But alas, Seth and I pull apart as soon as we hear Andy skipping toward us, and, instead of days, the kiss lasts for about thirty seconds, tops. I touch my lips and grin sheepishly at Seth, whose eyes never leave Andy.
The three of us walk back to the dorm together, Andy monopolizing the conversation with talk about how he plans on seducing the guy he likes. I try to make eye contact with Seth the entire way, but he stays a few steps ahead, body unreadable. And the three of us say goodnight at the bottom of the stairs in Chandler Hall like it was any other night, like the events on the garden bench never took place.
chapter seventeen
Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: So much heaviness. Quote some #ProjectEarth, please. Cheer a girl up.
Smart Singer Girl @smartsingergirl: @kikeronis You okay? Call me if you need to talk.
Once my beer haze fades, I wake up around three in the morning and spend the rest of the night tossing and turning, alternately thinking about kissing Seth and wanting to kiss Jack.
The Seth thing is just confusing. Why did it happen? Do we write it off as a stupid thing we did while drunk? Is that the mature thing to do? Do we even need to have a conversation about it? Could we just ignore it, go about our lives without ever mentioning it again? It’s not like anybody got hurt. I was sad. We were both drunk. It was one, quick moment. Boom. Done.
People do that kind of thing all the time, right? I’m pretty sure Seth does.
I finally wake up for good when I hear the door creak open.
Shielding my eyes from the sunlight peeking through our curtains, I sit up.
“Good morning,” Brie whispers.
“Hi.” My hands shoot to my throat. I’m hoarse. Really hoarse. I hadn’t anticipated that. Is that a side effect of drinking or kissing?
Brie hands me a bottle of water from my mini-fridge. “How are you?” She sits on the edge of my bed. “Your voice sounds awful.”
“I know.” I don’t need a lecture this morning of all mornings. My head throbs. My voice sounds like Bea Arthur’s.
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry. I get it, you know. You guys all think I’m this robot, but I get the impulse of wanting to lose yourself for a little while.”
“I’m starting to think it was a really dumb idea.” My mind runs through all the stupid things I did last night, all the stupid things I had my friends do. It was so stinking reckless.
“Maybe,” says Brie, “but we can’t be expected to make good decisions one hundred percent of the time. We’re human.”
“You do. You make good decisions all the time,” I say.
She rolls her eyes. “Talk to me tomorrow morning.” She stands up. “I am heading out to my parents’ for the day. Mini-family reunion,” she adds, extracting a duffle bag from under her bed.
“You’re staying overnight.”
“Yup. And I’m bringing the guy I like with me. And I’m going to tell him today that I like him, so.” She curtsies.
My mouth drops. “You like someone. You do? Who is he? A guy from home?”
“Nope, from here.” She folds a T-shirt and places it in the duffle bag. “He was in the mood for a home-cooked meal, so I invited him to come with me.”
I consider every guy here at camp. Finley’s with Kendra. Norman is, well, a tenor and shorter than Brie so, automatically, he’s out. Andy’s gay, though that doesn’t rule out her liking him. Seth kissed me last night. No, brain, let’s not think about that. “Is it Philip?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Um…Eric the Hermit?”
“Ew.”
I swallow. “Some guy from another camp? A basketball player? A football player?”
“Kiki, what did I tell you about sports?”
There’s a knock at the door.
“That’s probably him,” she says. “Let him in?”
Like I’m heading to my execution, I stand up, checking myself in the mirror before answering the door. I pull out my ponytail holder and fix my hair into a less ratty topknot. With a deep breath, I heave open the door and say automatically, “Hi, Seth.”
His eyes meet mine, my breath stops in my chest, and not because our attraction for each other is so palpable. It’s because I kissed the guy my friend liked. Inadvertently, sure, but it happened. If Brie is anything like Beth, she’ll murder me when she finds out about this. I retreat to my side of the room, staring at the Bobby Krakow picture on my laptop. I don’t want to see Seth’s reaction to me. I don’t want Brie to see my reaction to him.
