The Things You Kiss Goodbye

by Connor, Leslie

  Suddenly, I flashed on all my kisses in the graveyard, how fleeting all of it had seemed. I was pretty sure that Brady was asking me to be his girlfriend. Had he ever had a girlfriend? I wondered. More than one? It didn’t seem like it. He was a little bit awkward and innocent, I thought. But man, his eyes were bright and his lips were full and perfect. I could so try kissing those. . . .

  “Oh, God,” I said, and his eyebrows bumped up just the littlest bit. I shook my head. “Sorry, but no. I cannot go out with you. My father is so old-fashioned. Prehistoric. I’m basically not allowed to date. We’d have to sneak around. It wouldn’t be much fun for you.”

  “Oh. Wuh-well . . . uh, okay then.” I watched the air go out of the boy.

  “I’m sorry. Really. Look, I should go down to the office and use the phone,” I said, though I didn’t really want to leave him. “They’ll wonder at home why I’m not off the bus yet. I’m supposed to call for a ride if I miss it.”

  “You don’t have a phone?” He twisted up his face as he dug into his pocket. “Here.” He held his phone out. I took it carefully. I loved phones. They were sleek and shiny and responsive—all in a package like a chocolate bar. And this one was warm from being next to Brady Cullen.

  I dialed home. I got my father and, aware that Brady was listening, I tried to keep it simple.

  “Bampas? Yes. Sorry, I missed the bus. I was slow getting out of the art room,” I lied. “Yep, okay. See you down in the circle—” I looked at Brady while Bampas scolded me. I was sure that he could hear everything.

  “I do not understand it, Bettina! What keeps you in that art room too late for a bus? You will explain at supper tonight. When you take the time of others, you disregard them. And when you are late, you make them worry—”

  I mouthed the word sorry at Brady and rolled my eyes while I continued to use his beautiful phone. “Yes, Bampas. I will. I will. Yes. Bye.” When the call was over, I held the phone to my chest for a beat and sighed. “And there is a little sample of my life for you,” I told Brady.

  “So, are you in trouble now? He sounds kinda mad. Will you be grounded?”

  “No,” I said. “Well, not any more than I usually am. I’m kind of grounded as a way of life.” Again, Brady and I were laughing together. “And sometimes, there just has to be a lecture and then it’s over.”

  “So, wait . . . is Bampas your father or your grandfather?”

  In truth, Bampas was old enough to be my grandfather. But Brady didn’t need to know that. “‘Bampas’ is Greek for father, or dad,” I told him. “Like Papa.”

  Brady reached for my hand and didn’t so much take it as he gave it a timid sort of tug. “Is it okay if I walk you out to the circle? Or is that a bad idea?”

  “Even Bampas doesn’t get to say who goes out to the circle,” I said.

  On our way through the lobby, Brady and I leaned together. I gave him our home number and watched as his long fingers quickly tapped it into his phone. I should not be encouraging this boy, I thought. But it’d be so nice if he really did call.

  For the next few weeks, I missed the bus about every other day. Bampas would pull up and see me with standing with Brady. Finally, he dug down for the monotone and asked me, “Who is the boy, Bettina?”

  “His name is Brady Cullen, Bampas.”

  Without taking his eyes off the road, my father said, “Do I need to tell you—”

  “That there is no dating until you tell me there will be dating? And not to ask before I am at least sixteen? No, you don’t.”

  “And do you know why?”

  Oh. This part had not come up before. I looked at Bampas and tried to read his profile—stern as ever—as he stared forward.

  “It is because you are not mature enough for a relationship, Bettina.”

  I suppose I could have said what I was thinking—that I wouldn’t mind practicing a little bit before anyone called it a “relationship.” But that wasn’t a good way to deal with Bampas; he’d ground me for being fresh. So, I dropped it.

  Then one day around the end of May, after I had missed the bus some more, Brady walked up to the car with me. He leaned in to the window and introduced himself to my father, all the while holding my hand on the outside of the car where Bampas could not see.

  “Oh, yes. You are the boy who has called the house?” Bampas said.

