17 First Kisses (28 page)

She opens her mouth one more time but then shakes her head and walks away.

Luke doesn't show his face for at least half an hour, and by then I've calmed down. He shuffles up to me with his head hung low.

“I'm really sorry. I was a jerk.”

“Yeah. You were.”

“But you know I'd never hurt you, right?” His blue eyes are wide and innocent, but I don't trust them anymore.

“Yeah, I guess.”

A slow song plays over the speaker system.

“Do you maybe want to dance with me?”

I don't. But I also don't want to awkwardly dump my boyfriend in front of everyone at prom, so I'll do what I can until it's over. “Sure.”

I take his hand reluctantly and follow him to the dance floor. In spite of what happened, my body molds itself to his, feet between feet, hips against hips, my head tucked under his chin. I used to love how perfectly shaped we are for each other. To
anyone watching, we must seem like this happy, totally-in-love couple sharing a romantic moment. But all I can think of is his fist swooshing past my cheek.

At the end of the song, he tilts my head up and presses his lips against mine. And like the traitors they are, my lips part until we're full on making out and my skin tingles with warmth and I'm hungry for more. Damn it. I know lots of people are into that whole passionate fight–passionate make-up thing, but I'm not one of them. The highs aren't worth the lows. Now if only I can convince my body.

Luke is overly attentive and gentle as a kitten for the rest of the night. He strokes the back of my neck while we take a packed limo to Buck's house for the after-party. He whispers in my ear how beautiful I am. It only makes what I have to do next that much harder. After the other couples exit the limo, I grab the sleeve of Luke's tux.

“Wait.”

He slides back into the seat next to me. “What is it?”

Rip it off. Fast. Like a Band-Aid. Picture the wall crater. Let it be your strength.

“We need to break up.”

“What?”

“You make me jealous and insecure. I make you punch walls. We're obviously not right for each other.”

“Can't we talk about this?”

I scoot across the seat toward the door. “There's nothing to talk about. We'll just fight again.”

I close the door to the limo and walk sadly into the party. Now I have no friends
and
no boyfriend. What I do have is a house full of people under various degrees of intoxication harboring various degrees of hatred toward me. It's time to start doing shots.

In the kitchen I find a shot taker's paradise—bottles in all shapes and colors supplied by Buck's older brother, who makes regular appearances at high school parties even though he graduated three years ago. Jimmy stands at the counter mixing drinks for a couple of sophomore girls who have apparently not been alerted to his legendary creeper status.

“Hey, Claire.” His eyes light up. “What can I get you?”

I decide getting a drink is worth making a deal with the Grim Creeper. “Shots.”

“Oh-ho-kay.”

Jimmy whips up a line of shots, something with vodka and juices, and the four of us (me, Jimmy, the two sophomores) take them and slam the empty glasses on the counter. He immediately makes another batch, and when Sophomore #1 wimps out, I pound hers too. A hand squeezes my shoulder, and I turn.

“CJ, are you okay?” Sam asks, his brown eyes full of concern.

“I'm fine. I'm just having some fun.”

He shifts from foot to foot like he wants to say something else, but before he can, Amanda drags him away for yet another photo op. I hop up on the counter, not caring that my dress gets wet in the process, and prattle away with the sophomores like
we're BFFs. They don't seem to know they're supposed to hate me—that I'm a boyfriend stealer and a slut. Or maybe they're so excited to hang out with seniors they're not picky. Jimmy slips us a steady supply of fruity drinks while we talk, each one tasting stronger than the last.

“Be right back—I totally have to pee,” I tell the sophomores. I jump down to the linoleum, barely sticking the landing. “And I totally have to take off these shoes.”

I leave my heels in the kitchen and zigzag to the bathroom, which—miracle of miracles—is empty. When I open the door again, Jimmy stands in the hallway, waiting.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, I'm totally fine. Totally.”

I take a step forward, wobble, and decide it would be easier to lean against the wall instead. Jimmy is suddenly close, really close, his breath hot on my cheek. The elk head mounted on the wall above me watches with glassy eyes.

“You sure are pretty,” he whispers into my ear.

He kisses me, but I'm too drunk to care. I barely even feel it. My lips have gone numb. I press at them with my fingertips and giggle. There's a tug at my wrist, an arm around my waist, Jimmy dragging me up the stairs toward the door of a bedroom.

“What do you think you're doing?”

My eyelids flutter. Megan has stepped in front of Jimmy, blocking the doorway.

“Oh, uh, sorry. We can go somewhere else.”

“You're not going anywhere with her.”

“She wants to come with me.” A whine creeps into Jimmy's voice as he backs away from her, pulling me with him.

“No. She doesn't.” Megan's fingers pry his arm from my body. When I start to keel over like a doll that can't stand on its own, she quickly slides her own arm in place of his. I fall against her birdlike shoulder, and she staggers under my weight, taking tiny shuffling steps to lead me away.

Jimmy's face turns red between his goatee patches. “What am I supposed to do now?” He kicks the door. “Bitch.”

“I don't care. But it won't be with her.” Megan fixes him with her frostiest smile. “So you can go find someone else to molest, Creep Show.”

Jimmy opens his mouth like he wants to say something else, but instead he stomps off down the hall. Megan and I half walk, half fall down the stairs, and by some magic she manages to get us to the first-floor bathroom in one piece. She leaves me on the floor, where I slump against the bathtub, which is nice and cool against my cheek. When the door opens again, she's holding a glass of water.

“Drink the whole thing.” She shoves it into my hands, and I tilt it back. Some of it sloshes down the front of my dress. Megan sits behind me on the side of the tub and combs my hair away from my face with her fingers.

“What are you doing?”

“In case you throw up,” she says.

“Thanks.” Then I remember every awful prank and cold silence for the past four months. “But . . . I mean . . . why did
you pull me away from Jimmy?”