“How are you feeling?” he asks.
I looked to the Dana last night. I did what Dana would do, and see where it got me? I’m in the same position I was a few months ago, about to incur the wrath of another girlfriend scorned.
“I’m…okay,” I say, looking up. I know my face is redder than Dana’s red dress. “How are you?” I hope that question conveys every other thought on my mind: We kissed last night. Can you believe it? I know I kissed you first, but you kissed me back. Why did you do that? Do you do that with everyone, or just me? God, you’re pretty, but I’m not sure if I’m over Jack, the bastard. And Brie likes you. Brie! Likes you!
“I’m good.” And then he smiles and winks at me. Seth Banks winks at me. What in the goddamn hell does that mean?
Brie tosses a bag over her shoulder. “Ready?” she asks Seth.
“So you’re going to Brie’s family reunion.” I hope he feels my concern. This is not going to end well for me. I know it. He’s going to accidentally (or purposefully) tell her what happened last night.
“In Batesville,” he says. “Casket capital of the United States.”
“Have fun.” I infuse that “fun” with an undercurrent of “Please keep your mouth shut for the love of God, dude.”
“Maybe Kiki should come, too,” he says. “She’d probably like the chance to get off campus.”
Seriously, between the alcohol from last night and the emotional roller coaster Seth and Brie have me on at the moment, I’m pretty sure my stomach is about to drop right out of my body and onto the floor. “Um,” I say. What do I want? What the hell, Seth? No, I don’t want to come. “I have a ton of work to do.” I glance at Brie. This is the correct answer.
The two of them leave, and I hole up in my room to hide out for the rest of the day. I need to process everything that happened over the past twenty-four hours. I need some time alone. I need to avoid Jack and his girlfriend.
I check in with Twitter. @Windry87 thinks that Seth kissing me after the party is a good thing and that I should treat it as such.
Winnie Dixon @Windry87: @kikeronis He kissed you back. He didn’t have to do that.
Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: @Windry87 True. It’s just that there’s this other guy, who has a girlfriend…
Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: @Windry87 …and this girl, who’s kind of almost my friend…It’s complicated.
Winnie Dixon @Windry87: @kikeronis Girl, your life sounds like Calliope Pfeiffer’s with all the guys chasing you.
Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: @Windry87 Heh.
Eric Damien @TyrionsBanister: @kikeronis I agree with everything @Windry87 says on almost all matters of importance, but especially kissing.
I wonder if something romantic isn’t brewing between those two. And then I catch myself before I start mentally composing Twitter-based fanfic. That’s a bridge too far, even for me.
I pull out a notebook and start writing some pathetic potential lyrics about my guy woes. Once that ceases to be entertaining, I pull out the big guns—Netflix and the salted caramels Brie tries to hide from me in a shoebox marked “dead insects.” I curl up on the forbidden papasan chair and huddle under my comforter. It strikes me that I never once consider taking out my music to practice, maybe because part of me is still thinking, what’s the point?
This is the way I always dealt with my pathetic life back at home when I was alone on a weekend night or whatever. Whenever I found myself in one of these situations, I’d turn on a movie or a TV
show and all of my problems would fade into the background, like magic. But after an episode and a half of Jessica Jones, I realize the distraction’s not working. I’m not paying attention. My mind keeps wandering to everything that happened last night. I’m thinking about Jack and Izzy. I’m wondering what Seth has said to people about us kissing, if he’s said anything at all. I wonder if he’ll say anything to Brie. Maybe he already has.
I hop on Twitter again. I have a few more messages from people telling me how badass I am for kissing the hot guy. I look down at my clothes. No more hot black dress. My Cinderella transformation timed out. I’m back to my worn out T-shirt and boxer shorts. So badass. So freaking badass.
I’m falling back into my old patterns. Why is it so easy to do that? I have two weeks left of camp, two weeks left at Krause; why not make the most of them?
