by Nia Stephens
“I bet.” Kiki reached across the car to open his door. He hopped in, slammed the door, and gave Kiki another quick kiss. It was so fast she didn’t have time to resist.
“There. I’m feeling nice and toasty. Now, let’s get you home in a hurry.”
Kiki had to fight a smile. His good-natured energy was infectious. And he really was ready to drive clear across town in a drafty convertible, wearing only soaking-wet boxers. Kiki now had a very clear idea of what she was missing by demanding a ride home. If she had any doubts about Michael’s popularity with girls, she had lost them with one look at his nearly naked form. She couldn’t even imagine what Jasmine would say if she were here.
On the ride home, Michael kept the radio tuned to what she and Mark called the “soccer mom station,” all cheesy pop, all the time. Still, Kiki was too worried to complain. She thought that she would either get home after 10:30 or, because of Micael’s speed, wind up wrapped around a tree, completely unrecognizable. She was terrified all the way around.
They screeched into her driveway at 10:29:42, and Kiki was pelting for the door before the car had completely stopped.
“I’ll call you tomorrow!” Michael shouted after her.
“Fine!” She was concentrating on getting her key into the lock, but wasn’t surprised when the doorknob turned before she could get it in. Both of her parents were frowning, looking entirely serious despite her father’s ridiculously ratty robe and her mother’s curlers.
“Hey, Kiki!” Michael called from the street. “Where did you put my clothes?!”
Kiki cringed and watched her parents exchange a look. It was not a good look, either.
Without turning around, she shouted back, “They’re under your seat, Michael. Goodnight.”
“Cool! See ya!”
“Kiki, did some naked man just drive you home late?” her father asked, sounding amazed.
“Not exactly,” she mumbled. “I still had eight seconds.”
“And why was he naked?” her mother asked.
“Because he was swimming in Percy Priest.”
“Kiki, of course you’re in trouble for being late, but you know not to lie,” her mother said irritably.
“Oddly enough, I’m not lying. He really was swimming in Percy Priest. And I’m really not late.” She showed them her cell phone, which showed a time of 10:30:07.
“But it’s freezing! And heaven knows what’s in that water.”
“Yeah, he’s insane. Could you let me in? It is kind of cold out here.”
After a brief argument about the exact time of her return, which Kiki actually won, she typed up a quick description of her date and e-mailed it to Sasha, Camille, and Jasmine. She had answers from all three of them within half an hour. Silver-Sasha @nashville.goth.net said, “What a moron! He just left you standing there? I’m sorry I e-mailed him in the first place. You can chop off my big toe as punishment.” Bloomofdoom@-belloftn. com said, “Don’t forget how much fun you had before the party. That was still the best date you’ve had in the last year, I bet. (And if you dump him before you’ve seen him completely nude, you’re an idiot.) [email protected] said, “I don’t know what to think about this guy. What do you think?”
“Good question,” Kiki muttered aloud. “What do I think about Michael?”
“He’s a loser!” a voice called from the hallway. “Never go out with him again.”
“Thanks, Mom. But I wasn’t asking you.”
SHOULD KIKI TRY HIM ON?
Turn to page 219 to see if Michael’s her perfect fit.
SHOULD KIKI PUT HIM BACK ON THE RACK?
Turn to page 229 to see what happens if she tells him goodbye.
You think the fun of dating Michael is worth the frustration? Then keep reading!
Chapter 5
The Zombies
“Sure I’d like to go out again,” Kiki said, after switching her cell phone from one ear to the other. Before Michael got around to asking her out, he had babbled on and on about how much fun she had missed the night before. She’d already missed half her lunch break and was afraid that she was going to spend all of it on the phone in the second floor girls’ bathroom. “But I’d rather do something a little more structured next time, you know?”
“What do you mean?” Michael seemed genuinely confused by the word “structured.” Kiki wasn’t surprised.
