by Ivy Adams
“You don’t look anything like your dad, Cass. Well, except the height.”
Cassidy stared at the guy in the picture. She’d definitely gotten his tall, lanky frame. Everything else—her wavy blond hair and brown eyes, the smattering of freckles across her nose—was all from her mom.
Sifting through the papers, Cassidy found what she was looking for: a business card. “Conway Brothers Well Digging” it said, with a cartoon of a well gushing water in the corner. Beneath that read “Casey Conway, Co-Owner.” She flipped over the card. On the back in a man’s messy scribble was a home address and phone number.
Mei looked at the card in Cassidy’s hand. “Your dad lives in Tyler? But that’s only two hours away!”
Cassidy nodded. “He has a whole new family there, two little boys and a girl. I’ve never met them, though.” And she bet they had no idea they had another sister.
Until her dad’s new daughter had come along, Cassidy had held out a secret hope that maybe he just couldn’t relate to girls and that’s why he’d stopped calling. But a birth announcement had come in the mail when her half sister was born, and she’d seen the look of pride and love on his face as he held his new daughter.
Cassidy put the other papers back in the envelope and hid it under the socks again. They crossed the hall to her room and sat on the bed, staring at the card. Now that she had the number and was actually about to do this, the nervous energy was almost paralyzing, like she’d just shotgunned a Red Bull while wearing a straitjacket.
“Are you okay, Cass?”
“Mm-hmm,” was all she could manage.
Mei reached for the phone. “Do you want me to dial for you?”
Cassidy couldn’t answer. A kaleidoscope of images flitted across her mind like an out-of-control slide show until it stopped at the picture of her mom before prom. She’d looked so happy, but Cassidy wondered how much she regretted the decisions she’d made that night. Because the fact was that her mom had gotten left behind not only by Cassidy’s dad but also by life—stuck in a shitty job, in a nowhere town, forever.
Cassidy would not let the same thing happen to her.
“No. I’ve got it.” She took the phone from Mei and dialed the numbers on the back of the card, ignoring her shaking fingers. The line rang once, twice, three times.
“Hello?” a woman’s voice asked. Cassidy hadn’t expected his wife to answer. She choked.
“Hello?” the woman repeated.
Oh God. Hang up, hang up, Cassidy thought. Mei squeezed her hand reassuringly.
“You can do this,” her friend mouthed to her.
Cassidy squeezed her eyes shut and breathed. She could do this. She had to do this. “Hello, may I speak with Casey Conway, please?” She was proud of herself—her voice wavered only a little at the end. Mei gave her a thumbs-up.
“Yes, can I tell him who’s calling?” the woman asked.
“This is Cassidy. His daughter.”
Later that night, the four girls met up again over at Izzy’s house for their regular Saturday night sleepover. Izzy had the biggest flat-screen TV for movie watching, and since Linc would probably be home, the chance that Tanner would be with him meant that Piper wanted to hang out there whenever possible.
Izzy and Mei had just congratulated Cassidy on getting the money from her dad. The phone call had been totally awkward, but she’d done it and he had come through. Plus, he’d sounded genuinely happy to hear from her, and had even mentioned that they should plan to get together as soon as she came back from her trip. Cassidy didn’t want to raise her hopes too high, because plans with her dad had the tendency to fall through at the last minute, but it still felt good imagining it could happen.
Izzy’s door banged open and Piper made her entrance, weighed down with two large Victoria’s Secret bags in tow. “Good, you’re all here. Because I’ve brought goodies!”
The change in Piper since they’d all decided to go on these trips was nothing less than manic—she’d been so low since the Kiss the Pig fiasco that Cassidy had really begun to worry for her, but now she seemed to be back to the old perpetually bright and optimistic Piper. Although now that Cassidy looked closer, Piper’s eyes were a little red. Another round with her mother? Cassidy had known those blue shoes were a bad idea. She sent up a silent thank-you that her own mother was so laid back.
“Now, I know I said I wasn’t going to give you these until closer to the trip,” Piper trilled, “but I decided I couldn’t wait. A little something from me to y’all for those unexpected, special events.” She winked and handed out the little pink boxes like Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.
