Kiss Crush Collide

by Christina Meredith

  I sit up and search around in the tangled duvet. I find my bra and start to put it on, sliding it under my shirt.

  “Hook this thing, Shane,” I say with my chin down and my fingers foreign and clumsy behind my back.

  Shane of course bypasses the bra completely and reaches for my goods.

  “Jesus, Shane.” I swear through clenching teeth as I fight him off.

  Kneeling, I swing my hair over my shoulder and feel a section that clings, still damp and sweaty, to the back of my neck.

  I reach back and try again. “She is going to walk in the door any second.”

  “I am much better at the unhooking part,” Shane says in frustration, but he twists my lacy pink bra around in his football fingers until he gets it hooked.

  Shane and I have barely touched down on the last step when there my mother is, pushing a large silver vase overflowing with yellow tea roses into my arms.

  “Find somewhere to put these where Freddie can enjoy them,” she says as she walks off toward the kitchen.

  Caterers are carrying more of everything in through the garage door. A constant stream of aproned workers, steaming silver pans, and large, Saran-covered platters passes through the arched doorway.

  Right, I think, holding the flowers out and away from me at arm’s length as I search the room for a place to stash them. I was there when Freddie had a couple of accidents and Yorke invented pee-your-bed yellow. Freddie has shunned yellow ever since, but my mother keeps trying.

  I set the flowers down on a small trestle table in our family room and feel a slip and a slosh. Water drips onto my fingers and the polished wood tabletop.

  “Oh, and Fred . . . Lee . . . Yorke,” my mother calls impatiently.

  Finally she is out of choices and lands on “Leah.”

  Her head pops around the corner, and she finds me wiping my wet hands on my already used-looking T-shirt.

  “Go change,” she says, eyeing me up and down with a disquieting glance. “It’s almost time and you look . . . disheveled.”

  God, she doesn’t even know which one I am. She just knows I don’t look good enough.

  I retreat across the foyer with Shane in tow. He’s so close he’s practically in my back pocket as I grab the railing at the base of the stairs.

  My mother’s slender fingers slide onto his forearm, stopping us both.

  “Shane,” she says with a smooth smile, the coral tips of her fingers denting into his skin, “won’t you come give me a hand at the bar?”

  She peels him away from me, and I head back to my room alone, feeling mostly pissed at her, but also a little thankful, because for once I can climb the stairs without Shane hotboxing me step by step.

  I kneel on my bed and push the window open, letting in a breeze that floats my sheer white curtains. Leaning back on my heels, I breathe deeply as the smell of Shane, a combination of spicy cologne and gym locker, fades away.

  Opening the louvered doors of my walk-in closet, I hit the light and step inside to find something to wear that my mother will deem appropriate.

  I flick the hangers, sliding summer dresses, tank tops, skirts, and jeans past my view. I make it all the way to the end, past the stuff I haven’t worn since freshman year and the stuff with tags still on it that I will never wear because my mother has picked it out for me while shopping with her girlfriends, and then I look at everything again, sliding the velvet padded hangers back the other way.

  Nothing seems right. I pull my skirt off and kick it to the back of the closet, then drop my T onto the heap of dirty clothes piled next to my laundry basket. It lands on top of the short black dress I wore last night.

  I pick the dress up and press the dark, soft jersey to my face, instantly smelling my perfume and hair spray. I breathe in even deeper and smell mint and—this just might be my imagination—the green, fresh smell of grass.

  I walk up to the full-length mirror propped up against the wall. Holding the black dress in front of me, I crook the side of my mouth up and smile back at my reflection, just to see how it looks. Then a smile—a real, true Leah smile—breaks out on my face and my choice is clear. It’s not exactly clean, and I know my mother knows I was wearing it last night because she was wearing the old lady version of it herself and my sisters had on almost exact duplicates, except theirs were just a bit shorter and tighter, but right now I really want to wear this dress.

  I spring up onto my bed and peer out the window, holding the black dress tightly against my chest. I kneel, resting my butt on my heels, and look down over the yard.