“Um, because he's the creepiest guy in the universe.” She wraps an elastic around my hair.

“No, I mean, why are you helping me? I stole your boyfriend, and I just bitched you out at prom. You're supposed to hate me.”

Megan kneels in front of me and holds my hands.

“Because, Pact number two, I couldn't let you make out with him. And, Pact number one, I don't hate you.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

I
go back to school on Monday wondering if things have really changed with Megan and me or if prom was a fluke. An alcohol-soaked dream. But then, at lunch, Amberly shyly asks me to sit at their table.

“I missed you,” she says while we wait in line for sandwiches. Everything inside me unknots at hearing her say that. “I missed you, too.”

“I'm sorry about not talking to you, but you know . . . my dad and everything . . .”

“It's okay. I was the home wrecker this time, so you stuck with Megan.”

She smiles a sheepish smile.

“You have to know, though, I didn't do anything with Luke
until after they broke up.”

“I believe you. I think Megan does too. I'm just sorry I couldn't get everyone to come around sooner.”

I grab a turkey and Swiss on whole wheat. “That's okay. It means a lot that you tried. You probably tried to talk them out of the other stuff too, huh?”

My stomach clenches at her hesitation.
Please say you tried. Please say you weren't a part of it.

“What are you talking about?” she finally says.

“I, um—” Could it really be possible she doesn't know? “Never mind. Let's talk about it later,” I say, because we are rapidly approaching the lunch table, and Britney is already there with her seat scooted as close as humanly possible to Buck's.

“Hi,” I say as I sit down.

She glances up for a second, says hi, and immediately goes back to mooning over Buck. If I didn't know better, I'd say she looked scared. Megan comes toward our table with a tray. She's staring right at me. I suck in my breath and have a strange urge to run, but then she smiles and sits next to me and bumps her shoulder against mine, and that one motion lets me know everything is going to be okay.

I don't know whether saving me from Jimmy cancels out the pranks they played. Or whether she's really forgiven me about Luke. But I'm willing to give our friendship another shot since she's so obviously trying. I have been given a second chance, and it feels great. It makes me want to give other people that same chance. And now I'm seeing people I've known my whole life in
a new way.

I look closer at Amberly and see that she is really, truly in love with Coach Davis. And even though the idea of staying in our town and marrying someone from our high school makes me feel like someone is sucking all the air out of the room, I've been realizing that some people want that life, and it's okay.

I look closer at B and realize she's on pins and needles whenever I'm around, though I couldn't say why.

I'm scared to look closer at Megan in case it means our newly glued-back-together friendship has to fall apart again. We still haven't talked about Luke or formally apologized.

There are some shaky, awkward moments between us, but our friend group is approaching normal again. Except now Amanda Bell is a part of it. Hag. Okay, so maybe my inner-beauty finder still has some work to do where Amanda is concerned.

“I'm so glad you're back,” Megan says to me on the way home from school one day. “Amanda Bell is no substitute.”

“Did you really think she would be?”

Megan shakes her head. “She's so annoying. It's like she's so excited to be around us she just agrees with everything we say, especially me. And she's a huge bitch to everyone else. Even the girls she used to be friends with.”

I smile. It's good to know I'm irreplaceable.

“So what are we going to do about senior trip?” asks Megan.

“What do you mean? I'm not going.”

Every year the seniors from my high school go on a trip to Panama City Beach. I planned on going, but after things went
bad, I didn't sign up, because what would be the point?

      
Panama City Beach (proper noun)

      
A beach town on the Florida panhandle where most people in the Southeast go for spring break/senior trips/ any other occasion that calls for sugar-white beaches and thousands of rednecks.

      
(synonyms)

      
The Redneck Riviera, LA (Lower Alabama)

“Yes, you are. You have to.”

“But who am I going to room with? No one will have spots open by now.”

“You'll room with the four of us. We can get one of those fold-up cots. And if the hotel doesn't have any, Amanda can sleep on the floor for all I care.”

I shrug. “Okay, I'm in.”

“Sweet!!!!!!”

And then we're planning the trip together, just like old times. She and I are still fragile, though. I can tell by the way our friends are slightly on edge around us that they feel it too.

You know how sometimes people make up just so things can get back to normal and everyone else can be comfortable again? Well, that's kind of what happened here. Megan and I are best friends again. Technically. Officially. On the surface-ly. But underneath, nothing has really changed. We haven't talked about all the serious, dark stuff we need to talk about because we're both scared of what will happen. That our friendship might not survive that kind of major surgery. But you can't just slap concealer on a
big giant zit and hope for the best. Because the bacteria festering just under your skin is still there. And sooner or later, that sucker is going to pop.

Before I know it, AP tests are over, we've graduated, and I'm at the beach. Amberly does my makeup while Britney paints her toenails on the balcony and Megan tries on fifty different skirts.

“I love that one even more,” says Amanda. “You're so lucky. Everything looks
amazing
on you.”

Megan raises an eyebrow at me, and I almost start giggling. My phone buzzes in my pocket—a text from my mom. I open it to find a picture of a wall in Timothy's now-empty room painted with sample shades of orange, peach, and saffron. The text says they'll wait to pick a color until I get back because she wants it to be a family decision, but they wanted to give me a preview. I can't even believe how different his room looks without the choo-choo-train wallpaper.

“Hey, what's up? You look kind of sad,” says Amberly.

“Huh?” I snap my phone shut. “Oh, um, it's nothing. I'm fine.”

“Uh-huh. Well, close your eyes so I can do your eyeliner.”

She traces and smudges and clucks over me and I let her. It's actually very relaxing.

“Done,” she pronounces after what feels like no time at all.

I look in the mirror. My eyes are super smoky and sexy, just like I asked for.