Ink is Thicker Than Water (Entangled Teen)

by Spalding, Amy

  I try really hard to shove all of this stuff I’m feeling into words that make sense and don’t implicate Oliver in any way, but I can barely manage to come up with topics for a school newspaper humor column. My brain can’t handle this.

  Sara starts back toward her room. “I have to get this homework finished. We can talk tomorrow if you want.”

  I let her go, though not just because I’m not sure I could stop her. Of course I don’t really know what I’m doing with Oliver, but there are way worse things to obsess over alone than thoughts of tonight’s kisses, over and over and over.

  Chapter Seven

  Kaitlyn’s car is still in the shop the next morning, so I pick her up again. The oldies station is really on a roll today, and I’ve got a Hollies song blasting as she gets into the car.

  “Hey.” She points to the radio. “Is this a protest because I made you listen to music from this century yesterday?”

  “‘Bus Stop’ is one of the greatest pop songs ever recorded,” I tell her. “Also, yes.”

  “You’re such a nerd.”

  Kaitlyn has been calling me a nerd for ages, particularly about my devotion to music from before even my parents were born, but today it feels different. Today Kaitlyn’s someone who talks to a whole new class of people and thinks sneaking into underage clubs would be cool.

  “Thanks for the ride,” she says. “I don’t know what’s up with my car.”

  “That’s what you get for trusting German engineering,” I say in what is a pretty great impression of Kaitlyn’s dad. “We’re running early, should we get coffee?” Of course by coffee I mean hot chocolate, but it doesn’t roll off the tongue as well.

  “Definitely, I could use the caffeine.”

  The only coffee shop on the way to school from Kaitlyn’s is a Starbucks, but unlike Mom, I don’t think Starbucks is going to bring on the end of local businesses forever, so I pull right up and park.

  “I can’t believe you still get those,” Kaitlyn says inside when I order my hot cocoa. “You’re not a five-year-old.”

  “Five-year-olds can’t drive themselves to school,” I say. “Or their friends who have shoddy German cars.”

  “Ha, ha,” Kaitlyn says. It’s just like a flash, this thing where she’s maybe judgmental of me, just like the other day with my slightly holey shirt, and then she just looks like herself again.

  My phone beeps, and I check it to see that, like I hoped, it’s a text from Oliver. POP QUIZ: We should hang out this weekend: TRUE or FALSE. I’m texting back my response when Kaitlyn cranes her neck down. “Who is that from?”

  “This guy.” I hit send and throw the phone into my purse. “The college guy. The thing I told you about.”

  “I thought you said that was just a one-time thing,” she says with her eyebrows way raised like she painted them on wrong.

  “I thought it was, but maybe it’s not.”

  “Why are you talking so fast?”

  “Aaahhh, I don’t know, sorry.” Of course I know why. Of course I know I’m simultaneously terrified and also thinking of little but more opportunities to kiss Oliver. And also I’m terrified of admitting I’m terrified. I frigging hate being terrified! I never planned on being terrified of anything. It’s a drag. Why can’t I be brave like I feel like I am?

  My phone beeps again, from the cavern of my bag, and even though I am trying to play this whole thing cool in front of Kaitlyn, that part of my brain that likes him won’t let me wait until I get to school to check the response. Cool, instructions and directions will be forthcoming.

  “Is he, like, your boyfriend now?” Kaitlyn asks.

  “It’s way more casual than that.” I pray Kaitlyn doesn’t ask me to get more specific, because even though Oliver is basically the only image flashing in my brain right now, revealing any more wouldn’t exactly make this seem casual.

  But the barista calls out our drinks, and it’s time to get to school. And my brain can get right back to thinking only about Oliver and his lips. These are great, great subjects.

  Adelaide intercepts me in the hallway the moment I separate from Kaitlyn. I feel like a jerk for my relief at the timing. Kaitlyn’s befriending our school’s royalty, or at least talking to them casually, while I’m banding with the people who treat stories about new seats in the auditorium like serious journalism. Probably best Kaitlyn doesn’t really know this yet.

