Once Upon a Kiss

by Robin Palmer

  Around midnight I was just about to turn out my light and go to bed (that Internet stuff was addicting) when my phone dinged with an e-mail telling me that Jonah had accepted my friend request on Facebook. Clicking on his page, I discovered I now had full access to see pictures that he had posted and status updates like Wherever you go, there you are . . . unless you’re not and Who beliebs the Biebs? Not I. I could also scroll down through random things that he “liked,” such as J. R. R. Tolkien, some TV show called Lost, and Mexican food.

  When I saw that most of the photos on his page had been posted by Montana, I got that same feeling I had when I saw them at lunch together. Sad and left out and jealous. From the various check-ins and tags, it was clear that the two spent a lot of time together.

  Like best-friend-level time together.

  I don’t know why I was surprised. I mean, Jonah deserved a cool best friend. One who was down to earth. And smart. And passionate about the world. Montana seemed to be everything that this version of me was not. I would have rather hung out with her than me any day. Well, this version of me. And I really needed to stop saying “this version of me,” because it was driving me nuts.

  Starting from when Jonah had first joined Facebook, I read everything he had ever posted. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. It was more like I was looking to feel connected to him again. At times I smiled at the corny posts that probably no one but me would find funny. Other times I got sad—especially when he tagged Montana in what were obviously private jokes. It was weird how this Facebook thing made you feel both more connected and more isolated at the same time. It was also—I realized when I looked at my clock and saw that it was one a.m.—a major timesuck.

  I was just about to click off when I saw it.

  A link to a YouTube video of Modern English’s “I Melt with You.” Our song. The one we had sang during ballroom dancing. The one we yelled at the top of our lungs when it came on in the car, even though we were both tone-deaf. The one I couldn’t hear without thinking of him.

  Montana wasn’t tagged in the post. She didn’t even “like” it. In fact, no one did. It was like this lonesome little post in the middle of this sea of information.

  I moved my finger and clicked Like.

  Saying it was a sign was a reach, I knew that. And a sign of what, I wasn’t even sure. That Jonah would somehow come around to believing me when I told him what had happened? That I hadn’t lost the one person who got me and made me feel less alone on the planet?

  But I was going to take it as one anyway.

  IT’S IRONIC THAT AS THE MOST POPULAR girl at Castle Heights, I was probably also the loneliest. As I walked the halls the next morning, smiling and saying hi as Andrea echoed me, all I could think about was how I would much rather go back to being invisible. When you were invisible, you could stare at people all you wanted like an anthropologist and not be called out on it, or be judged, or held up to some impossible standard. This popularity thing had me actually feeling bad for Andrea and the pressure she was under all the time. Maybe that’s why she had been such a jerk to me before.

  “I feel like Mother Teresa,” I said as we made our way through the crowd. “But with better fashion sense.” In my new poet blouse, leggings, and Doc Martens, I felt somewhat back to normal.

  “Who?” asked Andrea. Or maybe she had been a jerk because she was frustrated that she was dumb.

  Seeing that Mother Teresa had already been, like, 150 back in the eighties, she was probably dead by now, but, still, you’d think she’d be in a history book.

  “Oh—I almost forgot,” she said as she opened her bag and took out two typed pages and handed them to me. “Here’s your presidential speech.”

  “You wrote my speech?”

  “Well, yeah. I always write your speech,” she replied, confused. “You love when I write it and you get to take credit for my awesome words.”

  I cringed. It was one thing for Jonah to write my speech. We were in sync in terms of our views. But I let Andrea do it? I couldn’t even imagine what she had come up with. Yet another reason I didn’t want to be this me but wanted to go back to being me me. I took the pages from her and started scanning it. “May Makeover Month?” I said. “What’s that?”

  “We talked about that. It’s where you offer makeovers to those in need, for no charge,” Andrea explained. “It would be a public-service thing.”

  Seriously? I could barely put on mascara without blinding myself. “Get one of the Kardashians to speak at Career Day,” I read. I looked up. What was a Kardashian? Just the word itself didn’t sound good. “Wow. That’s just brilliant.”

  She smiled.

  I folded the pages in half and stuck them in my bag. “Andrea, this is just great, and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this—”

  “Really? That’s so sweet. You never thank me for doing it.”

  “—but I think I’m going to take a crack at the speech myself this time,” I finished.

  “Oh. I can make any edits you have. It’s no big deal—”

  “That’s sweet of you, but it’s fine. Thanks.” Who knew how many chances I’d have to stand up there and say my piece? I might as well take advantage of it and try to implement as many things as possible.

  Before Andrea could argue with me anymore, we saw Brad striding down the hallway.

  “Ooh, look—there’s Brad,” she said. She smoothed her hair and turned to me. “Do I look okay—I mean, you look great,” she corrected.

  “Hey, babe,” Brad said when he got to us. Today’s polo shirt was lilac, with—surprise!—the collar turned up.

  “Hi Brad,” Andrea said. “I love your shirt.”

  “Thanks,” he replied, not even looking at her. He took in my outfit. “What are you wearing?”