  The sun is bright, shimmering in wavy diamonds on top of the just-cleaned pool water, highlighting the curves of the glasses that are lined up neatly behind the bar.

  Little round tables draped in white linen dot the lawn. A bowlful of my mother’s yellow roses sits atop every flat surface big enough to hold one, drawing my eye from post to post and table to table, a blooming dot-to-dot across our freshly cut yard.

  Yellow streamers decorate the fence. Yellow balloons are tied to the tent poles. Our whole yard is pee-your-bed yellow.

  Our back gate opens. A big yellow bow is tied to the top. It swings back and forth as the first guests arrive and the party gets under way.

  Freddie and my mother step up, with my dad right behind them, to greet the guests. I watch my family taking their places, lining up to say hello and how are you, it’s great to see you, and thanks so much for coming.

  Freddie gets the kisses and congratulations, for now, but I’m sure Yorke will bust that up as soon as she can. As if on cue, I watch my mother lift her arm and wave Yorke over from the shade of the rented tent.

  The guests are coming in thick, practically lining up behind the gate.

  Yorke’s sandals clack across the patio as she takes her spot, maneuvering Roger, dark and slim, into place behind her and up to the right a little, like a flat key on a piano.

  I have a bird’s-eye view, but I already know it by heart. It’s the same in every picture we have ever posed for—in the snapshots that fill the thick leather photo albums and in the black-and-white portraits inside the hefty sterling silver frames that line the walls and cover every mantelpiece of our house.

  It used to be that my mother would guide us into place, my dad waiting patiently off to the side with the tripod and the flash.

  “Yorke is first ’cause she is the oldest,” my mother would say, “then Freddie, and finally Leah.”

  Her fingertips would dig into our shoulders as she arranged us, blue, yellow, and pink, to her satisfaction. Then she would step back and admire her work and say something like “That’s one for our Christmas card,” as my dad snapped away.

  I rest my forehead against the windowpane. I can see where I am supposed to fit. There is a spot waiting for me at the end of the line. Freddie and Yorke know how to set it up now, no guidance necessary. Today is the garden party version. My sisters are shades of cool summer, icy blue, soft sea green, and long blond hair. I drop the black dress, crushing it under my knees, knowing what is expected of me, knowing the dress won’t work.

  Outside, the pile of cards and gifts continues to grow. The chatter of the guests and the tinkling of glass rise up toward me like a thunderhead building over the yard as I try to see beyond our neatly trimmed hedge, my pulse raising, hoping for a flash of bright red, a car rolling up to take me away from the careful orchestration that is my life. But I know that car is carefully parked in front of our house, in the shade to keep the soft leather seats from the sun.

  Last night was the most fun that car and I have probably ever had. We went out, polished and prepared for a standard Friday night, a smooth ride, no bumps in the road. But we came back different. Our engines had been run out. Revved up. Roger had only to slide the M3’s driver’s seat forward to get things back to normal. I don’t know what it’s going to take for me.

  Below me, my mother leans forward to kiss one of my dad’s golfing buddies on the cheek and notices the break in the line. Her l
ine. Her unhappiness is immediately apparent as she leans back, tightening up, her bracelets glinting when they slide silently down her arm, their metallic clink lost in the sounds of the swelling party.

  She folds her arms tightly across her chest, and her smile disappears for a split second, her mouth becoming a sharp slash of coral. I can almost feel her hands on my shoulders, sliding me into place.

  My throat tightens, and I scramble down off the bed. I grab the first pink dress I can find, pull it on, and hurry down the stairs to complete my mother’s matching set.

  You can see the sweat rolling down Evan’s face even though it’s already pretty dark. He’s behind Freddie, doing some kind of bump and grind thing, as she sways to the music, eyes closed, the gold honor cords she received earlier today sliding slowly from her neck.

  A miniature disco ball hangs over them. It spins and twinkles, illuminating the sprigs of grass sprouting up around the edges of the rented floor.

