Soul Kiss

by Neil S. Plakcy

  We had bought all kinds of software, and between unpacking and installing everything, Daniel and I were busy for a while. It was fun working with him, I have to admit. He knew a lot about computers, and I learned about setting up partitions and installing anti-virus software. It got dark outside and we turned on the lights, and then my mom stuck her head in the door and said, “Dinner, kids.”

  “I’m just warning you,” I said, as we shut down the computers. “My brother has all these food allergies so dinner is probably going to be weird.”

  And of course, just to make me look totally crazy, dinner was exceedingly normal: turkey breast, sweet potato casserole, steamed asparagus. My dad made the mistake of trying to engage Daniel in conversation, and that was that—it was like somebody flipped a switch in the kid and he went to town.

  When he found out my dad worked in advertising he started talking about all these ads he had seen and what he thought of them, and my dad was just eating it up. For once, Robbie and I exchanged matching looks, like who was this geek?

  We even had chocolate mousse for dessert, which is like my total favorite, but I still spent the whole meal cringing inside.

  “This was really wonderful, Mrs. Torani,” Daniel said, when we were finishing dessert. “My mom doesn’t get a chance to cook big meals much, and when she does it’s mostly Cuban comfort food, arroz con pollo, rice and beans and that kind of thing.”

  “Is that where your family is from?” my mother asked. “Cuba?”

  He nodded. “We left when I was six. I just did one year of school in Cienfuegos. I was just finished when my mom came home one day and said we were moving.”

  “That’s when you came to the United States?”

  He shook his head. “We went on a boat to Grand Cayman, an island west of Cuba. My mom won’t tell me the details, but I think she was running away from something.”

  We were all quiet for a minute, until my mom said, “And how did you come to live in Pennsylvania?”

  “We move around a lot,” he said. “From Grand Cayman we went to Tampa for a while, then Mississippi, then Tennessee. We were in Massachusetts last year but it was just too cold.”

  After dinner my dad walked outside with Daniel, and from my bedroom window I saw him try to give Daniel some money, which Daniel refused. Then he came back into the house and called, “Melissa? Daniel doesn’t have a car. Why don’t you give him a ride home? It’s the least we can do to thank him.”

  I was torn. I love to drive and I never get to. I just got my real license a couple of months ago and my parents are totally afraid I’ll smash up the car or something. But driving Daniel? No way.

  I groaned. I knew that if I refused, my father would drive him home, and God knows what kind of trouble that could cause. “Sure, Dad,” I said.

  “You can take my car,” he said, tossing me his keys.

  Well, that was cool. Usually the only car I could drive was the mom-mobile, the big hulking SUV. Dad’s car was low-slung and sporty. Mom called it his mid-life crisis car, but I never understood why. I mean, if you could drive a cool sports car, why wouldn’t you?

  The only bad thing was that the seats were really close together. As Daniel slid in next to me, I felt his body heat. When I put my hand on the gearshift to back out, it brushed against his leg, and I pulled back as if I’d been electrocuted.

  “Sweet car,” he said. “Your parents are very nice.”

  “Yeah, well, they just look that way from the outside,” I said, concentrating on backing out of the driveway without hitting the mailbox. Don’t ask.

  “Where do you live?” I asked.

  “You can just take me back to ComputerCo.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m taking you home.”

  “I kind of live near the store,” he said.

  “No probs.”

  Years of riding the late bus home from extra-curricular activities had given me intimate knowledge of the back roads between Stewart’s Crossing and Levittown, and even though it was dark and the roads were curvy, I relaxed as we left suburbia for the farm country.

  “It was nice of you to come over,” I said finally. “I didn’t know that trick about setting up the online backups before.”

  “I know I talk too much,” he blurted out. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay. I blabber myself sometimes. Especially if I get nervous.”

  He nodded. “It’s tough, always being the new kid. We’ve moved nearly every year since we got to this country.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. My mom doesn’t like to talk about stuff.”

  “You have a dad somewhere?”

  “He died. Back in Cuba. I think maybe that’s why we left.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lots of my friends had divorced parents, and I knew I was very lucky to have a mom and a dad who lived together and got along. Brie’s parents divorced when she was ten, and then her mom remarried the dentist who had taken care of Brie’s teeth. There was something shady about that, we were both sure, but her parents were careful never to say anything bad about the other.

  And as much as I longed to get out of Stewart’s Crossing, I knew I was lucky to have lived in the same place all my life, not to have to pick up and move every year like Daniel, or like kids I knew whose parents were in the military or who had to move for jobs or stuff. I could only imagine how tough it must be to walk into a classroom of strangers, to try and make friends from scratch every year.

  As we got close to ComputerCo, I said, “Where exactly do I go?”

  He directed me to turn just before the store, then make another turn until we pulled up in front of an apartment complex. It didn’t look like that nice a place, but then, I was spoiled, living in a big house with a nice yard.

  “Thanks for the ride,” he said.

  He leaned over and kissed me, quick, on the cheek, then jumped out of the car.

  I waited until he had disappeared between buildings, my cheek tingling where he had kissed me, until I finally put the car in gear and pulled away.

