The Things You Kiss Goodbye

by Connor, Leslie

  And we’re outta here . . . thank God.

  I got through the rest of the cheers, but barely. I wanted to get down on my back and pull my knees into my chest—fix my spine. Take some pressure off my neck. Sometime after the second half got underway, I saw Momma and my brothers standing against the wall of the gym. That was a surprise. Favian and Avel banged their hands together, point after point. The mighty White Tigers trounced their visitors, sixty-eight to forty-one. Brady Cullen had a very good game.

  It emerged that there was a postgame pizza-eating event, cheerleaders included. The booster club set that up in the cafeteria. All I wanted was three ibuprofens and a hot compress. I was pretty sure the boosters weren’t catering to me. It was Momma who nodded at me to go join the others. If I didn’t go, she’d wonder what was wrong and, of course, Brady was waiting for me. He was the high scorer. Twenty-eight points worth of success drew his mouth up at both corners. He took a big hop toward me when I entered the cafeteria. He leaned down and put his arms around me. I stiffened.

  “Was that crazy-great or what?” he asked me. “Did you see that? Twenty-eight points. That’s my highest game ever.”

  “Congrats,” I said.

  “Hey, come here a minute.” He took my hand and led me out to the quiet of the back corridor. Brady wiped his face with his hands. He sat back against the glass-block wall. “Phew,” he said. “I’m so friggin’ glad to have that game behind me. You have no idea. . . .”

  “You did great,” I said it again.

  “P’teenuh . . .” I looked at Brady Cullen. First, he tried to charm me with a smile and wide, playful eyes. But then he began tucking his chin. A second later, his eyes were all pinked up. “I’m sorry,” he gulped. “Sorry about before.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to talk about that here,” I told him.

  A pair of custodians came into the hall. Now we really couldn’t talk. Brady bit his knuckles. The workers collected their mops and rolling buckets and headed away.

  “This game had me so stressed,” he whispered.

  “I know it did,” I said. I tried to sound understanding. But it was a reply I might have given to a stranger. How could that be? All his familiar features were right there in front of me. But my sense of him was confused. So much of the boy I had been so taken with months ago was gone. I didn’t want to talk to this Brady. I wanted to go home.

  “Did you see me spell out your name on those three foul shots? The seven bounces? Did you tell your girlfriends I do that for you?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t tell them much of anything,” I said, and I watched him wilt.

  “Come on. Don’t be mad. Don’t be like that—”

  “I have to go.” I pointed a finger over my shoulder. “My mother is here to get me. My brothers are with her. You know how my father is. We need to go home.”

  “Wait—wait . . .” he stammered, then stopped. He looked helpless.

  “Congrats again,” I told him. “Really. The team looked awesome.” I slid away to find Momma and the boys.

  At home, Momma came into my room and perched on my bed. “Did you have a good time doing the cheers?” she asked.

  I waited. “Did you think I looked like I had a good time?” I asked, no sarcasm.

  “That’s why I’m asking,” she said softly.

  The truth about Brady Cullen was right there like a welling bee sting on the tip of my tongue. But I couldn’t bear to speak about it and it wasn’t what Momma had asked.

  “Bettina?”

  “No,” I whispered. “Momma, I hated cheering. I did fine, but it doesn’t feel right. I’m horrible for saying so but it feels like a comedown from my dancing, Momma. I was embarrassed calling out those lame chants. And this dress feels like it belongs on anyone but me.” I bit my lip. “And next week I have to do it again.” A flood of tears got away from me. I scrambled to collect them before Momma could see. But I knew it was too late. “I know, I know,” I said. “I can’t be crying just because I am a cheerleader. . . .”

  “I didn’t say that,” Momma said. She reached and covered my hand with hers. Why was she being so sweet about this?

  I sniffed and I cleared my throat. “I’m okay,” I said. I waved my hands to erase the air around me. “I am.” I absently pulled up on the neck of the cheer dress and wiped my eyes on it. “Oh! Now I have mascara on it. What if this stains? Oh, hell! Oh, sorry, Momma.” I did not usually swear even mildly in front of her.