“I mean, dinner and a movie. Dinner and dancing. You know. A real date.” A couple of freshman girls walked in, giggling about something. Kiki raised an eyebrow in their general direction, pointed at her cell phone, and they headed back out again.
“No problem. My buddy was telling me about this B-movie marathon out at the drive-in, in Watertown. Creature from the Black Lagoon, Plan 9 from Outer Space, that kind of thing. They’re hilarious, even if you aren’t stoned.”
“That sounds . . . interesting,” she said. She had never actually seen a B-movie, but she had heard about them, and had seen references to them in other movies. She would much rather see a good live band than Attack of the 50 Foot Woman, but all relationships involve a little compromise. “I guess I’m game. How far away is Watertown?” Going to the Watertown drive-in was one of those things that people always talked about doing, but no one ever did. At least, no one Kiki knew had been there. It was a nice idea, though—cuddling in Michael’s Thunderbird, which looked like it might have been around since before there were drive-ins, watching silly black-and-white movies about monsters. It would be more interesting than going to Laura Keller’s party, which is what Kiki would be doing otherwise.
“Oh, like forty minutes, or something,” Michael said. “It starts at sundown and goes on all night, but if we get bored, we can always hit some parties.”
“Okay. Sounds good. Do you want to do dinner before, or pick up something to eat at the drive-in?”
“I don’t know. What do you think?”
“We should probably bring something. It gets dark right at five, which is a little early for dinner.”
“Okay. Want me to pick you up at seven?”
Kiki sighed inwardly. “Well, sundown is at five. If you want to see the first movie, we should leave around four. But if you don’t care which movies we see, seven should be fine.”
“Great! See you at seven!”
After they said goodbye, Kiki dashed downstairs and outside to the football field. The Pussycats were sitting at the top of the stands, as far from the school building as they possibly could. Kiki managed to shove half a slice of cold pizza in her mouth before anyone could ask where she had been.
“Starving,” she mumbled. “Talk later.”
“Come on, dude. You’re not getting off that easily,” Jasmine smirked. “Were you in a broom closet with Mark?”
“Nah. Still over him.” Strangely enough, it was almost true this time. It still hurt a little to think that he just wasn’t interested, despite everything they shared, but maybe a relationship with him really wouldn’t have worked out in the end. Dating really was supposed to be fun. Dating Mark might be intense and interesting and, well, hot, but it wouldn’t be a lot of fun. She should have realized this a long time ago. Just because someone is a good friend doesn’t mean they would be a good boyfriend; denim is great for jeans and jackets, comfy things you wear every day, but you wouldn’t use it for a formal gown, or socks, and definitely not for your underwear.
“She was in the second floor bathroom, on the phone,” Camille said without looking up from the remains of her spinach salad. Kiki gave her a piercing glare over her pizza, but Camille just shrugged. “Abby saw you. She wanted to know what was up.”
Kiki slapped her forehead, thinking, that’s what you get for thinking of freshmen as little people who just get in the way, without names and brains of their own. Abby was Camille’s little sister, but her mouth wasn’t any smaller than Cam’s.
Sasha and Jasmine both narrowed their eyes, looking at Kiki with consideration. They looked at each other, then said, “Mic
hael,” at the same time, like twins. But they said it in very different tones of voice. Sasha sounded horrified; Jasmine sounded amused.
“No comment,” Kiki said, taking a bite out of her daily Granny Smith.
“Oh, come on,” Jasmine said. “Tell us what’s up. Are you bringing him to Laura Keller’s party?”
“That’ll be a no.”
“You’re not going to tell us?” Sasha asked.
“Nope.”
“Meanie!” Jasmine said, shaking a finger at her.
“Get over yourself, Jazz. If you wanted him so badly, you could have gotten into this boy-shopping thing yourself.”
Jasmine stuck out her lower lip in a textbook pout. It looked like something she’d practiced in the mirror, and, knowing Jasmine, she probably had.
“Don’t worry, Jasmine,” Sasha said, sounding rather worried herself. “I bet Michael will be back on the market sooner or later. Probably sooner.”