  “Are you busy on Friday night? Kellie.” Adelaide says my name in the same tone Mom does when I’m in semi-serious trouble. “With so many locally owned coffee shops around here, you actually go to Starbucks?”

  “Their beans are free trade.” I don’t know what that means, but they have tons of booklets and signs up about it, and it sounds good. “And at least they’re providing local employment for the people who work there.” I pull that completely out of my ass as I’m saying it, but it sounds pretty good.

  “Well.” She eyes me for a moment. “That’s true. So a bunch of us are going out on Friday night, seeing The Apple at the Tivoli at midnight. You should come with us.”

  “I’ve never even heard of that. Is it new this week?”

  “Oh. My. God.” She shakes her head slowly, sadly. “The Apple is only one of the worst films of all time. It’s so bad it comes back around to being awesome. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen it, and I can’t allow myself to let you go on with life if you don’t.”

  “I might have plans on Friday,” I say, which isn’t a lie.

  “You can invite Oliver. In fact, please do invite Oliver. He’ll have a blast, I’m sure.”

  “I’m not inviting Oliver to some weird bad movie,” I say.

  “Your loss,” she says. “And his. See you in Jennifer’s.”

  I stop off at my locker to get my stuff, but of course also check my phone. There’s nothing new from Oliver, but I reread all his previous texts anyway. He got up this morning and thought about me—you have to think about a person to text her, after all—and I was thinking about him, and that whole thing seems kind of magical.

  Okay, magical, self? I can’t believe a guy is turning my brain so cheesy. Previously, it was normal, and now it’s made of cheddar and Gorgonzola.

  When I walk into Jennifer’s classroom, I drop into the desk next to Adelaide without really thinking about it. She holds up this weird picture of a guy with one devil horn, and I burst out laughing.

  “See?” Adelaide’s tone is triumphant. “That’s from the movie. Don’t you want to go now?”

  “I don’t know when I’m going out with Oliver,” I say. “But if it’s a different night, okay.”

  I immediately feel bad because I know Kaitlyn wants us to do something cool this weekend—and I’m 100 percent positive something cool wouldn’t include seeing a bad movie on purpose with the newspaper staff—but I’ll figure that out later.

  Kaitlyn’s late getting to lunch, so I quietly eat my sad cafeteria burrito while vaguely listening to the table’s conversation about potential Halloween plans later this month. This is basically the same group we’ve sat with since freshman year, and we all get along, but honestly, when I think about friends at school I think about Kait. It’s not that I never hang out with anyone else, but she’s the one I share everything with. (The stuff I want to share, at least.)

  “Hey.” Kaitlyn plunks down beside me with a huge salad. “Sorry, I got caught in the longest conversation ever. Also, Jessie Weinberg told me you’re on the newspaper now.”

  Unfortunately, I’m midbite, so I just shrug. Shrugging with a burrito in your mouth is not attractive, but there are no other available options.

  “You joined the paper and didn’t tell me?” She wrinkles her nose a little, since I am eating the way a velociraptor would approach a bean burrito. “You barely even like being in school when you have to, and now you’re doing extracurriculars?”

  “One extracurricular,” I say, “not extracurriculars, plural.”

  “Remember when I was going to join French clu
b and you said that seemed dumb?”

  “That doesn’t sound like me,” I say even though of course it does, and also, French club does sound dumb! I don’t need to join a group of Ticknor students to eat croissants and talk about Les Miserables or whatever they do. “If you really wanted to join, you could have, you know.”

  “I know. I’m just saying, Kell.”

  I feel like such a dork even thinking about how I used to be a really big believer in just sitting back and letting life happen. In tiny waves it started washing over me that there were things I wanted and maybe going after them wouldn’t be awful. But no way I’m saying aloud what sounds like a motivational poster.

  “The French club is actually really fun,” Chelsea says. “Last week we learned to make crepes.”

  “It seems like it’s just cooking club,” I say, and she shrugs.

  “All the food’s really good.”

  “It’s true,” Mitchell says. “She gave me some of the leftover crepes.”

  “Okay, maybe you should join the French club,” I tell Kaitlyn, but her attention’s on her phone. Hopefully, this at least means the topic of the newspaper and me are behind us. Oh, except— “So I can’t take you home tonight. I’m sorry. I have a thing.”

