“Yeah?” Brady interrupted me, and looked down the hall after Tony for a beat. Then he gave me an intense stare. He thrust his jaw at me a hitch. “Come on, let’s go,” he said. I was afraid I had somehow hurt his feelings but I let it go since I also knew that Brady was in a mixed mood about being back at school.
Walking so close to him in the halls I noticed how incredibly “eyes up” Brady was—meeting gazes and giving and receiving little nods and hellos every step of the way. This was new since last spring when we had both been pretty much invisible. People knew Brady now—about twice as much as they didn’t know me.
When we reached my locker, he kissed my forehead. “Maybe see you at lunch if our schedules work out, huh?”
“I hope so,” I said. Then I added, “Hey, hang in there. Have a good morning.”
“What?” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Are we some old farts getting up from the breakfast table, here?”
I tipped my head back and laughed.
Truth was, I liked that we weren’t a new couple anymore. We had lasted the summer, and that was always a big question with couples that met up in the spring. If anyone had asked, I might have said our relationship had been cemented by equal parts freedom and longing. It would have been nice to have more nights together. But I had warned Brady that it was best to push gently against the force that was my father.
“You’ve already performed a miracle where Dinos Vasilis is concerned,” I had said, and it was true. Bampas had noted offhandedly that he was surprised we’d lasted. He must have been solid in his belief that Brady was the right boy for me to date. After the first several weeks, he hadn’t even checked up on us the way I thought he would. Sure, I had curfew. But usually it was Momma who met me when I came in at night. I was freer than I ever dreamed I could be.
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Five
SO, BAMPAS GAVE ME SOME GRIEF ABOUT GOING OUT that first Friday night after school began again. It was as if he had to. He rumbled about my homework and how the lazy days of summer were passed and how I needed a schedule again. But I bargained hard to have that Friday night with Brady. He was so low about being in classes; I took it upon myself to try and keep him bolstered him up.
I won out with Bampas, and Brady came to get me that night. We had to drop the car back at his house in the village so his mother could use it. Mrs. Cullen waved from the kitchen window. Brady held the keys up over his head, jangled them for her to see, then threw them onto the seat of the car. She acknowledged, and Brady took my hand.
“Let’s walk to the park,” he said. “Then maybe we’ll come back here.” He was giving me a potent sort of look, and I felt like I was missing something—was it about the car? His mother? Or more stuff about the start of school? “I was just thinking we could hang a while,” he added.
“Yeah. Sure.” I agreed. “Let’s just have a kick-back night.”
We ended up making a quick loop that evening, rushed along by a metallic scent in the air and a sky full of rain clouds and then trees shaking in the wind. Half a block away from Brady’s house, he paused to point to a brick school building.
“See, Alcott Elementary,” Brady said. “My first and favorite place ever to shoot hoops,” he said.
“Really?” I asked. “Even now?”
“Yep. That’s where it all began. That’s where I found out I could sink six, then eight, then thirty in a row.”
I started to tell him how curious I was about Alcott—the school I had not gone to. But the rain began to come down so Brady took my hand and we started to jog.
That run in the rain was exactly what I would have planned if I could have, to keep Brady feeling light. He took us shortcutting across the last few lawns. We jumped little fences and avoided flower beds.
“This way, this way.” He hustled me along the narrow side yard at his house. He stopped us at the cellar door—the kind that looks like a slide for little kids. He pulled it open and said, “Go ahead down. Careful.”
“Okay . . . but why? What’s down here?” I said. Was this the way in from the rain at the Cullen household? I two-footed my way down the cement stairs. Brady came in behind me, tucking himself below the door. He eased it down to so it wouldn’t slam.
“Why are we here?” I whispered. The rain pattered on the metal door. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I had that excited, “safe inside” feeling. I grabbed Brady’s shirt and pressed my nose to his chest, giggling.
“Come on,” he said. He guided me along the cinder-block wall to a place where just a little more light came in through a ground-level window.
