” I sort of shout.

  “Okay,” he says. “See you.”

  “Oh, I—I meant to email you back.” I had, but I’d hoped a magical gig would appear immediately. “But thanks for what you said about the band.”

  “Well,” he says, with a shrug, “you guys are really good. Hopefully, I can come see you play sometime.”

  “I’ll let you know, yeah.” I realize I am FULL-OUT GRINNING at him.

  I wait for him to wave and walk off, but he doesn’t. We’re still standing together.

  “When did you start playing drums?”

  “About three years ago.”

  “Cool,” he says, then smiles.

  It hits me that even though this is barely a conversation, it’s nice. Ted is not just good hair and impressive extracurriculars. Ted is a guy I can just stand and talk to, and it’s normal. Ted, it’s normal!

  “Hey.” Lucy walks up. Maybe if Edendale were a bigger school, I could avoid her a little more. Lucy notices I’m talking to Ted, and kind of steps back so she isn’t being rude. I suddenly want to cry that I can’t give her a secret look to indicate maybe Something Is Happening. I miss Lucy so freaking much.

  “See you in world history.” Ted walks off.

  Then Lucy gives me a Look! “Are you friends with him?”

  “I guess.” I try to affect a casual pose, which is weird when you’re standing in the middle of the hallway because I associate casualness with leaning, and there is no leaning to be had. “Why?”

  “He’s cute in a weird way, isn’t he?”

  “Yes,” I say very automatically. “I mean, I guess. I mean, what’s weird, really?”

  Lucy laughs. “Good point.”

  “I, uh, should go.” I walk into the bathroom, but I don’t even have to go. I just wash my hands and walk back out. By then, Lucy’s out of sight.

  Garrick’s walking down the hallway, and I give him a wave I decide is appropriate after the messing around as well as the Sydney Jacobs discovery.

  He hands me my hoodie. “You left your jacket thing at my house.”

  Wait, Garrick doesn’t know the word for hoodie? What kind of genius are you, Garrick?

  “Thanks.” I wonder if anyone walking by knows what happened based on this hoodie exchange. I still would have forgotten it there if we hadn’t messed around, wouldn’t I?

  No, I totally would not have.

  Besides the various weirdnesses of the morning, the day is typical. But after school I have a plan of making a random thing a regular thing.

  “Riley!” Reid comes tearing around the corner toward my locker, breathing exactly the way a guy who never runs would with all this tearing around. “Good news!”

  “Jane?” I ask.

  “We, my friend,” he says with the grace and dignity of an old-fashioned movie star, “are playing the fall formal.”

  “YES!” I high-five him, and even think about hugging him, but hugging makes people talk and probably enough people think since Lucy and Nathan were secretly Doing It that Reid and I are, too. “You’re awesome for making this happen.”

  Reid grins like he is aware of his own awesomeness. I let it slide.

  “I’m gonna go find Luce and Nathan. Come with me.”

  “I have to do a thing, a potential Time With the Crush thing,” I say. “So I should go.”

  “Good luck with that.” He smirks and hands me the Passenger Manifest.

  “Shut up,” I say. “And thanks for the fall formal gig.”

  “Hey, it’s for all of us,” he says. “And we did it by having great demos.”

  I grin at him and head off down the hallway. I don’t make it all the way to Ted’s locker before he walks up right beside me. It’s a sign! Thanks, universe. Love, Riley.

  “Hey, Ted.” I approach carefully, the way you do with bunny rabbits and motion-detector singing-and-dancing Santas. “I was wondering if you needed a ride.”

  It’s a bold move.

  “Really?” he asks.

  “Really,” I say, but I try to make it all easy breezy.

  “Okay, if you don’t mind,” he says. “And I have to talk to Ms. Matteson for a couple minutes.”

  “No problem, I can meet you by your locker,” I say. “Not that I know where your locker is. I mean, it’s alphabetical, I sort of know. Not by heart, not the number, just, in general, it’s near Mrs. Bullard’s room, I think, right, is it?”

  Oh my god, Riley. Shut up.

  But Ted just says, “Cool!” and disappears back into Ms. Matteson’s classroom.

  I try to appear casual and as if I only have the vaguest notion of Ted’s locker location, and he’s out like he says in just a couple minutes and then we’re off down the hallway together.

  “Should I take you to your mom’s office again?” I ask him.