  “Yes, sir. That one time, it was during your dinner. I apologize for that.”

  Bampas progressed from a shrug to a nod, saying, “No, no. This is okay.”

  “Mr. Vasilis, I was hoping Bettina could come to Shoot for a Cause with me on Friday night. It’s a cookout and basketball free throw contest, down in the park. We have sponsors and the money goes to disaster relief.”

  I stood outside the car, linking pinkies with Brady and thought about what a nice try that had been. Then damned if I didn’t hear Bampas say yes. And damned if Brady didn’t stand up, smile, and brush me a little kiss for the first time, there above the roof of the car where Bampas would not see it happen.

  Brady Cullen became my beacon. He was the boy my father would let me go out with. Brady picked me. Bampas picked Brady. I flew free—a couple of times a week.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Three

  IN THE BEGINNING, BRADY WAS WHAT ANYONE WOULD call a good boyfriend. He waited for me between classes, and he sat with me at lunch on the days our schedules allowed. He bought me little books of cartoony tattoos and left funny cards in my locker. Once, he brought me a lemon-poppy cupcake in a box from the best bakery in the city. He’d gotten up early just to have it at my locker when I arrived in the morning.

  I made Brady ugly little clay creatures with big ears, snouts, and toothpick horns on their heads. I pinched them together toward the end of art class and handed them to him while they were still wet. He’d take them from me knowing he’d end up with mud on his fingers, which I found hilariously sweet, and put them on the top shelf of his locker to dry. He gave me discreet kisses in the hall. I had told him no tongues in school. Couples that did that grossed me out. He honored that.

  He seemed oblivious to the fact that other than Spooner, who was about to graduate and be gone, his friends hadn’t exactly warmed to me—especially the girls. They eyeballed the clothes I wore, my henna inkings, heavy-metal jewelry. I didn’t think of myself as an outrageous dresser. But I definitely clashed with their designer labels. No one was outright mean but they nudged each other in my presence and made faces they thought I couldn’t see. No one ever said more than a perfunctory “hey” to me. I wasn’t good at striking up conversations with them either. I couldn’t shake the feeling that Brady’s friends didn’t get me. But Brady was steadfast, if shy, in his affection for me. That melted me over and over again and it made me want to be with him no matter who else was around.

  Then, just before school let out for summer, he talked me into something I had never even thought of doing. “Be a cheerleader,” he said. I stared at him. If the mere suggestion wasn’t enough to make my eyeballs squirt out of my head, he gave my arm an encouraging pump too. “You could make it,” he said.

  I managed a shrug for his sake, but a resounding no bounced all around the inside of my head. “I don’t think that’s really my thing. . . ,” I tried to tell him.

  “Aw, come on. Sure it is. All that dance stuff you did?”

  “But they’ll make me take my boots off. . . .” I whined. “I need my boots.” I knocked my heels together and Brady laughed.

  He pushed at me. “Come on, come on, come on. . . .”

  “I don’t know. . . . I guess I could try—”

  “Hell, yeah!” he said. He popped his fist off his chest and did a big sidestep in celebration. He jumped up, shot a pretend ball at a pretend hoop. I had to smile as his cap of hair landed back on his head. “If you make it, you get into every game free. You
can watch me play. . . .” He tried to begin a list but it seemed to end there.

  I wanted to go to Brady’s games and if I made that cheerleading squad, Momma and Bampas would pretty much have to allow that—sometimes even on school nights. Oh. My. Gosh.

  “Colleges like to see that too—the extra stuff—besides the grades,” Brady added.

  Colleges. A stone sank through me. Bampas wouldn’t talk about college—not for me. I was all about art, and Bampas had always said, “You don’t need to be at an expensive university for what you do.” That would always catch me a sympathetic and pensive look from Momma. She wouldn’t say it, but I think she felt we should at least talk about college. But when I opened my mouth to mention the possibility of scholarships, Bampas raised a finger and said, “Siopi.” He was telling me to be silent.