  College Plans

  I didn’t text Brie until the next day, and even then, I didn’t tell her that Daniel had kissed me. She was obsessing over her military school boyfriend. He only had limited e-mail privileges and wasn’t allowed a cell phone, so every time she got a message she stored it on her phone and kept reading it over and over again.

  At school on Monday, neither Daniel nor I said anything about what had happened on Saturday. I could see he was trying to dial back his weird brainiac-ness, giving short answers in class and not always raising his hand. We sat next to each other in calculus, because that’s the way things had shaken out that first day, and we were polite to each other, but it’s not like we were holding hands and mooning over each other, like some kids did.

  We were leaving English class a couple of days later when he said, “I read that author you were telling me about. Jane Austen. I liked Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility, but the one I could relate to best was Northanger Abbey, with all the stuff about her going to Bath and all the snotty people there.”

  As he said it he looked over at Chelsea Scalzitti. She turned away.

  “You didn’t really read all three of those books since last week,” I said.

  “I read fast. I read all her books—those were just the ones that made me think.”

  “Seriously, Daniel. You did not.”

  “Seriously, Melissa. I did.”

  By then we were in calculus so I couldn’t argue with him anymore. But all through class I brooded. “Meet me in the library at the end of lunch,” I said as we walked out.

  The tide of students swept him away before he could ask me anything more. In the cafeteria, I gobbled my sandwich and then said, “I’ve got to go to the library. I’ll see you guys in class.”

  I stood up. Chelsea said, “You’re not meeting Daniel Florez, are you?”

  “Are you my mother now, Chelsea? Because if you are
you need to raise your voice a little and make it whinier.”

  “He’s not like us, Melissa.” She lowered her voice. “Seriously. You should stay away from him.”

  “Thanks for the advice.” I turned and walked away, nearly banging into a sophomore with a tray full of Jell-O. I had no idea what was up with that, or why Chelsea thought Daniel was a bad influence. I mean, was he going to bore me to death?

  He was already in the library when I got there. I went right to the fiction shelves, searching for Jane Austen. The high school hasn’t bought any new books since like 1950, so I was sure there had to be some of her books there. Sure enough, I found a battered hardcover copy of Northanger Abbey. I hadn’t ever read it myself, but I pulled it off the shelf and opened it.

  “All right, time for a quiz,” I said to Daniel. “Who’s the heroine of this book?”

  “That’s easy. Catherine Morland. And her friends are Isabella Thorpe and Eleanor Tilney.”

  I flipped through a few more pages. “She has a favorite book. What is it?”

  “The Mysteries of Udolpho. The author’s name is Radcliffe. By the end of the book Catherine comes to understand that life is not like a novel. Which is kind of ironic considering that she’s a character in a novel, wouldn’t you say?”

  I stared at him, baffled.

  “I told you, I read fast,” he said.

  I shoved the book back on the shelf and pulled out another. “Okay, read the first chapter of this.”

  He took the book from me, opened it, and started flipping pages. Though I watched his eyes move across the page, I couldn’t believe he was really reading, or understanding.

  He looked up when he reached the end of the chapter, then handed the book back to me. “Okay, ask me something.”

  I looked at the book myself. What kind of crap had I picked up? It was some dumb novel about a girl growing up in Kansas at the turn of the last century. And they wonder why kids don’t read.

  I started asking him questions. He got them right, even obscure names of characters who appeared only once.

  Finally I closed the book and put it back on the shelf. “I believe you. But you are some kind of freak. Can you read everything that fast?”

  “Pretty much. But don’t tell anybody else, all right?”

  We started walking to Mrs. Becker’s class. “Wow. You must spend like no time on homework.”

  “It’s how I can work at ComputerCo. If I had to study all the time, I couldn’t do it.” We got to AP history just as Brie, Chelsea, and Mindy did. They all looked at me like I had some kind of disease, just because I was walking with Daniel.

  Neither of us said anything about that kiss on the cheek, but I no longer actively ignored him, and he didn’t push himself toward me. I could see he was trying to fit in—he must have acid-washed his jeans so they weren’t so shiny or creased, and he had picked up a couple of decent T-shirts somewhere, and though his hair was still wild and shaggy it looked like he’d gotten it cut.

  The next day, the guidance counselor, Mr. Chandra, came to AP English to talk about college applications. “You all should have already taken the SAT and the Achievement tests; if you haven’t, you’ll find the next set of dates on the handout I’ve given you.”

  Despite his Indian name, Mr. Chandra was black and came from Trinidad; he spoke with a lilting accent that was kind of mesmerizing. I usually ended up listening to him but not really processing what he said.

  He turned to the blackboard and started writing. “You should have a list of six to ten colleges you are going to apply to,” he said. “At least one should be a safety school—a college you know you can be accepted to, based on your scores and your academic record. For many of you, that’s going to be Penn State.”

  I looked at Brie and Chelsea. There was no way our parents were going to let us go to Penn State. Mindy wanted to go to the University of Michigan for some strange reason, or to the University of Maryland. We kidded her that there were Mississippi, Miami, and Minnesota, too, if she was set on going to a school called UM.