  “A poet blouse.”

  He reached over and patted the arm. “It sure is puffy.”

  “Isn’t it?” Andrea agreed. “That’s our girl—never afraid to be bold with her fashion choices!”

  “Hey, Andrea?” Brad asked.

  “Yes?” she said, way too hopefully.

  “You think I can talk to Zoe for a second?”

  “Sure,” she said, not moving.

  “I meant . . . alone.”

  “Oh. Right. Of course.”

  As she started to move away, I grabbed her arm. “It’s okay—she can stay,” I said nervously. “I mean, we are best friends”—why did my throat always feel like it was closing up when I said that?—“which means I just end up telling her everything anyway—”

  “But I wanted to talk about Friday night,” Brad said, his eyes glinting.

  “Friday night,” I repeated blankly.

  “Yeah. You know . . . our big date.”

  I did not know about our big date, but I knew enough from the look on his face to know that whatever he had in mind didn’t include board games, except for maybe naked Twister.

  “Right. Your big date,” Andrea said, deflated. “I’ll just go to the cafeteria and binge on low-carb snacks.”

  As I watched her walk away, the usual cheery click-clacking of her heels replaced with a sad slither, I couldn’t believe how bad I felt for my archenemy.

  “So Friday night,” Brad said, smiling. The way the light hit his teeth reminded me of fangs.

  “Friday night,” I said again. I wondered if I sounded as freaked-out as I felt.

  He cocked his head and squinted. “I’m thinking a walk on the beach at sunset, I’m thinking dinner, and then, after that . . .” He leaned in. “Well, you know. . . .”

  I did not know and didn’t even want to try to guess. “And then after that you drive me home so we can both get to sleep early because studies have shown that at least eight hours of sleep are necessary for the healthy development of a growing teen’s brains?” I asked hopefully as I leaned away from h
im.

  “No. And then you come over . . .” he said as he leaned in closer, “to my empty house . . .” Closer still. “. . . because my parents are in San Francisco . . .” If I leaned back any farther, I was in danger of doing a backbend. “. . . and not coming back until Saturday night . . .” I was totally losing my balance. “. . . and you’ve already told your parents you’re sleeping at Andrea’s. . . .”

  That did not sound like run-of-the-mill making-out stuff. That sounded more like a sleepover. I had to believe that if I wasn’t still a virgin I’d know that, and I certainly didn’t have any plans to change that now or for a long time to come. Before he could go on—and I did not want him to—my foot gave way and I toppled backward.

  Brad’s phone dinged with a text. “Ooh—Andrea says they’re handing out tofu breakfast burritos in the caf.” As if he needed yet another burrito.

  “That’s great. Definitely go get one and have some quality one-on-one time with Andrea,” I said as I pushed him in the direction of the cafeteria. “I’ll see you later, okay? Bye!” I said as I started off the other way.

  And landed smack into Montana who was in yet another cool outfit. This time it was a patchwork denim miniskirt, black tights, and short motorcycle boots topped with a black tank top and a red crochet cardigan.

  She took in my own outfit. “Is that a poet blouse?”

  “It is.”

  “Huh. I have to give it to you—that’s a very brave choice.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not, but I smiled anyway. “Thanks. I like your outfit a lot.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  She cocked her head. “Don’t take this the wrong way but the last few days, you’re, like, a totally different person.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Just then Jonah came up.

  “Hey, Jonah,” we said in unison, before exchanging a look.

  “Hey,” he said, seeming to be somewhat uneasy with the attention.

  “Well, I guess I should get going,” I mumbled as I started off.

  Why was it that every time I was around him I got nervous? I never got nervous around Jonah. In fact, he was like the one person in the world outside of my family I didn’t get nervous around.

  By the time lunch was over, poet blouses was doing something called “trending” on Twitter which—according to my new best friend Google—meant it was really popular. Also by the time lunch was over, my face ached from the perma-smile that was attached to it. From the surprised looks I got whenever I said hello to someone, I got the sense that I was very partial about who I spoke to, which made me go out of my way to talk to even more people. As long as I was stuck here, I was going to milk my popularity power for all it was worth and make sure that no one felt less than or left out. It was strange, though. For someone who was supposedly so popular, I felt really alone. When you’re up on a pedestal and people are intimidated by you, you feel just as out of sync as when you’re sitting on the edge of the cafeteria.

  By the time study hall came along I was excited for the chance to just be by myself for a while. According to my Twitter feed that I had read through last night in my crash course of trying to figure out who I was, I usually spent study hall surfing fashion websites, such as Piperlime and Shopbop. Not that afternoon, though, once I noticed Nerdy Wayne sitting two seats away from me.

  And then it hit me—if anyone would know about time travel, it was him! Why hadn’t I thought about this sooner? He was the one who had come up with the idea for Socialize, which, I now realized, was almost identical to Facebook! And then I remembered that not only did he believe the Socialize idea could work, but he had gone as far as to say that one day we’d be able to see each other on screens when we talked to each other on the phone. (Um, FaceTime anyone?) So if he was so good about forecasting the future, maybe he knew a thing or two about the past as well. Or at least getting back there.