  Lights from the black-draped DJ table tint Evan’s hardworking face in a wash of colors as he makes his moves, the center of attention on the dance floor. He is getting into it, hips shaking, arms raised, clapping to the beat some of the time, but mostly missing it completely.

  I feel a little bad for Evan. Grossed out mostly, because of the sweating, but also a bit bad because he is on the kill list and doesn’t even realize it. If he did, I doubt he would be putting this much energy into some old eighties song.

  No Johnson sister escapes to college with a high school boyfriend holding her back. Evan is on his way out, the same way Yorke’s high school boyfriend Dwight was the summer she graduated. The same way Shane will be a year from now.

  “Let’s dance,” Shane says, stretching his arm out along the back of my chair, his breath malty and thick in my ear as he rubs my shoulder. He has been pawing at me and rubbing around on me all day.

  “Come on,” he says, his fingers, sticky with beer, making a clumsy circle on my bare skin, “let’s go.”

  Figuring Shane is a lot like a dog and if I don’t make eye contact he will eventually lose interest and pant away, I don’t even look at him. I keep my eyes glued on Freddie and Evan.

  You can tell that Evan just wants to get into Freddie’s pants. That he just knows that since she is pretty drunk and it is a special occasion, he is in there. Right, I think, stripping Shane’s fingers off my shoulder, one by one, hoping he will get the hint, dead man dancing.

  A little slow on the uptake, as usual, Shane finally moves his arm. He swirls his smuggled beer around in a dainty white coffee cup and finishes it off in a big gulp, oblivious of the fact that I am walking away, the ground squishing under my heels as I escape.

  It has been a rush of relatives and old friends and fancy little appetizers washed down with well-wishes all day. With Shane’s arm looped around my waist, the warm sun melting us together like chocolates, we lined up with my family, and I smiled and answered the same questions over and over and over.

  “Will you go abroad next year just like Freddie?” I would be asked.

  I don’t know, my brain would think.

  “Of course she will,” my mother would answer.

  “Can we expect another valedictorian next year?”

  I would nod and smile, thinking, Of course you can. Mr. Hobart’s got it all arranged.

  Then they would lean into each other as they walked away, saying the same thing everybody says, “She’s just like her sisters.”

  Can people even tell us apart, or do they only know it’s me ’cause I am at the end of the line?

  I turn back toward the tent. Little girls dance right next to the towering black DJ speakers, their hands clasped, their cheeks pink and bright.

  The music fades, and the girls keep bouncing, their shiny little dress shoes reflecting the lights. My mother stands in the middle of the dance floor. My dad, straightening his tie, rushes over to join her.

  “Everyone,” my mother says, squinting into the light with her hand over her brow, like a ship captain searching for land.

  “Everyone,” she repeats, more loudly this time and in a higher pitch as her gaze slides from the ancient relatives in the way back to the little dancers at her feet.

  She waits for the calm.

  She raises a glass, and the hem of her dress inches a modest amount up her thigh as she says, “Please join us in a toast.”

  I watch Freddie swirl to a stop in the corner of the dance floor. She steadies herself, smoothing back her hair and adjusting the gold cords around her neck.

  “It is our honor,” my mother declares, turning to look at my dad with an expression of absolute pride.

  “Our pleasure,” he chimes in, his head bowing toward hers, the golden bubbles alight in his raised glass of beer.

  “To announce the engagement of our daughter Yorke—” my mother says over delighted gasps. The sound of thunderous clapping lifts the sides of the tent and drowns out the rest of her toast and any mention of Roger, who is standing at attention at Yorke’s side.

  I see Freddie slump, but it lasts for only a second. She rebounds quickly, Johnson style, storing her anger and smoothing it over with a smile and a hug from the toothy boyfriend at her side.

  She looks great, but I know she is falling apart, her moment in the sun being stolen clap by clap and kiss by kiss as Yorke starts her victory lap.