My toe bumped over something. I looked down and saw the raw edge of a big carpet scrap, then the old futon mattress covered in a worn Sesame Street sheet.
“I set us up a little spot,” Brady said. I sighed. It was rare that we had a private place to be together. He wrapped me in his arms.
Holding me close and kissing me, he pulled me down and laid me on my back. Quickly, he peeled off his T-shirt. He slid my sweater up, undid the catch on my bra with a flick of his fingers. Our skin was damp from the rain and I shivered. He hovered over me, as if to warm me for a moment. But then he sat back just enough so he could slide his hands up under my skirt. I felt his fingertips curl around the thin elastic at my hipbones. “Brady . . .” I whispered. He eased me out of my panties. “Hey, Brady . . .” I whispered again.
I guess I wanted to say that I thought we were skipping a few steps. But he didn’t want to talk, and now I seemed not able to. A few seconds later, a condom wrapper with the corner torn back lay curled near my shoulder.
I never saw what he looked like that first time, and I can’t describe what I felt. Not pain. But not nothing. When I twisted underneath him, he pressed closer. He whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”
I braced, and for a second or two, I turned my face into the sheet underneath me. I saw the yellow of Big Bird’s beak, the white, cartoony eye with the black-dot pupil. The thought of my little brothers—their TV shows and stuffed animals flashed through my mind. Was that even appropriate? Wasn’t I supposed to be perfectly, completely, and passionately linked to Brady right now? And what was he thinking and feeling way up there above me? How could I be this close to him yet feel like he was far away?
He gasped several times, grunted, then rested heavily on top of me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I’d once watched our rabbits mate—the buck had fallen off the doe at the finish but he’d clung to her, wheezing once or twice before he’d righted himself. I wished for Brady to roll off, roll away.
The Cullen’s basement ceiling whirled. I was shaky. Brady knew it. He started kissing me and hugging me. He tried to cajole me with huge, handsome smiles shining in the dim basement light. “I—I’m so glad we did this now.” He pressed those words into me—his hands on my face. “I love you so much. I do. So much.” Finally, he thought to ask, “You okay?”
“Yeah, I am.” I slid out from under him. I began to grope for my clothes.
“Hey. Come on.” He pulled me back against him but I sat forward, clutching my sweater in a ball at my chest. My head swam with thoughts. I felt surprised and weird and maybe scared.
“I—I just want to know that—” I swallowed hard and began again. “That you . . .”
“What? Tell me.”
“I—I don’t want everyone to know.”
“Uh, well, people are going to figure,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. “We actually waited kinda long. People hook up all the time—”
“No,” I said. “No. This is us. This is ours, what we just did. I—I’ll feel sick if you race out of here and tell your friends as if it were nothing—”
“You think I’m going to do that? Really?”
I felt bad then. “No . . . but please, Brady. I didn’t know we were here yet. I mean I thought eventually
. . . b-but I didn’t think we’d do this now.”
“Well, I kind of know what you mean. But I think you were just . . . nervous. It’ll be better the next time,” he said.
Well, the next time was a few days later—same place. We’d cut a lunch period together. I went willingly—didn’t think he’d go for it all in the middle of the day, though that sounds idiotic even to me now. Anyway, it was worse. I was tense, still trying to catch up to where Brady felt we were. I’d gotten a look at him this time, and that made me even more apprehensive.
“Jesus, P’teen-uh! Stop making that face,” Brady finally said. “Christ! I can’t do it if it’s gonna be like this.” He stopped and stripped off the rubber. “Do you know how much these things cost?” He shot the empty condom at Big Bird’s head. “You have to try,” he said. “And be glad I protect you! Not all guys are that good about this stuff,” he told me. All I could think was, Hey, protection is a given. But of course I didn’t say it. In fact, I was speechless. Again.
