17 First Kisses (7 page)

“Oh, right, I forgot. Sorry.”

“What about Michael Shaw?” asks Britney.

“Pass. He has coat-hanger shoulders. It needs to be somebody really good,” says Megan. “What about Buck?”

“Pass,” I say, and everyone stares at me. “He kissed me in, like, second grade. I want someone new.” I shrug like it's no big deal, even though I'd rather gnaw off my own arm than kiss Buck again.

The girls look impressed.

“I knew we picked the right girl,” says Megan. “Hey, who's that guy over there?”

She points toward the snack table, which is really just a lunch table with a glittery paper tablecloth.

“Amanda Bell's cousin,” replies Amberly. “He's totally yummy. That is such a good call.”

Amanda wears a smug smile while her friends vie for the attention of her oh-so-cute cousin.

“If you kiss him, her friends are going to be so pissed,” says Megan. She smiles. “He's perfect.”

I watch him for a few seconds longer.

“Done.”

I take off across the gym floor in long, sure strides that make it pretty obvious to anyone watching me where I'm going. Ordinarily I would be terrified of rejection, but I don't feel like me tonight. I feel like Megan McQueen's new friend. Buoyed by that feeling, I walk straight up to Amanda's cousin, parting the sea of adoring girls who surround him.

“Hi. I'm Claire.”

If he thinks it's weird for a girl to walk up and introduce
herself, he doesn't show it.

“I'm Evan.”

Amanda and her friends shoot daggers at me with their stares. Evan's buttoned-up-all-the-way-to-the-top shirt and slicked-over hair make me think he might be a goody-goody at his school, but at our school he is fresh meat. He's even cuter up close. He has dark brown hair like Amanda's, but thankfully no snaggleteeth. Now that I'm close enough to count his inch-long eyelashes, I am suddenly shy.

“I feel like a snowflake tonight.” I can barely bring myself to say the words. “Because I've fallen for you.”

It takes him a minute to process this.

“Wow. That's a pretty bad one.”

He laughs, and I join in.

“I know. But I kind of had to say it.”

I jerk my chin toward the girls. He sees them watching us and gives me a friendly nod to show he understands.

“I kind of have to do this too.”

I wrap one hand behind his neck and give him a quick peck-on-the-lips, blink-and-you'll-miss-it kiss. Actually, I barely remember the kiss at all. What happened after was more important. I remember the half-shocked, half-happy look on his face when I pulled away. I remember the incredulous gasps from Amanda and her friends. But most of all I remember what happened when I waltzed back over to the Crownies.

“That was amazing! So totally hot!” yells Amberly.

“Did you see their faces?” laughs Britney. She squeezes my
shoulder. Now that I've done the dare, all the negativity I was getting from her before has vanished.

“It
was
pretty amazing.” Megan gives me a hug. “You're officially one of us now!”

We spend the rest of the night in Megan's basement eating turkey-Brie–raspberry jam croissants (Megan made them herself—including the raspberry jam—from scratch!) and rehashing the dance. Whose outfits were cute and whose needed help, Steven Lippert's attempt to do the worm, and, of course, the Kiss are the major topics. Then we dance around in our pj's and sing “I Will Survive” into our hairbrushes. (Well, they dance. I mostly hover on the sideline and try not to trip over myself while I mimic them.)

After Britney and Amberly fall asleep, Megan drags her sleeping bag over to mine and tells me how jealous she is of how her college professor parents treat her genius older brother. So I tell her about how my mom focuses all her attention on my perfect big sister. We talk until it's light outside about the places we want to go and things we want to do and the glamorous lives we'll have when we're old enough to leave Pine Bluff. And I finally realize what I was missing in all those years without girlfriends.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

T
he body paint oozes thick and gooey against my fingers. Sam stands in front of me, shirtless, and once again I'm struck by how different he looks. Man boobs—gone. Love handles—gone. Abs—present.

“So, what am I painting?” I ask.

“Paint me orange with a navy
E
.”

“An
E
?”