  “What thing?” she asks while still texting. “Newspaper?”

  “Yeah, sorry. Can you get another ride?”

  “I’m good, don’t worry about it,” Kaitlyn says, still all eyes on the phone. “Also, Kell, sorry for bugging you about the weekend. I’m good there, too.”

  “You weren’t bugging me,” I say, even though maybe the whole sneaking into a club thing was bugging me, a little. God, it suddenly feels like everything I say to Kait has some unspoken second half.

  I’m positive it didn’t used to be like that.

  At today’s newspaper meeting, I realize that people are turning in the articles they just talked about on Tuesday. What the heck! It feels like one of those nightmares where you find yourself in a class you didn’t know you signed up for and the final’s that very moment. Except this is all real.

  “I don’t think I understood the deadline,” I tell Adelaide as she stacks printouts of articles on her desktop. “I haven’t even started any of those ideas yet.”

  “I know, Brooks, we just talked about them last night. Look at the whiteboard.” She barely gestures to the board hanging at the back of the room. I see that all the assignments chosen two days ago have been transferred there, and also that I’m still listed as Kelly B. The good, non-nightmarish news is that my assignment is just listed as “something funny” and the due date is next week. “And if you’re still nervous, we can run your cafeteria piece. Calm down. See if anyone needs your help.”

  I don’t really know how to help anyone, but Jessie asks me to check her article for typos (and I find one, so I feel like a superhero), and then Mitchell lets me cast my vote for the best photo to pair with a story about autumn. (I’m not sure how that’s an actual story topic, but whatever, at least I don’t have to write it.)

  Editors all have to stay late to make sure the paper’s ready to go to press, but the rest of us get to go once everything’s copyedited and all photos have captions. Scott Garcia suggests hanging out at the Java Joint, and since tonight I have no responsibilities, I agree to go.

  “Is it true your parents own a tattoo parlor?” Jessie asks me as our whole group is crowded around a tiny table meant for two or three. I guess technically she’s in a much cooler group than the rest of us, but she doesn’t seem out of place in this crowd, either. People can be so many more things than you expect.

  “My mom and stepdad, yeah,” I say. “Also, just to be helpful, no one really calls it a parlor. It’s just a shop.”

  “Do you have any tattoos?” Paul Bowen, one of the photographers, asks, and I swear he’s staring at my butt even though I’m sitting down and clearly wearing multiple layers of clothing. Guys can be really obvious.

  “Nope.”

  “Not even somewhere people can’t see?” he asks, and now he is clearly staring at my butt.

  “No. My mom’s really hung up on the whole not-until-you’re-eighteen thing. I’m convinced I’ll wear her down, though.”

  “What’s the weirdest tattoo you saw anyone get?” Chelsea asks.

  “Someone got a corndog on their bicep,” I say. “With a halo, like it was saintly. And someone got a portrait of Dr. Phil.”

  My phone buzzes as everyone starts chiming in with what they want to get tattooed on themselves someday, and I grin when I see the text is from Oliver. Saturday night? So I tune out instead of contributing my future tattoo ideas and respond an affirmative to him. I’ve heard that you shouldn’t always be so available when guys contact you, but I don’t feel like pretending I’m not into Oliver. Meet up at Moke’s at 7 and go from there?

  “Why are you blushing, Kellie?” Chelsea asks me, and then Mitchell tries to read my phone’s screen, but I hide it in time—and it’s not like it says something pervy anyway—but everyone knows I’m up to something. And I kind of don’t even care. Oliver McAuley, who is tall and smart and a very good kisser, wants to go out with me on Saturday night.

  I’ve put it off long enough, so that night while I’m helping Mom with dishes and getting texts from Oliver (him: Haunted houses, cool or lame or so lame they’re cool? me: depends. last year we went to one we heard was super scary, but it was just a church showing stuff like kids reading harry potter and burning in hell), I bring it up like I haven’t been obsessing over how to ask her. “Oh, Mom? Don’t make a big deal of this or whatever, but is it okay if I go on a date on Saturday?”

  “With Oliver McAuley?”