  We had even started pretending to meditate around her, chanting, “Um, um, um,” like it was a mantra.

  Chelsea’s parents were totally on top of her. Her father went to Rutgers for college and law school, and her mother had gone to the College of New Jersey in Trenton, and they were convinced she was going to Princeton and then to Harvard Law. Honestly, I didn’t see it. Chelsea was smart but shallow-- she got things fast but then she didn’t have the brains to get deep into any subject. Her papers always came back with marks that said she had good ideas but needed to explore them in greater depth.

  My parents both went to the University of Pennsylvania; they met when my dad was a junior and my mom was a sophomore, when one of his roommates had been dating one of her friends, and they had all gone to some street festival in Philadelphia.

  They spent the whole afternoon together, my mother told me over and over again, and by the time they got back to the campus they were sure they were meant for each other.

  They really wanted me to go to Penn too, but I wasn’t sure. It just didn’t seem far enough from home, and with my dad working in Center City I thought it would be too easy for them to be constantly on my case.

  Up at the board, Mr. Chandra was still droning on. “Then you should have your aspiration school. The college you’d love to attend, but you’re not sure you can get in. And in the middle, a group of schools where you have a good chance of being admitted, where they offer programs you want to study, in an environment where you’d be comfortable.”

  He lectured us on the difference between colleges—did we want to go to an urban school or one in the country? A big university or a small college? One with a narrow curriculum or a broad one?

  He turned to us and asked who already knew where they were applying. Lashonda Jackson, who was usually the only black girl in AP classes, raised her hand. “I was thinking of going to Howard University in Washington,” she said.

  “Very good school,” he said. “But don’t lock yourself in. You’re a smart girl, and you should be applying to a number of very good colleges.” He looked at the room, as if he wasn’t really talking just to Lashonda. “There are services that will pay your application fees, if your family needs the help. Don’t let that stand in your way.”

  Lashonda’s family lived in an apartment in the flat part of Stewart’s Crossing, down by the river. She had a bunch of brothers and sisters but she was the only smart one, as far as I knew.

  “Anyone else?” he asked. Kate Marsh was applying to Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and a couple of the Seven Sisters colleges. Brie said she wasn’t sure, and Chelsea and Mindy said where they were applying.

  “I’m applying early decision to Penn,” I said. “My parents both went there, and the admissions office said that early decision was best for me.”

  That sent Mr. Chandra off on another tangent, and once again, I spaced out, listening to the melody of his accent. My parents had already started putting together their tax forms and pressing me to write my essays. So instead of listening, I kept looking at Daniel. But he was spacing too; he wasn’t looking at Mr. Chandra, or at me.

  The class ended with Mr. Chandra reminding us that we could come to the guidance office any time to schedule an appointment to discuss our college plans. Mrs. Ash made us applaud him when he finished.

  Daniel didn’t look at me or walk with me when class was finished, and over the next week or two, I started to think maybe that kiss was just some sort of Latin thing, a way of saying thanks for the trip. We saw a documentary on Spain in eighth grade, and people were always kissing each other in that.

  Chelsea had gotten it into her head to hate Daniel, even though he was no threat to her. She wasn’t the smartest girl in school, so it’s not like he was taking over valedictorian from her or something. That was Kate Marsh; she was dull and quiet, but she got straight As in everything and you could always ask her to share her notes if you missed class. The
y were written in perfect handwriting, not a scribble or a scratch out.

  I’ll bet Chelsea’s father could have sent her to private school, but he had come to ninth grade career day once and announced that he paid his taxes to the school district and he expected to get his money’s worth. At the time none of us really knew what a lawyer was or did, except Chelsea, and I think we all just figured it was a guy who liked to talk a lot.

  Chelsea had the same aggressive attitude. You were either with her or against her. She had frizzy blonde hair always pulled into a ponytail, a pointy nose and a matching chin, and she always dressed in whatever was most stylish or most expensive. But I had known her since kindergarten so I was grandfathered in as her friend.

  Not so with Daniel. Every day at lunch she sniped about his clothes, his shaggy hair, his off-brand sneakers. One day she was criticizing his T-shirt, a retro design from some Cuban cigar box label. Though it was a cheap cotton, baggy on him, and the design was faded, I thought it was kind of cool and that made me tired of Chelsea harping on him.

  “Give it a rest, Chelsea,” I said. “Not everybody has a rich daddy who buys her anything she wants.”

  She looked at me like I had stuck an arrow into her chest. “My daddy is not rich. We are upper middle class, just like your family, Melissa. Girls whose fathers drive Mercedes sports cars should not throw stones.”

  “I’m not throwing stones at you, Chelsea. Though I do owe you a snowball from last year—don’t think I’ve forgotten. I’m just saying it’s not his fault his mother can’t afford to buy him fancy clothes.”

  “His mother? What about his father?”

  “I think his father’s dead.”

  She looked at me closely. “And how do you know so much about him?”

  “Geez, Chelsea, it’s not like I’ve memorized his complete biography. I sit next to him in math class, remember.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, nodding.

  I got up and walked over to where Daniel was sitting. “I like your T-shirt,” I said.