  I did try out for cheerleading. I wasn’t as loud as the teacher-judges wanted me to be. But I learned routines in a snap because I was used to impatient chorographers. As for what little actual dancing the cheerleaders did—well, piece of cake. I could leap. Or jump. I could lift and be lifted—no fears about that. If anything set me apart from the others, it was that I arrived and left the tryout alone.

  A day after tryouts, they posted the names on a list in the girls’ locker room. Bad timing: I met a cluster of girls ushering out a slump-shouldered friend who was weeping her way along the tiled wall. “Who is Bettina Vasilis, anyway?” she choked between sobs. “She took my spot!”

  “Oh, so sad for you, Jenna . . .” came a consoling voice. “I think she’s that art room girl—the one with the long, long braid. She wears metal. . . . She’s into grunge. . . .”

  Then a redhead locked eyes on me and hushed her friends with a few nudges and the words, “Hey, you guys . . .”

  I was Bettina Vasilis. Right smack there. I couldn’t do much but give them all a “sorry” look. The group went on by, moving like a single organism, I couldn’t help noticing. The redhead doubled back to whisper to me. “This is just hard for Jenna. It’ll be her senior year. She really wanted a spot on the squad. But, hey, no mean stuff intended, okay?”

  “Same,” I said, but I felt like I should apologize and hand over a pom-pom.

  I’d made the winter squad, which, I learned, was more competitive than the fall squad in our all-about-basketball town. Who knew? With the posted roster was a message saying we would start practicing in September. That was months before basketball season began and that seemed excessive to me. But, hey, there it was: my legit reason not to get on the bus for home right after the bell and, if the team made the play-offs, we’d be hollering and jumping through spring vacation. So, except for poor, crying Jenna Somebody, I started to like the idea.

  Brady was thrilled.

  “It’s going to go like this,” he said, and he drilled an imaginary ball toward the floor. “Every time I take a foul shot, you watch ’cause I’m going to bounce it seven times for the letters in your name. B-E-T-T-I-N-A. It’s for good luck,” he said.

  Of course, between making the squad in spring and starting practices in the fall, summer happened. Brady and I had our two nights a week together: the two that Bampas allowed, and I snuck out a handful of times. Brady didn’t want me to use up my nights out to go to crowded games in the park. “I want to really be with you on those nights,” he insisted. My heart worked overtime, doing all the things a heart will do when it is letting someone close—the flutters, the swells. Nothing had ever felt so good as bursting out of the house and into Brady’s arms—all summer long.

  By then, I was sixteen. But since Bampas had not even thought of letting me learn to drive, he didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know that even though Brady was older than most rising high school juniors I wasn’t supposed to be riding in a car with him, and Brady’s parents didn’t seem to care. So he’d pick me up, and take me to his house in the village. From there, we’d walk under miles of twilight together, through village streets and around the town parks. Maintenance guys locked up gates behind us and we pretended to leave. But really, we lurked, and we squeezed past posts or climbed fences after they’d gone. One night when the orange trucks had bobbed away for the night, I sat across Brady’s lap while we kissed by the base of an oak tree. Gently, he slid his hands under my shirt, touched my belly skin with his fingertips. A long time later, he’d gone no higher—and no lower—than my first rib. His tentativeness melted me. No more one-shot graveyard kissing for me. No jawing on each other like there was no tomorrow. I had a nice boyfriend. I had him before anyone else had him—I was fairly certain of that—and I liked it that we were taking our time. Every so often I remembered what Bampas had said and I felt like I was proving him wrong; this was a relationship.

  On a starry night in July, Brady and I stood in a fort of rhododendrons not far from a darkened baseball field. Loose buttonholes made it easy and my shirt fell back over my shoulders. The skinny straps of a cami slid easily down my arms. He touched me so lightly. His breath went crazy and he told me, “Sweet Jesus, I’m gonna pass out.”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” I giggled, and his forehead met my shoulder and together, we knelt safely down.