“Yeah. I called some guys from the soccer team. We're gonna spell
TIGERS
,” he says. “Oh, and if you want to get creative and paint some black tiger stripes on my arms, that'd be cool too.”

I wipe a nickel-sized glob of tangerine-colored paint on Sam's stomach and start smearing it around. When my fingers reach the contours of his abs, I get that fluttery feeling again. I step away
abruptly.

“I've got an idea,” I say.

“What?”

“You should get the girl you're crushing on to do this at the game. That way she's touching you.”

“You think?”

“Definitely.” I don't explain to Sam why I'm positive this will work. “Who is she, anyway?”

His eyes are on the floor when he answers. “Amanda Bell.”

“Amanda Bell?! You have a crush on Amanda Bell?”

I repeat these words about fifty-seven times on the way to the game. Amanda Bell has fought to become queen of the B group, and she's one of those dying-to-be-popular people who act way meaner than the actual popular people. It's like that with monkeys too. The beta females are always the most aggressive. As soon as I hop out of Sam's truck, he places a firm hand on each of my shoulders.

“No more talking about it now that we're at the game, okay?”

“Done.” I pretend to button my lips.

After we get inside, I stop at the concession stand so I can watch Sam in action—I mean, buy cotton candy. Poor guy. Amanda is surrounded by three other girls. He bravely approaches the pack and singles out their snaggletoothed leader. I can't hear what they're saying, but the girls are giggling, and not in a good way.

Then Sam plays his trump card: he whips off his T-shirt. Amanda is as stunned as I was. She casts covert glances at her
friends, and when she sees they too are smiling carnivorous smiles at Sam's abs, she nods in agreement. By the time I pass by with my cotton candy, she's happily rubbing paint all over his stomach. I flash him a hidden thumbs-up, and he grins.

Then I hurry to find a seat before kickoff because, despite how much I make fun of Buck and our football team, I freaking love football. The intensity of the players. The excitement in the stands. Moms clanging cowbells. Old men reliving their glory days as they holler at the boys running around under the stadium lights. It's intoxicating.

The first quarter is pretty uneventful—it's our defense against theirs, and they're both good. But then I see Glenn, our star receiver, tear off down the field. He completely blows past the poor guy who is supposed to be covering him. Buck throws a wobbly rainbow of a pass, and the crowd collectively sucks in their breath. But there's no way. Buck overthrew. Glenn won't be able to . . .

He catches it! He jumps into the air like there's a hidden springboard on the field and, with every muscle in his arm stretching and straining, plucks the ball one-handed and curls it into his gut as he falls back to the ground.

The crowd explodes. I whistle through my fingers and yell, “Yeah, Glenn!” People are screaming for Buck too, which just pisses me off. He threw a crappy pass. He is so lucky he has Glenn to make him look good. Sometimes Buck even throws the ball at the guy on the other team, but Glenn jumps in front of him just in time to intercept it. My dad calls him an offensive cornerback.

The head coach, a skinny, wrinkly, white-haired man who looks exactly like an old rooster (hence his nickname: the Rooster), claps Glenn on the back. The assistant coach, who is fresh out of college and the target of many schoolgirl crushes, stops jumping up and down just long enough to do the same.

We score shortly after Glenn's magical catch, and the game calms down again. I bounce from clique to clique since my three closest friends are busy with pom-poms and herkies.

      
herkie (noun)

      
1: One of those jump thingies cheerleaders do when they're excited.

      
2: Kicking one leg out to the side so it's parallel with the ground, while simultaneously trying to kick your own ass with your other leg, while simultaneously jumping as high as you can. So it's kind of like a toe touch, except hilarious, and the best part is they have no idea how goofy it looks.

I squeeze past my ex, Tanner Walsh (Kiss #9), as he bangs away on his drums. For a band guy, he is kind of a player. In the next section over I say hey to Sam and the rest of the T-I-G-E-R-S. Amanda Bell and her friends have taken up roost behind him, and Sam is smiling the goofiest smile. I let Seth Wong, who is the
T
in
TIGERS
and also Kiss #13 and Tanner's ex–best friend (not a coincidence), spray my hair with glittery blue hair paint.