Oddly, that made Kiki even more determined to make it work. So when Michael was fifteen minutes late picking her up, she didn’t give him the lecture that was boiling away inside her. Instead she kissed him lightly, lingering just a bit on his sensuous lower lip and said, “I packed us sandwiches and drinks, so we don’t need to stop anywhere.”
“Hey, cool! You’re so good at this planning-ahead thing.” Michael backed out of Kiki’s driveway so fast he nearly hit their neighbor’s mailbox, causing Kiki to claw four new quarter-moon-shaped holes in the armrest, joining an untold number of cigarette burns and holes of more mysterious origins.
“Um, yes, I am. But it’s not like I have a lot of choice about that,” she pointed out, gently prying her fingernails out of the armrest.
“Wow! Your parents really get on your case, huh?”
“Not so much them as my managers. It drives them crazy that we’re at school forty hours a week. They’ve been begging me and Mark’s parents to let us go to online high school for years.”
Michael looked at her so long she was afraid he was going to hit something. “There’s high school on the Internet? You can do that?”
Kiki sighed and steered the conversation toward his adventures in public school. It had always seemed exciting in comparison to Wentworth, where there weren’t a lot of rules, since no one ever did anything especially rebellious. Michael’s high school sounded insane: people set things on fire, had ultimate Frisbee games on the roof during assemblies, and gambled fifty- and hundred-dollar bills on girl fights in the cafeteria.
“And you would rather go to school at home?” Kiki asked, completely baffled.
They compared schools all the way to Watertown, which was a lot farther than forty minutes away. Kiki was worried that they would have to park so far from the screen that they wouldn’t be able to tell the Martians from the zombies. Instead, Michael was able to pull up right in front of the screen, because there was nothing showing there at all.
“That’s weird,” Michael said, peering around at the eerily empty field. It was full dark, but the giant screen glowed palely in the moonlight. A faded sign taped to the box office, a tiny building next to the driveway, said,
END OF SUMMER FESTIVAL: B MOVIE MARATHON!
LABOR DAY WEEKEND, SEPTEMBER 4-6!
LAST CHANCE TO ENJOY THE DRIVE-IN THIS YEAR!
“Weird is one word for it,” Kiki said, doing the breathing exercise one of her managers taught everyone on the Temporary Insanity tour bus. It was supposed to keep them from screaming at one another. This time, it worked.
Once Kiki was sure she was not going to raise her voice, she said, “You didn’t check to see when the film festival was going on?”
“Neither did you,” Michael pointed out. Kiki had to admit that this was true. If she was going to date Michael, it was clear that she was going to be the one who kept track of things. She should have realized it the day they met.
“Okay, good point. So, now what? I know about a party going on in Belle Meade.”
He made a face. “Belle Meade? They’ve got police everywhere.”
“You weren’t planning to do anything very illegal, were you?” Kiki asked. “I mean, you do sober up before you drive. Right?”
“Well, yeah. Of course I do. But Belle Meade cops don’t need an excuse to pull you over. They just do it.”
“But if you can pass the Breathalyzer, what difference does it make?”
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I may have some unpaid tickets hanging around.”
Alarm bells went off in the back of Kiki’s mind. They sounded a lot like her mother’s keys jingling in the morning, except they rang out, Unpaid tickets can mean a revoked license. Driving on a revoked license means a trip to jail!
“Okay . . .” Kiki said slowly. “Laura Keller’s might not be the best place for you to be. The Jennifers are playing at the End. They’re pretty awesome. Want to check it out?”
“I don’t really like live music,” he said without looking up from his cell phone. He was tapping out a text message, which Kiki knew was some variation on, “Who’s throwing a party tonight?”
“You don’t like live music?” Kiki repeated, hoping she had misunderstood him somehow.
“Nah. You’ve got to sneak in, get the bartender to serve you, you can’t really meet anybody because of all the noise.”