I pull on one of my stupid twee dresses and go for a walk. I pass Mary’s room and Kendra’s, but they’re not around. Then I head down to Unit Six.
I knock on Jack’s door. If Izzy’s still around, I’m not sure how I’m going to explain my being here. Maybe I’ll say I’m looking for Norman, I don’t know. But it doesn’t matter, because Jack opens the door and he’s there alone, phone in hand.
“I can’t believe you told her about the drumming,” he says, like he’s been planning for this moment.
“Fuck you,” is my response to that.
He sighs and shoves his phone into his back pocket.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“Gone.”
“Gone?”
“She was supposed to stay for the weekend, but she headed down to her uncle’s ranch in Kentucky this morning. To think.”
I nod. “We need to talk.”
“You want to come in?”
“No,” I say. There will be no more “in” for Jack and me.
He follows me out of Chandler Hall and onto campus. The air outside is simply perfect, almost offensively perfect. Doesn’t the weather know how shitty my life is? Where’s the driving rain? Where are the dark clouds? The soft wind warms my skin immediately, blanketing me with heat after the air-conditioned dorm. Loads of other students are actually enjoying the weather. The mall is crowded with kids playing Frisbee, lying on blankets together, running along the pathways.
Jack takes a seat on the edge of the star-shaped fountain in the middle of campus.
I stand in front of him. “Did you have fun last night?”
“We stayed in my room and talked. All. Night.” He raises his eyebrows. His face does look tired. And haggard. Good. He pats the spot next to him on the concrete wall.
I sigh and sit down. I know I should probably just tell him off and walk away, but damn it if I don’t want to hear his side of the story.
“I feel bad that you’re mad at me,” he says.
“Well, I feel bad that you feel bad, you poor baby,” I say, my words dripping with sarcasm. I wait, for a second, for him to continue. I should let him squirm, force him to say the words, but I can’t. I have to get it out. Exhaling, I turn to him. “You led me on. You know that.”
He nods.
“You have been a complete asshole to me. Which sucks because I thought we were friends. At the very least.”
“We are friends.”
“You ask a lot of your friends on dates, Jack?”
“No,” he says.
I draw strength from the cool concrete of the fountain below me. It reminds me of the concrete bench where a guy did actually kiss me last night, a really hot guy, in fact. I want to tell Jack that. I want to throw it in his face, but I don’t.
We sit side-by-side on the fountain, an Izzy-sized space between the two of us. We both watch the mall, trees swaying in the warm breeze, people laughing and joking and having fun. In this moment, I feel like I’ll never have fun again.
“She’s my high school girlfriend. We’ve been together for, like, two years,” he says.
“Wow. That’s practically a marriage at our age.” More sarcasm.
“I know you’re kidding, but it is though. And our families are close. We kind of grew up together. Her friends are my friends. There’s a lot of history.” Jack picks up a leafy weed growing at the base of the fountain. He peels the flesh of the leaf away from the spine, cleaning up missed bits as he goes along with the precision of a surgeon. “It was always assumed that we’d stay together. I never gave the decision a second thought. Until I started hanging around with you.” He tosses the remains of the leaf to the ground and wipes his palms against his khaki thighs. “I didn’t tell you I had a girlfriend because…well, I didn’t want to.”
I play connect-the-dots with the moles on my thighs.
“I’ve been with her since we were fifteen. I never dated anyone else. We go to a really small high school where everyone knows everyone else’s business and they fall into coupledom. Out of boredom, really.”
I reach for a daisy next to the fountain. As Jack talks, I amuse myself with a game I like to call, “I hate Jack/I hate him not.” The weird thing, the stupid thing is, I want to reach over and kiss him so badly, it’s killing me. I should want to punch him or spit at him and, yeah, I do want to do those things. But more than anything, I want to jump his bones, maybe to show him what he’ll be missing if he stays with Izzy, maybe to prove to him and to myself that I am actually a sexy, desirable human being, maybe just because sometimes we’re inexplicably drawn to someone and there’s no rhyme or reason for it.