  “Bettina . . .” My mother leaned toward me. She set both hands on my shoulders. “It’s only makeup. It comes off your eyes easily, it will come right out of the dress.”

  “Even a white dress?”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay,” I said. I sucked it up with all I had left in me. “I thought it was nice that you came to the game,” I said. “That awful game,” I added, and a laugh escaped through my quivering lips. Momma laughed too. She went into my bathroom and started a shower for me.

  “Nice and warm.” She shook water from her hand. “Come on,” she said, switching places with me. “Hand me out the dress, and I’ll put it to soak.”

  “Okay. Thank you. And Momma, don’t say anything to Bampas. Please. I’m just PMS-ing or something. I don’t even know why I’m so upset. I’ll just finish the season. I’ll be fine.” I pushed off the dress and Momma took it at the door, gathering it into a neat roll.

  “You’ll feel better after a shower,” she said.

  Momma was exactly right. The shower helped. (Of course, I downed those ibuprofens too.) I let that hot water pour over my aches. I stood in my steamy bathroom afterward. I reached up to drop my nightgown over my head but stopped. I knew why my neck and shoulder muscles hurt, but why did I hurt along that one side? I wondered. I wiped down the mirror with a towel, held it to my chest and turned my bare back to the glass.

  There wasn’t much to see. But walking my fingers along my skin I could feel it—a new bruise rising. A set of bruises, actually. They were weirdly straight-line in shape and ran from the back of my shoulder down to my butt, skipping the hollows of my body. Cowboy would have referred to it as right, rear-quarter damage if I had been a car. What did this? Something long, and with an edge—

  Oh. My locker door. That’s what.

  In the mirror where the steam was beginning to collect again, my reflection caught my eye and I looked at the girl through the haze—really looked. I let my towel slide down. I scanned the body in the glass, from head to breasts to hipbones and back up again to the staring gold eyes.

  I asked that girl in a whisper, “How did you let him do that to you?” I thought of Cowboy and I started bawling into my bath towel.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Thirty-seven

  IF THERE WAS ANYTHING GOOD ABOUT BASKETBALL SEASON, it was that those games ate up big chunks of time—the time Brady and I usually spent alone together. We were both too busy now. Funny thing, considering I’d taken up cheerleading in a move for solidarity. But I couldn’t imagine that now—not the solidarity, not the intimacy.

  I couldn’t deny it anymore; Brady Cullen was hurting me. We were unfixable. But I knew that there was not a single soul that I would ever tell that to. And I didn’t know how I was going to get myself away from him either. So many damn things were tying us together.

  I guess I would have been willing to flat out dump Brady if all could be done with no fallout. I’m out of here. Right. Everyone would want to know the reason why. Everyone. His friends. The Not-So-Cheerleaders. My own parents.

  If it wasn’t enough that I felt ashamed and demeaned by the things that had happened, I was afraid too—afraid that nobody would understand. What does someone hear when the words are said? He squeezed my fingers. He threw a ball at me. He pulled my hair. He slammed me in a locker.

  People adored Brady. They’d give him the benefit of the doubt
. If I dumped him, the cheerleaders would despise me. I could not quit the squad. The season was about to begin—I’d made a commitment. Yet Brady was my only reason for being there.

  But possibly the worst of all my thorn-covered thoughts was about Bampas. I believed that it would grieve him to learn that someone was hurting me—I did. But I feared he’d look upon this as my fail, nonetheless. He had said I was not mature enough for a relationship. What if he construed the facts as proof that he’d been right? I was afraid he’d criticize my judgment. I even feared he would think I hadn’t done enough to support Brady Cullen. I didn’t think I could bear that.

  I was trapped. I hated everything I had going on as December rolled in. Brady and I went through the motions of being basketball star and cheer-girlfriend. He was affectionate toward me, as usual. He wanted me on his arm. He wanted us to cram into a booth at Minio’s Pizza in the village with his friends after home games and wait for the ten o’clock news to light up the big screen over the bar with local sports coverage. I went sometimes—if Momma and Bampas gave me permission. But other times, I didn’t even ask to go. I gave Brady excuses: They won’t let me out tonight. I have to babysit. I have cramps.