“You got us underwear?” Cassidy asked. “Um, no offense, Piper, but I like to buy my own panties.”
“It’s not underwear,” she declared. “It’s lingerie.” This in her best French accent.
Mei had already opened her box and was holding up what looked to Cassidy like black polka-dotted tissue paper with two straps, and a pair of matching string bikini panties. Mei’s gaping mouth said what they were all thinking.
“I thought you’d like black best, Mei—it’s more demure, like you. I got you a camisole, too, so it would be warmer, ‘cause I read online it gets pretty cold at night in Shenyang.”
Mei examined the garments, the thin straps more like angel hair pasta than spaghetti, obviously wondering how these and “warm” belonged in the same sentence. Also, did Piper not realize that nothing was “unexpected” in Mei’s hyperorganized life? And that any special events would not involve underwear purchased by someone else? “Thanks, Piper. That was really … thoughtful of you.”
Cassidy was now wondering with one part morbid curiosity and another part total dread what she was going to find in her own gift box. Turned out, both feelings were rewarded by what she found underneath the tissue: three pairs of boy-short panties—a hot-pink-and-black-striped pair, a hot-pink cheetah pair, and a hot-pink pair covered in little red cherries. They were all cut so high in the back that her butt would be hanging out of them.
“They’re called Cheekies,” Piper said, “because they show your—”
“I got it,” Cassidy cut her off, looking inside the box again to see if Piper had left a gift receipt. If any “special events” happened on this trip, which they probably wouldn’t, Cassidy was more than certain none of these would be the underwear she would want to be wearing.
“What the hell is this?” Izzy cried. Dangling off the end of her finger was a tiny triangle of green lace and a filament of string connecting all three corners.
“It’s called a Brazilian thong, and there are five of them because I didn’t know how much access you would have to a washing machine in Costa Rica. Oh, and there’s a push-up bra, too, for a little extra boost of confidence.”
Mei’s eyebrows practically touched her hairline as she picked up the bra. “If Izzy has any more ‘confidence,’ she’ll tip over face-first.”
“Is that a bra, or a melon catcher?” Cassidy asked.
Izzy pretended to look offended. “Hey, we can’t all get by in a sports bra and tank top.” They all burst out laughing so hard that Cassidy thought she might have pulled a muscle.
“You think this is an appropriate undergarment to wear in the rain forest, Piper?” Izzy asked, eyeing the scraps of fabric.
“What? It’s Brazilian,” she replied. “I got myself a sexy black bustier with match—”
The door flew open, and Linc stood in the hall, Tanner just behind him. “What the hell, Isabel,” her brother said. “We can’t hear our game over y’all’s noise.”
Linc had been in a pissy mood since he’d stupidly punched his locker and broke his hand after losing the first game of the season. Nice to know he was taking it out on his sister.
Izzy still had the thong in her hand. “Damn, Izzy, put those away. I don’t want to see that,” Linc said.
“Hey, Tanner,” Piper said, all flirtatious smile. “Do you prefer lace or thong panties?” She held up a pair
of each that she’d grabbed from the girls’ gift boxes.
Ugh. Cassidy wished Piper would stop trying so hard to make Tanner notice her every chance she got. It sucked watching your best friend waste her time on someone who obviously wasn’t interested. But at least Tanner was a decent guy—except for his Germaine problem, that is.
Unlike Linc, who commented, “Shouldn’t you be asking a pig?” The urge to break his other hand started to bring Cass to her feet.
Luckily, Mei saved her the trouble by saying, “If she’d asked you, she would have been asking a pig. That’s why she asked Tanner.”
Linc’s walnut-sized brain struggled for a response. When nothing came, he elbowed Tanner and asked, “Does Germaine even wear panties?”
Jeez, did putting a football in a guy’s hand turn him into a jerk, or was it that only jerks played football? It was an age-old riddle Cassidy had yet to solve.
Tanner just grinned. “Nice panties, Isabel.”
“Nice gun, Derringer,” Izzy quipped, but by then he’d already disappeared down the hall with Linc. “Damn it. Why can’t I be quicker on the uptake?” She made a disgusted face before throwing the thong back into the box.