It was bad. Really bad. I thought we might have ruined every good thing we’d had. Dressing again and hurrying back to school for the afternoon was horrible. I felt like crying, and he wouldn’t speak. This was worse than the first time. His angry tone had stunned me. I was heartsick. I spent the next hours at school asking myself what happened to the sweet, shy boy who’d nearly passed out the first time he’d touched me. I was desperate to have that boy back.
By late afternoon, Brady had flipped. He tracked me down before I got on my bus to go home. “I’m sorry. Man, I am so, so sorry. I was a total shit.” His eyes pinked up as he spoke. He buried his face in my neck. He called to apologize again before I went to sleep that night.
Rough starts, I thought. This had probably happened to other couples. The next morning, he brought me flowers. We hugged in the hall and fought off tears. We told each other everything was okay, and I knew we’d go on.
When the next opportunity came, Brady sure made it was better. He slowed down, gave me time. We’d had a bad patch, Brady Cullen and I. But now he wanted to learn how to make it good for me.
“Don’t be embarrassed, just tell me,” he said. At first I couldn’t. But he just kept encouraging me and finally, one afternoon in Brady’s basement, I got to the good part.
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Six
SO, I HADN’T HEARD FROM ANY OF THE CHEERLEADERS over the summer—no time to become friends. I was worried about fitting in with them but I’d been so wrapped up in Brady that it didn’t seem so important. I was aware that they were comprised of a pair of cliques that brushed up against each other and traded members. Our first gathering of the school year took place a few weeks in. It was not a practice but a meeting to set the schedule. After that was done, there was some socializing that had nothing to do with me—until I felt them circling up. The redhead from spring tryouts asked, “So, hey, Bettina . . .” (Ah, someone remembered me . . . and was that going to be good or bad?) “How was your summer?”
I played it friendly. “Great!” I said. “Except for too much hanging out at home. I’m so glad school has started again.”
“Oh, you didn’t work?” another girl asked. She skewed her jaw, twirled her hair around her finger.
I shook my head no. I had wanted a job. But that was another never-ending bone between my parents and me. Mamma was a broken record: “Your Bampas provides for you, gives you money when you need it. In return, you’ll babysit when we ask.” To me, they were keeping me home and keeping me from having much money of my own. But it was okay. I had been so happy all summer. I’d been allowed to go out with Brady.
Then someone said it. “So . . . you’re still with Brady. . . .”
“Yeah. I am.” I smiled.
“Ooh, that’s Brady Cullen, right? He’s adorable!” one girl blurted, then giggled in a genuine sort of way. I had noticed her before. She was little and sort of hyper, bouncing about the open lobby like a free satellite.
Before I could nod at her, someone squelched her, saying, “Emmy, don’t be a freak. . . .”
Emmy bit her thumb, closed her eyes tightly, and said, “Okay, I’m being quiet now,” and she laughed again. I pegged Emmy as the most cheerful cheerleader right then and there, and I began to think of the rest of them as the Not-So-Cheerleaders. They weren’t done with me yet.
“So, that whole thing is all good? You and Brady?”
“Real good . . .” I said, and all of us laughed, and I felt one little second of warmth. I very nearly blurted something non-detailed about that recent bad patch. But I caught myself. That was between Brady and me, and we’d worked it out.
“But how come we never saw you at summer league games?” They wanted to know. “Everybody goes . . .”
“Right. Well, it’s complicated but, um . . .” I was not going to try to explain the uncool style of my upbringing to these girls. “Brady and I saw each other a couple of nights a week. Just not basketball nights,” I said.
“Oh. I guess if I had a boyfriend I’d want to see him play. But you did see him? And he really doesn’t see anyone besides you?”
“Well . . . n-no,” I said. There was a roaring moment of silence in which I could almost feel Brady’s fingertips on my skin—new inch by new inch. We were close, close, close all summer. Shed our shyness, shed our clothes . . .