A couple minutes later, I get a tap on the shoulder.

“Hey, Claire.” Luke has magically appeared by my elbow.

“Hey! I'm glad you made it.”

I sneak a glance at the sideline where Megan is cheering to see if she's noticed him yet, but she hasn't. I try not to think about what it means that he sought me out. Try to keep the bubbly feelings scrunched down inside. I've already made up my mind. She can have him. I'll just ignore his lean, muscular, soccer-player body.

“How's the game going?” he asks.

“We're winning! Go Tigers.”

He leans close so I can hear him over the noise of the game. “This place is packed. I had to elbow people to get to you in the front row.” His deep voice rumbles in my ear, sending a small shiver down my right side. This is going to be harder than I thought.

“Yeah, this town pretty much closes down for football.”

I try to concentrate on the game instead of on Luke, filling him in on what he missed so far. We're half watching the game and half making small talk, when Glenn catches a short pass and darts down the field with it. The boy is fast. He sprints past the forty, the thirty. He thinks he's beaten everyone on the other team, but then a defender the size of a wildebeest bulldozes into him. It's one of those hits you can hear from the stands. Everyone cringes and gasps as Glenn goes down and one of his feet bends in a funny direction.

He doesn't get up.

The Rooster and a medic run onto the field. The crowd waits in tense silence. Glenn clutches at his ankle, his face contorting in pain when they prod him. He's able to stand and limp off the field with help, though. The crowd gives him a standing ovation.
Everyone remains pretty subdued for the rest of the half, which means Luke and I can actually hear ourselves talk.

“I can't believe I'm finally a senior,” he says.

“I know. I can't wait to get away from this place.” I notice Buck on the sideline, putting a finger to the side of his nose and blowing a snot rocket onto the ground. “And these people. Well, maybe not everyone. I love my friends. But a lot of people in this town suck.”

“I have noticed that some of the people here are . . . different. I'm excited to be done with high school too, though.”

“Do you know what you're going to do next year?” I ask. I word the question carefully, because in my family the question isn't “Are you going to college?” it's “Which college are you going to?”—but not everyone is like that.

A dark cloud passes over his face. “I know what my parents want me to do.”

“What's that?”

“My dad's been in the military his whole life. He started out as a grunt and worked his way up. With my grades, he's always, ‘You have to go to the Academy. Do you know how many advantages you have that I didn't have? Do you know how far ahead that would have put me?' But I don't want to go.”

“What do you want to do?”

“That's the thing. I don't know,” he says. “Which makes it really hard to argue.”

I nod sympathetically.

“I know I don't want to be just like him. I guess I want to go
to a school with a lot of different options so I can figure it out.”

“I know how that goes,” I say.

He looks relieved. “Really?”

“Yeah. I want to do something big to help people medically, like find an early biomarker for cancer or design a prosthetic retina or something. Which means majoring in biomedical engineering. Which means going to Georgia Tech.”

“Those all sound like great things. Why would your parents care?”

“Because everyone in my family goes to the University of Georgia. As in the archnemesis of Georgia Tech. If you're not from here, it's hard to explain how big a deal it is.”

“No, I get it,” he says.

“I still haven't told my family I'm applying.” I think about how little my parents seem to notice these days. “Maybe they wouldn't care as much as I think. Things with my family are complicated. My parents—well, my mom—” I'm interrupted by a roar from the stands.

Whoa. I can't believe how close I just came to spilling my family secrets to him. I never talk about my family anymore. When I used to, people would always give me these looks that clearly meant
Don't you know you're supposed to pretend that never happened to you?
so I learned not to.

But he doesn't notice, and we keep up the conversation easily, moving on to much happier subjects. Megan spots us talking mid–toe touch and nearly suffers a cheer-related injury as a result. For the rest of the half, she alternates between shooting Luke sexy
looks and me suspicious ones. The result is she looks like one of those women who has been over-Botoxed.