Piper looked disappointed that Tanner hadn’t answered her question.
“Okay, then,” Mei cut in. “We have other things we need to get done tonight.”
“I hope so,” Cassidy said.
“Me, too,” Izzy agreed.
Mei took out her laptop. “We need to come up with avatars to go with our IKC pseudonyms—you know, something unique to each of us, but not too revealing.”
“Definitely not pictures of us in our new underwear, then,” Izzy snickered.
“Lingerie,” Piper corrected. She grabbed a camera off Izzy’s desk and flicked it on. She panned around the room, focusing on Mei’s laptop case resting against her calf. Piper crouched down to shoe level and snapped a couple of shots. Then she jumped to her feet in triumph. She turned the camera around to reveal the picture to the others. The laptop bag dominated the left side of the photo, the toes of Mei’s funky Doc Martens extended beyond the edge of the bag. Studious with a dash of edgy. It was so Mei.
“Oooh, I love it!” Piper cried in excitement.
She hopped up and dashed for the pile of junk she carted with her to every sleepover, pulling out her brand-new pair of blue shoes. She slipped them on and gazed around the room. “I don’t have a good bag.”
“Sure you do,” Izzy chimed in. She pointed to the vintage train case that Piper had inherited from her grandmother. It was white with pink trim and looked like a miniature suitcase. Piper stored her evergrowing stash of cosmetics in the chic little bag.
A few minutes later, they had the perfect shot of Piper’s Smurf-blue shoes kicking above the cosmetics case.
Cassidy’s shot was simpler: her aqua Vans against the sports duffel she usually carried to practice.
Izzy dug in her closet to find her new favorite shoes, her Simple Mary Jane sneakers made from hemp and recycled tires. She posed them on either side of the hiking backpack she’d bought for Costa Rica.
Once Mei had loaded all of the pictures onto the page, she looked up. “That’s done,” she said. “I can check it off my list.”
Good. One step closer to getting the hell out of Paris. Now that Cassidy knew for sure she could pay for the trip, all this other stuff: the Facebook page, the kissing—should there be any—it was all icing.
Especially the kissing. She glanced down at the cherry-print Cheekies—the kissing could be the cherry on top.
IKC Fan Page
The Official Fan Page for the International Kissing Club
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IKC Page
Chapter 7
Izzy
If it hadn’t been for the word “emergency,” Izzy would have ignored the post on the IKC Facebook page. Piper, Mei, and Cassidy had been shooting messages back and forth nonstop since first devising the club. For a while she’d been as excited as they were, but that had all changed this past Monday when her parents had told her the news: there wasn’t enough money for her to go on the trip. When her idiot brother had broken his hand, he’d blown his shot at a scholarship from the University of Texas. Unless he had the healing powers of a superhero, he’d be out for the rest of the season and there was no way UT would give a scholarship to someone who’d spent the year on the bench. Plus, her mom was plotting to send Shane to New York for the qualifying round of some international piano competition that no one under the age of ninety-eight would be interested in. Because of all this, her parents were too broke to send Izzy to Costa Rica. Since then, she’d been dodging her friends at school and online.
Now she felt a faint glimmer of hope. Emergency meeting? Maybe she wasn’t the only one. If her parents could overspend, it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Piper’s had, too.
Ten minutes later, she pulled Brittney into the empty space in front of Piper’s house. Today, she didn’t dare curse at the car the way she sometimes did. Who knew how much longer she’d have a car to curse at?
She found her friends up in Piper’s room. Mei lay sprawled across Piper’s rumpled bed, flipping through a magazine. Cassidy perched on the back of an armchair, her feet on the seat, her elbows propped on her knees. Piper stood before the closet doors, along the top of which she’d hung a half-dozen hangers of clothes. Two suitcases lay open at her feet.
“What’s up?” Izzy asked, sitting on the edge of the bed beside Mei. “What’s the big emergency?” She hadn’t yet told them her news. Her throat tightened just thinking about it, and she was glad she’d been able to talk without her voice sounding all funny.