  “This is so . . . embarrassing. How out of my league am I?” He lay back in the grass, hands over his eyes, and laughed at himself. I wedged up against him, felt his heart pounding through his chest. We lay nestled together, looking up through the leaves at the shining pinholes of light in the sky until he felt a little brave again. “I—I don’t even know exactly how to say it,” he stammered. “I guess being with you like this . . . just blows me away, is all.” I leaned over and kissed his summery neck.

  So summer went. Little step by little step, I was falling in love.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Four

  COME SEPTEMBER, BRADY AND I WALKED INTO THE FIRST day of school together, me solidly on his arm. I felt his slight backward tug the second we hit the lobby and heard him swear under his breath. He scanned the hall like he was looking for something more to attach to than just me.

  Brady was not in love with the “school” part of school; he had confided this to me. So on that September morning, I tried to console him. But he pulled forward and led me to a cluster of his basketball buddies. I stood outside the huddle, my hand still tucked in the fold of Brady’s elbow. I still hadn’t gotten to know his friends and now I wondered what my absence at all those summer games had cost me. The girls seemed familiar with Brady in a way I did not remember from the spring. They’d look at me sideways and barely say hello. I felt like I had something that was supposed to be someone else’s. I heard one of the guys say to another, “Guess that’s still going on. . . .” while he cocked his head toward Brady and me. I was the girl he’d brought in from the outside. I shifted in the school lobby, turning myself a few more degrees away from the circle.

  I wanted to move on to my locker and peek into the art room and see what Mr. Terrazzi had done with the art budget over the summer. But Brady kept on talking to his pack and I didn’t have the heart to pry him away. This was the good thing about school for him, his morning pep rally. If he could have skipped straight to basketball season he would have. I had half on ear on them as they talked about the state trophy they were going to bring home at the end of the winter. How they could focus on something that was still such a long way off, I had no clue.

  Under my feet, there was the large mosaic of our school mascot—the White Tiger. I traced an arc across it with the toe of my boot. It had been designed by a group of senior art students some years before. This wasn’t the first time I’d studied it. The White Tiger wasn’t just white. There were dozens of colors of pale blues and pearly grays in that pelt. How had they done it? I wondered. How did they plan for such a large-scale piece of art?

  “Hey, Bettina!” I looked up—way up—almost to the top of the stairs. There was T
ony Colletti breaking into a grin. I had the thought that from where he stood, I must look like the tail on a big letter Q, standing outside of the jock circle like I was. I suddenly felt like a Brady Cullen accessory—like his backpack or gym bag. I waved to Tony with my free arm. He descended quickly and came to stand beside me.

  “Hey! How was your summer? I can’t believe it—I never saw you,” he complained. “And now it’s over!”

  “Oh, I know,” I said. “The families just don’t get to together anymore.” I flashed on old times—the block parties down in the little ethnic neighborhoods where we’d lived before Bampas built the house out near the river. Seeing Tony made me nostalgic for fat trees growing out of the sidewalks, for brick houses with white iron railings, and steamy bowls of pasta fagioli. I remembered the dozens of Virgin Marys watching over that neighborhood from turquoise-blue grottos in the narrow backyards. I cocked my head at Tony. “Actually, maybe all of you do still get together,” I said. I gave him an embarrassed smile. “We’re the ones that moved.”

  “Eh, we don’t do that so much. You and me, we’ll have to light a fire under everyone again, huh? We’ll do something this fall. Bring your little brothers down for trick or treat.”

  “Sure,” I said, but I doubted it’d happen. “How is everyone? Your family?” I asked. He gave me a nod but his grin dropped in a dark sort of way.

  “We should catch up,” he said. “Soon. I’ll look for you.” The first bell rang while I was watching him walk down the hall. Tony Colletti had had that same bouncy walk all his life, I realized, and it made me smile.

  Suddenly, Brady was in my ear. “That guy—he always has to talk to you, doesn’t he?” The huddle of basketballers was dispersing. I stepped out of their way.

  “Who? Tony?” I thought for just a second. Always? More like he’s the only guy who ever talks to me. “Yeah,” I said, “Our families know each other from wa-a-ay back. We used to live two doors down fr—”