  I went home. Often, I thought about that kiss—the one he had planted on that college girl at the farm party. I actually hoped he’d go sampling some more. Maybe hook up with someone he could be nice to.

  One night at Minio’s, I sat watching him while he watched the television. Then we heard it: “The White Tigers are celebrating tonight—here’s junior guard Brady Cullen turning in two of his electrifying twenty-six points—” There he was on the screen, looping a shot into the hoop. Our booth in the corner of Minio’s roared. Brady pounded his fists on his chest then reached into the air with both arms. “Yes! Yes!” he hollered. He was glowing like he’d swallowed the moon. He didn’t need to be alone with me; he’d found something better to get off on.

  I didn’t love those nights out—save the few times I ended up next to Emmy for a small conversation. But better to be out than on my back in Brady’s basement. That hadn’t happened in weeks. I sometimes wondered what he would have done if he’d seen that line of bruises skipping down my torso. He’d probably have ignored them. That seemed to be his way. But a couple of weeks went by and he didn’t see me naked. The marks faded.

  In spite of being dog-tired, Brady was always willing to go out of his way to take me home. “Gives me time to unwind,” he said.

  The Brady Cullen Dashboard Highlights Show, I thought. He looked wired, staring forward out the windshield, his eyes glossy and his smile crinkling his face every so often as he recapped his successes.

  In the hallways at school, I held on to my own braid—a new habit. I stood back from my own locker door. I couldn’t be sure but a couple of times, I had the feeling that Brady had rattled that sucker just to see me jerk. He’d look back at me, turn his palms up and shrug at me as if to say, Why are you flinching? I kept one eye on Brady.

  At the end of the day we’d take a table in the library—a safe place to be—and I’d tutor him in Spanish while he bit his knuckles and filled in blanks on a practice sheet with his deliberate handwriting. Then we’d go off to our separate practices. One afternoon when we did gather at the White Tiger with his friends, one of the guys asked Brady, “Hey, Cullen, what happened with that Spanish grade this week? Tell me you passed that test, man, ’cause we need you at guard on Friday night.”

  “B-friggin’-minus!” Brady answered. Then damned if he didn’t drop his backpack so he could make a show of putting both his arms around me. “It’s all P’teen-uh. She gets me through that shit.”

  For something so imperfect and doomed, Brady and I appeared orderly. What I wanted most, at least for the time being, was to have no drama. I insisted to myself that it was working. Soon two weeks were gone. Then another. And another. Yes.

  Yes, because Brady was consumed and distracted by his sport. Yes, because I began to imagine that we’d come to a natural sort of end once basketball season wound down. I saw signs that he had the same thing in mind; he didn’t seem to care that we weren’t sleeping together. He knows we are done, I thought, but he can’t risk upsetting his season by stopping to face it. Easier to keep everything in the box. I told myself to hold on and do the right thing. Stick by Brady. Stick by the Not-So-Cheerleaders. All of this will fade. But in the meantime, I prayed for a short season for the mighty White Tigers.

  Visits to see Cowboy seemed far too few. But every time I saw him it was like putting a few necessary stitches in my soul. On a December afternoon, I cut practice and we took a ride in the truck, and when we reached the road out of town I put down my window, stuck my head and torso out, and just let the cold, cloudy air wipe me clean. I suppose it was only a few seconds that I rode like that but when I plunked back into my seat and belted up again, Cowboy glanced over.

  “Better now?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I tucked back a few strands of hair and I mopped cold-wind tears out of the corners of my eyes. “It smells like snow out there,” I said. Minutes later, flakes began to fall.

  That was the day he brought me to a farm, and not just to the edge of some field with a ditch full of rotting apples either. (Although, I somehow felt we might be close to the place I had been caught during the rubber-band road prank.) He drove down a long driveway to a farmhouse with a covered porch, a barn, and rail fences. He parked the truck as if he had every right to be there. “Where are we?” I asked as I followed him out of the truck.