“Piper’s having wardrobe malfunctions,” Mei said dryly.
“It’s a disaster! I have no idea what to pack.” Piper gestured to the hanger on one side of her and then to the other. “What do you think—the flutter cardigan or the silk-screened hoodie?”
“That’s your big emergency?” Izzy stood up. “You don’t know what to bring?”
“It can’t all be about saving the world, you know.” Clearly Piper heard the annoyance in Izzy’s voice and just chose to ignore it.
Ever since devising IKC, Piper had been inhabiting her own little universe. Not that Izzy blamed her. It wasn’t like she’d want to be a pig-kissing Internet sensation, either. But really, right now, there was only so much giddy joy she could take.
“I mean, it’s Paris!” Piper was saying. “Probably the most fashionable place on earth. Nothing I own is going to look right.” She crossed to the bed and flopped down backward on it, barely noticing that Mei had to roll out of the way to avoid being squashed. “I’m doomed.”
Izzy shoved her hands into her back pockets. “You get to go to Paris. I seriously doubt anyone’s going to notice what you’re wearing.”
Mei looked up from her magazine and cocked her head to the side as she studied Izzy.
Izzy didn’t meet her gaze but paced over to the closet, trying—really trying—to consider her friend’s clothing options past the haze of her own resentment. So far, not happening.
“You’re right,” Piper muttered. “Nothing I own is cool enough for Paris—it all shouts small-town reject. Mom said she was going to give me a spending allowance. Maybe I can shop there.”
The spending allowance pushed Izzy right over the edge. She whirled around and glared at Piper, and her words came out in an angry rush. “I can’t believe you expected us to drop everything and run over here for this big emergency and all you’re worried about is what to pack. Why are we supposed to even care what color beret you wear?”
As soon as the sentence left her mouth, Izzy clamped her lips shut, wishing she could take it back.
Cassidy’s head snapped up. Mei’s gaze became more interested. Slowly Piper raised herself up onto her elbows.
“Wow,” Piper whispered, her eyes wide. “Where did that come from?”
“I—” But, damn it, ho
w could she explain? “I’ve just been in a rotten mood lately.”
Piper smiled brightly. “I know what’ll cheer you up. This morning on Facebook, I noticed that a certain sexy eco-guy has posted new pictures on his page.”
“Oh, Piper, I really don’t think …”
Piper didn’t even hear Izzy’s protests. She swept over to her laptop and popped it open before Izzy could even finish the sentence.
“You know River and I broke up, right?”
“So?” Piper looked over her shoulder with a quirky grin as she quickly navigated through the maze that was Facebook.
“So, I unfriended him.” She’d done it eight days after the kegger, right about the time he left for Lubbock. By then, it was obvious he wasn’t going to call her. “I’m not interested in what he’s doing.”
“That’s just because you haven’t seen how pathetic and sad he looks without you.”
“He looks pathetic and sad without me?” She nearly cringed at the note of hope in her voice. Pathetic indeed.
“Why wouldn’t he? He doesn’t have you anymore, right? Okay, here’s his—”
Mei put her hand over Piper’s mouse just before she could click. “Maybe you should let it go. If Izzy unfriended him, then she doesn’t want to see the pictures.”
“Of course she does.” Piper clicked.
“No really, I don’t—”
Piper clicked again. A second later, the first of the photos loaded. Silence fell over the room.
It was a picture of a shiny white Cadillac Escalade. Leaning against the bumper was some blond chick with big hair, big boobs, daisy dukes, bikini on top.
The image was labeled, “New college, new toys, new major.”
Izzy felt like the world was telescoping down to just that photo. Her peripheral vision faded out, and she could hear Mei, Cassidy, and Piper talking as if from far away.
“Holy crap,” Cassidy muttered.
“The bastard!” Piper cried.
After a moment, Mei asked, “Does that sign behind him say, The Department of Petroleum Engineering?”
Izzy ripped her gaze away from Bikini Barbie and found the granite sign River’s Escalade was parked in front of. Sure enough. That was his new major. Freakin’ Petroleum Engineering.