  “Does it matter with who?”

  “No, of course it doesn’t, I was just—Well, a little! One of your teachers, someone my age, it would matter.”

  “It is with Oliver,” I say. “But please don’t make it a thing. Sara doesn’t know, and I feel weird about her knowing. Can she not know?”

  Mom directs a sly grin at me. “And you make fun of your dad for his secret relationship.”

  Having a secret relationship sounds like maybe there’s one cool thing—or at least a mysterious thing—about my dad. But, no.

  Dad is actually under the impression Sara and I have no idea he has a girlfriend, even though occasionally we run into them around town on days we aren’t staying with him. Jayne works at a nonprofit cat rescue organization and is sort of like Mom in that she smiles a lot—well, the few times I’ve seen her she’s been smiling—and she apparently really loves her job. I don’t know what he’s so afraid will happen if we’re flat-out told of her significance in his life…and as if their time together doesn’t already tell us that much anyway. But when we’ve asked Dad about her, it’s like he’s trying to do a Jedi mind trick on us. “What girlfriend?”

  “I am not like Dad. If this was like A Relationship, it wouldn’t be secret, but I’m still figuring out what it is, and I don’t want to do that while Sara knows about it. Just, please?”

  “You know I think honesty is—”

  “The best policy?” I smirk at her.

  “Hush.” I can tell from Mom’s strained, serious face that she’s trying desperately not to laugh. “But—yes. Still, dating’s tough enough. If you need some time to figure it out, I’m not going to announce it to your sister.”

  “You’re the best mom,” I say, because she really is. If I’m ever a mom and good at it, I hope my kids tell me.

  I’m Googling stuff for my Cornerstones of American History homework that night when a message pings on my Facebook. I’m hoping it’s Oliver even though we aren’t official friends yet, but instead it’s someone just a week ago I thought I’d never be talking to.

  Adelaide Johansson: Greetings.

  Kellie Brooks: i still haven’t started on my article yet, sorry.

  Adelaide Johansson: Jeez, touchy. I was merely saying hi.

  Kellie Brooks: hi.

  Adelaide J
ohansson: How’s Oliver?

  Kellie Brooks: we’re going out saturday.

  I type and retype the next thing a million times, finally deleting it all. But, seriously, this is Adelaide. Adelaide is not someone I should worry about looking like a freak in front of, and I really don’t know who else to talk to.

  Kellie Brooks: if you almost have sex with a guy once, and then a while later you have a date, does he think you’ll have sex with him then?

  Adelaide Johansson: Oh I have good advice here!

  Adelaide Johansson: JUST TALK TO HIM, KELLIE.

  Adelaide Johansson: Guys are not some foreign species who don’t know our language. They’re just PEOPLE, and if you have concerns about your sex life as it relates to Oliver, you shouldn’t be talking to me.

  Adelaide Johansson: And definitely don’t talk to Kaitlyn Hamilton. She’ll read you some article from Cosmo.

  Kellie Brooks: kaitlyn’s my best friend, you know.

  Adelaide Johansson: That advice still stands.

  I feel bad laughing, since it’s not Kaitlyn’s fault I haven’t asked her for advice, but I do anyway. Maybe Adelaide isn’t one billion percent wrong. (Honestly, it seems impossible for Adelaide to be wrong about anything.) It wasn’t that long ago when I knew exactly who I was, but right now in this moment, messaging a person I never thought I’d even speak to except out of necessity, I don’t really care anymore that I’m not so sure.

  Chapter Eight

  Friday at school is completely normal except that during lunch I get a text from Adelaide that the paper has been sent to press, so I guess that’s a thing that’ll happen weekly now. I had absolutely nothing to do with this issue except typo-catching and autumn-photo-selecting, but I’m still really glad everything is on schedule.

  On Fridays we usually go to Dad’s, even though it’s a prime weekend night and Dad’s place isn’t really a prime weekend spot. He lives way out off Highway 44 in Wildwood, where houses are sprawling and the size of yards guarantees you don’t have to see your neighbors if you don’t want to. It takes twenty minutes to get there, which is good when I need an excuse to see him less, but pretty annoying the rest of the time.