  “Yeah,” he says.

&nb
sp; I wait for him to expand on that or talk about anything else, but he doesn’t. I know Ted’s social circle is Toby Singer, Jon Banas, Brendon Maro, and Brendon’s girlfriend, Aisha Osman. Even when I catch a glimpse of that table at lunch it’s not like Ted’s the life of the party. So I’m accepting that maybe he’s quiet and it means nothing about my chances with him.

  “We have a show coming up.” I blurt it out as I’m letting us into the car.

  “Oh yeah?” Ted asks me.

  “Yeah, at the fall formal” shoots out of my mouth, which is clearly back to depending on Brain Number Two for its information. I now have no need, no pending information for an email later! How am I supposed to lure Ted into my affections without pending information? “Are you going? Do you have a date or something?”

  And so now I have no pending information and I asked a supernosy question I’m not even sure I want the answer to. If Garrick Bell could have sex with celebrities, what is Ted Callahan capable of? Real rock stars? I have no chance.

  “I, uh, yeah, I don’t have a date,” he says, kind of blushing (!!!). “But I want to see you guys play. So maybe I’ll just go.”

  “You should go,” I say really forcefully, like there’s a blood shortage and he’s the only one left with Type A. “Go! I’ll be there! We can hang out.”

  “Yeah, okay,” he says, like I’ve talked him into it. Humanity will survive on the blood of Ted Callahan! “I’ll think about going.”

  I pull up to his mom’s office building, and his door swings open and he’s out. Considering I all but just asked him out, it’s a swifter exit than I want.

  “See you, Riley,” he says with a wave. “Thanks for the ride.”

  “Anytime, Ted!” I call instead of something low-key and cool. I think there is a scary but real chance I am not capable of being low-key and cool. It’s bad news for anyone, particularly a rock star.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Places to Take Someone That Could Be Romantic, by Reid

  LAMILL

  Yeah, it’s just a coffee shop, but it’s fancy and expensive, and they’re open later than Silverlake Coffee. You can walk there from the Satellite, so it’d be a good quiet place to take someone before a show. Also they have that shot of espresso that tastes like a jelly doughnut, and I bet you could blow a girl’s mind with it.

  Griffith Observatory

  One of the most romantic things you can do with someone is look at the stars together.

  Edendale Grill

  I haven’t been here, but some guy took my mom on a date here once and she said it was very romantic, which isn’t something you want your mom to tell you, but I still noted it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  I don’t have much homework, so after I drop off Ted, I drive down Sunset to Amoeba Music, where I have probably logged more hours than any other building except school or home. Reid’s a snob about actual vinyl, and Lucy’s in love with her iPod, and while I have a record player as well as my own iPod, CDs are easy and go right into my car stereo, and I love picking up these shrink-wrapped square plastic boxes knowing they very well could contain something super life-changing.

  Mondays are a weird day to shop for music, since new releases are out on Tuesdays, but at this point I’m mainly catching up on things. I can only afford to buy one CD today thanks to the sad amount of cash Mom and Dad call an allowance. I’d love to get a job, like here or maybe one of the cooler coffee shops on Sunset, but my parents enforced their United Front to let me know my priority should be school, and also that there was nothing I desperately needed that couldn’t be paid out of my allowance.

  Obviously the parents and I have different definitions of desperately.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket, and it seems like the right timing to be Lucy, but it’s Reid.

  “Hey, what are you doing?” he asks. “Can we talk about algebra homework?”

  “I’m at Amoeba right now.”

  “Whoa,” he says, as if we’re both four years old and I’m next in line to see Santa.

  “It’s just Amoeba,” I say, and it’s not all the way out of my mouth before I feel guilty, and stroke a CD bin with my free hand to let the store know I don’t think of it as a just. “I mean, we go a lot.”

  “Together,” he says. “We go together.”

  “Are you mad I didn’t invite you?”

  “No,” he says. “I’m pointing out, Ri, that this could be very good for you. Look around right now.”

  I do. The store’s not packed, but there are plenty of people flipping through CDs. Big deal.

  “Most people are alone,” he says. “Right?”

  Actually that’s true.

  “You could meet someone there,” he says. “Someone cooler than—”

  “Shut up,” I say, though I guess that both guys I like are maybe not the coolest. “People are alone to buy music. It’s serious. That’s it.”