  I watched as his head bobbed over his iPad. (Turned out I had one as well. With a cover that was pink, natch.) “Hey, Wayne,” I whispered loudly.

  Nothing.

  “Wayne?” I said louder.

  At that his head raised, and I saw two white wires hanging out of his ears. As he took one of the wires out, I could hear music coming through the little circle thing at the top. They were like the headphones I used with my Walkman, but much smaller. “If I did something to offend you, I’m sorry,” he said. “Even if I don’t know what it is.”

  It was like the entire student body lived under a cloud of collective guilt. “I didn’t say you did,” I replied. “I just have a question. See, I was sitting over there, and I don’t know why, but for some reason I started thinking about the idea of time travel. Do you ever find yourself thinking about the idea of time travel, Wayne?”

  “Is this a trick question?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Nope.”

  “You want to know about time travel.”

  I nodded. “It’s a new interest of mine,” I replied. “Much more interesting than hairstyles and accessories. So do you know anything about it?”

  “Actually, I do. I just wrote a blog post about it.”

  “I love blogs,” I ad-libbed. “I have a bunch of them. In a lot of different colors.” Man, it was hard to constantly come up with things on the spot like that. It made my head hurt.

  From the way he looked at me, like I was nuts, that may have not been the right thing to say, but oh well. “You can link to it through my Facebook page. Or my Tumblr. Or my Twitter,” he said. “There’s a lot of useful information in the post about how to do it.”

  “That’s awesome,” I said, relieved. I just had to track down the log—I meant, blog—and hopefully by dinner I’d know how to get back to 1986. Not that I was planning on going right away. I was going to at least wait until after I gave my presidential speech.

  “Oh yeah. From the amount of hits I’ve gotten, it seems that a lot of people are interested in traveling to the future.”

  I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised. This is the guy who came up with the idea for Facebook. Well, obviously not the idea for Facebook, because if he had, I bet he would’ve dropped out of high school and bought himself a small country somewhere. “I’m sure they are,” I said, trying to keep my voice neutral. The last thing I needed was for it to get around school that I was asking about time travel. I could only imagine how that would morph as it made its way through the game of Telephone. “What about the past?”

  “The past?” he asked, confused.

  “Yeah. What about traveling back to the past?”

  “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Well, because there’s a lot of great stuff back there.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like . . . New Wave music. And John Hughes movies. And Bubblicious gum.”

  “But they didn’t have technology.”

  “Sure they did. What about VCRs? And Walkmans?”

  He stared at me blankly. “Anyways, if you still want to check out my blog and like it on Facebook, that would really amp up the hits, which would be awesome.”

  So much for getting an answer.

  “You’re really taking this ‘down with the people’ thing seriously, huh?” a voice said from behind me.

  I turned around to see Montana, her boots up on the seat in front of her, even though there was a big sign forbidding it on the wall to her right.

  “I was never not down with the people,” I replied. I cocked my head. “What does that phrase even mean?”

  Montana cocked hers as well as she thought about it. “You know, I have no idea.”

  We shared a smile for a brief second before hers went away. “Says the girl who spends her time ruling her kingdom from the Ramp.”

  “Okay, (a) I don’t have a kingdom,” I replied. “And (b) I act
ually have a big announcement about the Ramp coming up very soon.”

  “And what’s that? That you’re taking money from some scholarship fund to raise it so it’s even higher?”

  “No.” I got up and walked to her row and plopped into the seat next to her. “The announcement is . . . it’s coming down,” I whispered.

  Her eyes widened. As did mine. What was I saying?

  “What are you talking about?” she demanded.

  What was I talking about? “Well, I mean, I don’t know that for sure, but after much thought”—like, say, almost thirty years’ worth—“I’ve decided to suggest that we get rid of it entirely.” I was? Really? I needed to shut up. Now.

  She reached out and felt my forehead.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Checking to see if you’re delirious,” she replied.

  I took a moment to check in with myself. “Nope. I’m completely in my right mind,” I replied. “I mean, what kind of class president would I be if I didn’t try to restore democracy to Castle Heights?”

  “I hate to tell you this, but from what I’ve heard, I don’t think there’s ever been democracy here.”

  She wasn’t wrong. “Yeah, well, there should be. And I’m going to be the one to bring it,” I said. As much as I could before I went back to 1986.

  As Montana stared at me, as if trying to see whether I was telling the truth, I felt my face turn red. It was nice to be seen as just a regular human again as opposed to being feared or adored. “Huh.” She finally nodded. “Who knew?”

  “Who knew what?”

  “Who knew there was a whole other side to you,” she replied. “Poet blouses . . . democracy . . . next thing you know, you’re going to tell me you hate Top Forty bands.”

  “Oh, I do,” I said.

  “What do you listen to, then?”

  “New Wave.”

  “Like . . . New Wave from the eighties?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Psychedelic Furs. Modern English—”

  “Modern English,” Montana said. “That sounds familiar.”

  “They sing that song ‘I Melt with You.’”