“And by noise you mean music?” Kiki was having a hard time wrapping her brain around the not-liking-music concept. To her mind, it was like saying, “I don’t like oxygen.”
“Yeah, music. I mean, yeah, it’s cool if you’re dancing or something, but dance clubs have a cover, and the drinks are pricy. But basically the music is just background noise for the real stuff that’s happening.”
If Michael had started spouting religious philosophy, Kiki could not have been more shocked.
“Um, Michael, I think maybe you ought to take me home.”
“Why? It’s not even nine o’clock.”
“I don’t think we have anything in common.”
He looked as shocked as Kiki had felt a moment before. “What do you mean? We’ve got lots of stuff in common!”
“Like what?”
“We both like to party, B-movies, video games—”
“Yep, time to go home.”
“Is this about the music thing?”
Kiki shut her eyes and did a few more deep-breathing exercises. Michael really was a nice guy, and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But he was like a zombie that had come back from the dead to party rather than eat brains. It wasn’t hard to imagine him stumbling around, moaning, “Paaaaaarty! Paaaaaaaarty!” In fact, he was probably like that every morning around 3:00.
“Michael, I really think I need to be getting home. I have a lot of work to do.”
“On a Saturday night?”
“I always have a lot of work to do.”
“Wow. Bummer.” Disappointed as he was, he started the car and pulled out of the deserted drive-in.
When they were near Kiki’s house, Michael said, “So I guess we’re going to just be friends, right?”
“Sure,” Kiki agreed.
“Friends with benefits?”
She had to laugh. “Not a chance. But, hey, I’ll call you sometime.”
He pouted, reminding her of Jasmine, and Kiki laughed again.
“Goodbye,” she said a few moments later, kissing him on the cheek. “Take it easy.”
“I always take it easy.” He grinned. “See you around.” Once again, he backed perilously out of her driveway and drove off into the night.
Grinning to herself, Kiki pulled out her cell phone. “Hey, Jazz,” she said. “Want to give me a ride to Laura’s party?”
That didn’t work out as well as Kiki might have hoped. To see what would have happened if Kiki had decided to dump Michael, turn to page 229. To try another boy, turn to page 57.
Think that Michael is more trouble than he is worth? Read on to find out what happens when Kiki tries to dump him!
Chapt
er 5
Why Can’t We Be Friends?
“Friends with benefits?” Michael asked hopefully when Kiki told him she just wanted to be friends.
“No, no benefits. Just friends.” A pair of giggling freshman girls wandered into the second floor girls’ bathroom, where Kiki had gone to keep this conversation private. Kiki raised an eyebrow in their general direction, pointed at her cell phone, and they trooped back out.
“Oh. Well. Friends. That’s cool. Want to come over tonight and play Kill the Earthlings?”
Kiki slapped her forehead in frustration. “I just said that I just want to be friends!”
“Exactly. Friends play video games together. That’s how it works. You bring some friends. I bring some friends. Everyone becomes friends. It’s called ‘social networking.’ It’s cool. It’s the reason I signed up for HelloHello.”
Kiki was surprised that he was taking her at her word—most people seemed to think that “Let’s be friends” meant “I never want to speak to you again.” She was even more surprised that Michael knew what the phrase “social networking” meant.
“Er, okay. I have band practice, but I guess I could come over later.”
“Excellent! I’ll e-mail you directions! See you later!”
Kiki wandered out to the football field in a daze. She found the Pussycat Posse sitting at the top of the bleachers, as far away from the school buildings as they could get without leaving campus.
“You know how you can try to dump somebody and it doesn’t exactly work?” she asked, fishing her cold pizza out of a tin Pink Floyd lunchbox that was older than she was.
“You mean you just couldn’t say it?” Camille asked sympathetically. She was always having to find nice ways to let boys down. It was more than just her girl-next-door blond beauty, which was less striking than the other, black-clad Pussycats. Camille was so nice that she hated to break up with guys, no matter how much she wanted to do it. That was one reason she was the most popular member of the Pussycat Posse, at least with guys.