Jack continues, “I was not expecting to…I was not prepared to come here and find somebody I’d want to be with. And then we started hanging out, and I thought you were really funny and smart and kind of a huge jerk like I am and you played golf and you liked Project Earth and you’re not hard to look at, and you’re just so different from her. You look at me like I’m somebody special as I am today, not like I’m just somebody with a bright future, and I kind of wanted to see how the whole thing would play out. I never expected anything to happen, and I honestly never wanted to hurt you.” He raises his eyebrows and smiles at me.
I stare at him, stone-faced. “So basically you admit you’re a huge jackass.”
“I’m just as God made me, sir.”
Quoting Spinal Tap to me, this fucking guy. “Well, what now with your girlfriend? I mean, take me out of the equation completely because I kind of hate your guts and I will for a while, but if you were willing to let yourself get that close to cheating on her or leaving her, are you doing her any favors by staying with her now?”
Jack looks down at the ground for another leaf to mutilate. “It’s complicated.”
“You’re scared. And you’re being a dick to your girlfriend, just FYI.”
He lets that hang there for a few seconds. “I don’t want to lose all my friends and I don’t want to be alone.”
“I’ve been alone for my entire life,” I tell him. “Being alone is not the end of the world. What might just be the end of the world is staying with somebody you’re not sure you care about for the next several months or years or decades while scads of interesting people and opportunities pass you by.”
“How did you get so wise?”
“Lots and lots of television.” I run my fingernails along the concrete of the fountain below me. The effect feels like nails on a chalkboard, but without the noise.
“The night we met, Kiki…”
I glance at him when he doesn’t finish. He’s looking at me, his eyes sad and watery. The contents of my stomach churn. I shrug, my throat too full to speak.
“If we both end up going here…”
I wait for the rest of it.
“I hope we can be friends.”
My eyes well up and I jump off the star fountain. “I don’t want to be friends,” I say.
chapter eighteen
Kiki Nichols @kikeronis: Could the song be right? Was it only the time that was wrong?
Smart Singer Girl @smartsingergirl: @kikeronis (((hugs)))
On Monday morni
ng it hits me. There are two weeks left of camp. Two weeks. That’s it. Even though I feel pretty solid about my music, stress and urgency overwhelm me. There’s not much time left. Ten school days stand between me and a scholarship to Krause. In ten days I’ll know whether or not I’ll be studying music in college or something much less exciting, like Latin. O di immortales!
The pressure seems to have hit everyone else as well. Brie is like a zombie when she returns from her family reunion. She actually blows her performance during voice class on Tuesday. She misses a few entrances and cracks on her high notes. Brie never cracks on her high notes. It’s kind of her thing.
“Are you okay?” I ask on the way to lunch. I’ve pulled her a few paces back from the rest of the group. I’m terrified of her answer.
“I’m fine,” she says, through gritted teeth. Her eyes are bright, too bright. “Just stupid boy stuff. You know how it goes. I’ll be over it in a minute.”
“What stupid boy stuff?” I haven’t seen Seth, at least not alone, since they went to her parents’ house on Saturday. Though that in and of itself doesn’t mean anything. I’ve been actively trying not to see Seth. I’ve been avoiding Unit Six like the plague.
Brie shrugs. “He doesn’t like me like that,” she says. “No big deal.” The furrow in her brow tells me it is a big deal, a very big deal.
Seth, for his part, is not doing so well himself. He and Mary both fail the music theory exam on Wednesday. At dinner, the rest of us try to rationalize that they have nothing to worry about.
“Hey,” I say, “it’s even less of a problem now since, as of this morning, you have one less competitor.” Daffodil up and quit today before even taking the quiz. Despite having one of the best voices in the camp, she’s been struggling with the non-singing parts. Word is Mr. Zagorsky had a come-to-Jesus talk with her after voice class yesterday. “At least you got a better grade than Daffy?”
The Sound of Us Page 17