  “This is Dad’s place. But Dad’s not here during the day and neither are the brothers,” he said. “It’s just us.”

  “And them,” I said, as three, then four, then six horses clomped into the back paddock. “Oh, you’re going to make me be near those, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not going to make you do anything,” he said. “Wait here.” He jumped a fence and pulled open a gate to let just one horse into the front pen. Then he disappeared into the barn and came back with a bucket of oats. “Make a bowl, Beta,” Cowboy said.

  “Yeah, yeah, all right.” I cupped my hands. He poured them full of oats. He made a kissy, clicking sound.

  “Here comes Sweetie,” Cowboy said, and up marched the chestnut.

  I repeated a silent mantra: Nice-Sweetie, Good-Sweetie, Nice-Sweetie, Good-Sweetie . . .

  I knew what I was supposed to do. I held my hands forward as she stepped toward me through the new-falling snow. Sweetie nosed into the oats while her jealous barn mates stood behind the second fence. I felt the breath and fleecy lips, brushing my palms. Her lip hairs tickled me. Her large eyes shone, and snowflakes from our first snow stopped like tiny stars on the horse’s lashes.

  “I might not be afraid of horses anymore,” I whispered.

  “Thought so,” said Cowboy. He gave me a sideways hug, then he held me a little longer than I expected.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Thirty-eight

  COME THE LAST DAY BEFORE WINTER RECESS, I TOLD Cowboy I wouldn’t see him for nearly two weeks. No way was I going to be able to get to the auto shop during school break. I dreaded those days off, which always grew too long at home. Yet, I’d already chosen home over having to see Brady, and I’d told him that my parents would keep me close during the holidays. I would be released to cheer at several games—oh, joy.

  As for missing Cowboy, I told myself it was best to avoid a moment that might become sentimental—the way it sometimes goes with holidays. Still, I had little daydreams of him finding his way to my father’s garden again, to the rabbit hutches, maybe on Christmas Eve just to say “Merry.” But the night passed without his visit.

  But then on New Year’s Day, I woke to little thunk-thunking sounds at my window. Plum-sized snowballs stuck and slid down the glass. Beyond them stood Cowboy. “Get dressed,” he whispered, “I want to t
ake you somewhere. Not far.”

  I was still soaked in my own sleepiness, but ignited by the fact that he had come. I hurried in the bathroom. I hopped around with my toothbrush in my mouth while I pulled on a skirt from the top of the hamper. I grabbed a few layers including a heavy wool sweater. I couldn’t find leggings fast enough but I grabbed warm socks and stepped into my combat boots.

  Cowboy offered me a hand as I climbed out the window. When he saw my bare knees, he said, “That’s good—something practical. Jeez, Beta! It’s January.”

  “Hey, these are my clothes,” I told him. “Don’t give me any sass.”

  A crusty snowfall had covered a day-old powdery one, and the weather had stayed mild after it. As we plodded down the swath, we broke through the surface, leaving craters for footprints.

  “Oh, man, I need caffeine,” I mumbled.

  “Gotcha covered,” he said.

  Nothing felt better than climbing up into the warm truck. I held the coffee cup in both my hands, and settled in for the drive. Cowboy had come for me. He kept his eyes on the road and was quiet, as usual.

  “Did you celebrate Christmas?” I asked.

  “Eh,” he said. Then as if offering it to me, he added, “Christmas happened.”

  Outside, the new snow stuck to the trees and fences, roofs and mailboxes and, all along the roadsides, the plows had banked a clean path. I traced the hillsides and the tree line as we rode. Then I concentrated on the shadows on the snow. I promised myself I’d dig out my watercolors when I got home.

  “You know what?” I said to Cowboy.

  “What’s that?”

  “I think to paint snow you must have to paint everything but the snow.”

  “Hmm. To paint snow you throw a cherry slushie on it,” he said.