  It’s like the year Yorke got a new bike on Freddie’s birthday. The day belonged to Freddie, but Yorke drove away with it on a pearly white three-speed with silver streamers dangling from the handlebars. Freddie got a bike, too, but nobody seemed to notice.

  I step back into the tent and make my way toward Freddie, accidentally getting too close to a tableful of relatives. Before I can slip past, they begin a fresh round of “You must be so proud” and “Just think, next year it will be you,” distracting me from Freddie and her distress.

  In the small space of time it takes me to disentangle myself from their polite hugs and paper-thin kisses, Freddie has completely regained her composure.

  My sisters are hugging and twirling together in the middle of the dance floor, Yorke’s smile and engagement ring sparkling, Freddie’s blond hair and honor cords swinging in a gold blur.

  I lean kind of indecently past some old man wearing a bow tie and a cardigan that only someone really old and possibly close to death could wear on a hot summer night like this and snag a glass of, hopefully, untouched beer. I raise it in a silent toast. It’s not as if Freddie were the first valedictorian in this family, but considering that Yorke’s class was a bunch of dumbasses, she certainly was the best.

  I drink to her, knowing that with Yorke around, she will never get to be the first at anything. Or, I realize, the beer bubbling in my brain, the last. So I drink to all three of us.

  Chapter Four

  The last three days of school drip by. The parties, the yearbook signings, even the final class photos feel uneventful. I am listless, wilted, my pulse slow and slippery like water in a garden hose that’s been left in the sun.

  There is no breeze or breathing room at home. And our kitchen table is the front line in a silent war, France versus the traditional wedding. A bunker of bridal magazines flanks the left side of the breakfast nook, A Guidebook to French Phrases and an unfolded map of the Paris Métro dominate the right, leaving the silver salt and pepper shakers unprotected in the middle of no-man’s-land on the flowered tablecloth.

  It appears that the wedding is winning, hands down. It has strong support, being fully backed by my mother. It is easy for her to get behind a good wedding. She understands a world full of beautiful dresses and guest lists. France, however, she doesn’t get. She’s never been.

  It took Freddie months of prodding and convincing—plus an unexpected phone call during dinner one night last spring from Madame Lesac, promoting Freddie’s fluency and exceptional French skills—to get permission for a year abroad.

  But it was a comment from our new next-door neighbor, who had spent a
summer in France before college and declared it to be a “perfectly civilized place,” that finally got my mother to cave and laid the groundwork for this breakfast nook battle, where there are apparently no skirmishes, just lots of tension. Sitting between the warring factions each morning, I am usually shell-shocked before I can even finish my orange juice.

  It’s 9:00 A.M. on June 5, my first official day of summer, and already it is eighty-eight degrees. I hit the hill that leads down into the park, the hardest part of my long walk to the public pool, and adjust my backpack, feeling a bubble of heat escape from underneath it, even though the sun is still low in the sky.

  I follow the path that circles the flower garden, where the air smells sweet and buzzes with fat bumblebees. Flowers already trying to avoid the wilting sun lean over and box me in, bumping along the top of my backpack.

  When we were little, this park was one of our favorite places in the world. The flowers were so tall and dense back then that you could get lost and disappear in them. One time I looked up from my inspection of a bright red ladybug and saw only flowers. No sisters, no parents, not even a dog, only stems and leaves and petals that towered above me, closing in on each side.

  I thought I was lost forever, alone in a forest of flowers. I stayed still, squatting next to my ladybug friend with my heart thumping and my eyes wide until the sound of my sisters laughing floated by.

  I followed their voices, my little legs pumping until I promptly bumped into Yorke’s back. There they were, just around a curve in the path, and I was safe.

  I follow that same curve today, out of the flowerbed and back toward the street. Hitching my sliding backpack up again, I look up and notice a dark green Corvette slinking along the side of the road. I slow myself when the car rolls to a stop. I can almost feel someone watching me from behind its dark-tinted windows. I look around, nervously hoping to see Freddie and Yorke busting out of the tall flowers, just a step away as always, but the park is deserted.