I wasn’t sure what those girls were getting at but it seemed like something was up. I looked at their faces. Most of them looked either down or away. “We had an awesome summer,” I managed to say. There was another stretch of dead airtime. Then somebody chirped.
“Well, that’s good!”
Something about that high note stuck in my craw.
So, in the late afternoon, as I was pulling my head back through my shirt down in Brady’s basement, I asked him about it. “Hey,” and I touched his arm so he’d look at me and listen, “We’re all good right? I mean, have you . . . has there been . . . anybody else? You’re just seeing me, right?”
“What? You mean have I been going out with other girls?” His head drew backward like he’d been knocked in the nose. “Sheesh! P’teen-uh! What the hell?”
“W-we didn’t ever talk about whether this was exclusive. Someone said something—basically asked me if you had cheated on me this summer.”
“Oh, who’s going around saying that stuff? Who the fu—” Brady didn’t finish but he plowed into me with a teeth-banging kiss—his only answer to my question.
As the weeks passed, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that between June and September, while I’d been falling all over Brady, I had missed something—and maybe it wasn’t even exactly what the cheerleaders had hinted at. But now I could see a change as we walked through the school together. Brady Cullen wasn’t a shy, skinny guy bouncing a ball just beneath everyone’s radar anymore. He was a nodding, fist-bumping, “jock machine,” working the hallway like it was his job. Younger girls were baking him brownies and he was mugging for phone photos with them. Everyone knew him, and everyone prized him. For all I know, that’s exactly what turned him—exactly why he started to do bad shit to me.
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Seven
IT’S HARD TO REMEMBER EXACTLY HOW THE BAD STUFF began . . . or when it turned from amusement to malice. One of the things Brady and I liked to do—when it was just the two of us—was play. In the beginning I’d bump off his shoulder to jostle him and he’d jostle me back. We would end up laughing and holding hands. As he got more comfortable around me he’d dump me on the ground—always protecting my landings—and maybe subject me to a raspberry on the neck. We ended up hugging and kissing every time.
In school, he started to make a game of coming up behind me, grabbing my braid tail, and wrapping
it around my head so it covered my eyes. Harmless enough. But there were times that he pulled a little too hard, or kept me blind for too long—with other people watching and laughing. I didn’t love it but I wouldn’t make a scene. A couple of times he made me late for class. Once, I was about to get written up. But Brady popped through the door to the classroom and took the blame. He talked the teacher into letting him take my half hour of detention, which made him legend in the world of boyfriends.
I guess one day does stand out. We were at his locker just before lunch. One of those little clay figures I had made for him back in the spring fell off the shelf of his locker and broke into crumbs except for the head.
“Oops,” I said, looking at the dirt our feet. It was a little sad. It was our favorite, the one I had named Sputnik for its cap full of toothpick horns. When we’d emptied our lockers before summer break, I’d carried Sputnik into the art room and had found him a shelf to summer over on.
I looked at Brady in a mock-solemn way. “Here lies Sputnik . . .” I began an epitaph. “Hold on . . . I’m trying to come up with a rhyme. . . .”
Brady picked the clay head off the floor. “Save me!” he squawked, and I thought it was funny. “Fix me!” He waggled the head at me. I played along.
“No, no. You are beyond repair and must accept your fate. I shall return you to the bucket of clay from which you came—”
“No! Save me, bitch!” Brady jabbed the spiny head at me and caught me in the forearm.
“Ow!” I drew back. “Brady, you just clawed me with Sputnik!” I let out an incredulous gasp. I pushed up my sleeve. A pair of stinging red welts were rising on my forearm.
“I toothpicked you,” he said, and he laughed out loud. Then damned if he didn’t come after me for a second swipe. Thing is, I’m not sure how it would have stopped if it hadn’t been for several teachers who came down the hall. I slid my sleeve down over the scratches. They told us to clean up the clay crumbs and move on.
The Things You Kiss Goodbye Page 3