  “That’s why you’re there alone,” Reid says. “Just keep an open mind. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “See you.” I click the phone off. For a moment I look around to see if people are hitting on each other like I imagine they do in skeezy bars. It’s boring compared to actual CD shopping, so my attention’s back on the album quest.

  “Hey, can I see that?”

  I’ve just found the reissue of the Sandwiches’ Getting It, and am not about to hand it over. But when I glance up to see the person the nondescript voice is attached to, it turns out the voice is not an accurate indicator of nondescriptiveness. Cute guy, record shop, CD in common, hello and welcome to the best moment ever, Riley.

  Reid might be right.

  “It’s the last copy,” I say, not to play hard to get, but because it’s the last copy and this cute boy is not weaseling his way into stealing it from me just because he has eyes the color of dark clouds, spiky, well-coiffed blond hair, one more facial piercing than my parents would deem acceptable (so, one total), and a Coyote Dreams T-shirt.

  “I know it’s the last copy.” He smiles like he’s flirting. Maybe he’s flirting! Maybe Reid is 100 percent right! “That’s why I’m asking to see it.”

  “You can see it”—I hold it in front of him—“but it’s mine.”

  “That’s fair.” He reaches out and holds the CD steady by wrapping his hand around my wrist. I suddenly feel like we’ve gotten to second base or something.

  “I like your shirt,” I say while he’s examining the CD, not because it’s particularly a great shirt or anything, but so he’ll know that I know Coyote Dreams.

  “Thanks.” He releases my wrist. I’m, I realize, disappointed. “You for sure getting this?”

  “I’m totally for sure getting it. Yup.”

  Yup? Since when do I say yup? I’m suddenly Riley the Cowgirl.

  “Well, you did beat me to it,” he says, “so it’s fair. If you change your mind, though, you can call me, I’ll buy it from you.”

  “What?” I squint at him while he takes a pen out of his jeans pocket and scrawls a phone number onto my hand without even asking permission. “They can probably order you one, even though it’s used, or maybe you can check—”

  It hits me as I’m talking that this is how guys hit on girls, and not just the best way this guy can think of to procure this album.

  “Okay,” I say, like that will mind-wipe him of the string of stupidity I just spewed forth. “If I decide to sell it, you’re my first call.”

  “Or even if you’re thinking about it,” he says with a smile. It’s not quite as good a smile as Ted’s, but it comes way easier to him. “I’m Milo.”

  “I’m Riley.” I shake his hand, but carefully, so the ink won’t smudge. I want to photograph it for evidence for the Passenger Manifest, because this is a big moment.

  “Good to meet you, Riley.”

  I try to gauge how old he is. Maybe a year older than me? A senior?

  I realize I haven’t spoken for a couple moments, and it’s verging on weird. “Good to meet you,
too!”

  “I have to run,” he says.

  Where to, Milo? Milo, is there another girl? Milo, are you doing something cool, like getting in line for a secret show no one told me about? Milo, please tell me you’re off to your own band practice!

  “But call me if you want to talk selling options for the album.”

  “Okay.” I hold back saying ten billion more things to him. They’re within me, but I’ve got them simmering under a lid for the moment. My pot might runneth over around Ted lately, but I’m going to be a freaking rock star to Milo.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Places to Take Someone That Could Be Romantic, by Riley

  VIP Lounge at the Troubadour

  I’ve never been up there and I want to! It looks like they have couches, so you could sit with someone on a couch and feel important and exclusive together. (I am against PDA, though, so no kissing or whatever else on the couch.)

  Secret room in the school no one knows about

  I don’t know if Edendale has any of these, but if so it would be pretty sexy sneaking off to it to make out with someone.

  Hike in Altadena

  I went here on a field trip once. There’s a waterfall you could stand behind to make out and no one would know you were there.

  Your own room

  Duh.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Reid cannot believe the story of Milo the handwriter.

  “I can’t believe that guy did that!” he says as we walk to English lit.

  I didn’t call him last night because I was basking in the glow of having been hit on. Also, homework. This is our first chance to talk today since he got to school late because of a dentist appointment. Reid’s really into his dental hygiene. “He just did that!”

  “You’re the one who said people go there to meet people,” I say. “And he gave me his number. He didn’t have sex with me in the store or something.”

  “Still! I could never do that. I am not That Guy.”