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Authors: Wendelin Van Draanen

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BOOK: Confessions of a Serial Kisser
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11

Willow Talk

A
DRIENNE AND
I
BOTH HAVE OUR LICENSE
, we just don't get to drive much. My mom and I have opposite schedules and she always has the car, which makes sense because it's her car. My dad promised to buy me my own car when I turned sixteen, but as it turns out, he's a pathological liar. And Adrienne's parents rely on Adrienne's brother, Brody (who has his own truck), to do the shuttling.

Brody's one of those work-hard-and-save-your-money kind of guys who won't buy a Coke out of a machine because he thinks it's a rip-off. Then he goes broke dropping his whole wad on something big like a truck and has to start saving all over again.

My philosophy is spend-as-you-go. Buy the Coke. Enjoy every day.

Of course, I don't have a car.

Adrienne and I call Brody's truck the Chevy, because it's wide and slightly lowered and ripe-tomato red. It's a vintage GMC, but we still call it the Chevy, which drives him crazy, and I do so love driving Brody Willow crazy! He's like the big brother my parents forgot to provide. In addition to being a responsible saver, he's the quintessential student, and unlike me, he seems to find getting A's easy. He thinks physics is fascinating and has never had a B.

He's also never had a girlfriend; has never gone on a
date
(even though Adrienne and I have tried like mad to set him up). I don't think he's gay, but I wouldn't care if he was.

"Hey, Bro!" I said when I spotted him in the parking lot. "Wassup!"

"Get in," he said, rolling his eyes.

I scooted across the worn vinyl bench seat to my usual in-the-middle spot, and Adrienne came flying in right behind me. "Home, James!" she commanded. Then she grabbed my arm and whispered, "The gossip is insane!"

"I haven't heard anything," I said quite innocently as I turned on the radio and tuned in my favorite station.

As Neil Young's "Like a Hurricane" blasted from the speakers, Brody pulled into the traffic jam of students trying to escape the joys of secondary education. "I haven't either," he said.

Adrienne reached over and changed the radio station, muttering, "What
is
this song?" but Brody stopped her, saying, "At least give it a chance!"

"Yeah, choirgirl," I laughed. "Give it a chance!"

Adrienne rolled her eyes, then put Brody on the spot, saying, "So, you haven't said anything about Evangeline's new look."

"Huh?" He was busy with traffic, but he managed to glance at me. "She looks nice."

Fashion isn't exactly a priority for Brody. He and Adrienne both get a clothing allowance, but he never seems to buy anything new. He just cycles through the same old T-shirts. Still, I couldn't let
nice
stand. "Don't be fooled, Bro! I'm mean as mercury!"

I don't know why I said mercury, but Brody thought it was the funniest thing he'd ever heard. He chuckled about it the whole way home. Maybe in the cultish world of advanced placement physics, mercury is known as an evil substance, I don't know.

When Adrienne and I were safely alone in her bedroom, she threw her backpack down, plopped in her desk chair, and said, "I want to hear every detail! Tell me what happened with Robbie!"

So I did. And when I described the "kiss," her face contorted into knots of revulsion. "Eeeeew."

"Exactly."

"Wow," she said after a minute. "How disappointing." Then after another moment of absorbing the shock of it all, she nodded at my Rolling Stones shirt. "Maybe that gave him the wrong idea?"

I looked down at the oversized lips and tongue. "A guy doesn't base his kisses on the T-shirt a girl's wearing! He's just a horrible kisser."

She shook her head. "So disappointing." Then she brightened. "But, Evangeline, think about it! You did it! Robbie Marshall
kissed
you! It's, like,
insane.
"

"He mauled me," I grumbled, but she was right--it was a little surreal. I laughed. "Good thing it was a disaster, or I'd be in serious trouble!"

"Because of Sunshine?"

"Oh, yeah."

She laughed, too, then asked, "So now what?"

I lay back on her bed. "I'm not sure." I hugged a pillow as I propped myself up on an elbow. "How do you know if a guy's going to deliver a crimson kiss?"

She frowned. "All right, enough of this. What exactly
is
a crimson kiss?"

I smirked at her. "If you'd read the book, you'd understand."

She gave a little snort and rolled her eyes.

"See? You always put it down, but believe me, you want a crimson kiss too."

She studied me a moment, then said, "Fine. I'll read it."

I sat up. "Really?"

"Mm-hmm."

I snatched up my book bag and unzipped the small front pouch.

"You carry it with you?
Still?
"

I smiled and handed it over. The pages were curled, the cover tattered. "Be careful with it."

She sniggered. "Right."

"I'm serious."

She laughed. "You're insane!"

I laughed, too, and it felt good. I had a friend who cared, and (awful or not) I'd been kissed by the hottest guy at Larkmont High.

Maybe I wasn't living my fantasy
exactly,
but at least it felt like living.

12

The Kissing Corridor

I
SHOULDN'T HAVE WORRIED
about the awkwardness of seeing Robbie the next morning.

That boy totally ignored me.

Sunshine was waiting for him outside first period and made a big show of latching on to him as she escorted him away.

So it was true! Robbie had engaged in a little unauthorized mouth-to-mouth.

Tsk, tsk, tsk!

Such a naughty boy.

Since I was totally over him and his deceptive good looks, the news didn't even faze me. If Sunshine could resuscitate their relationship, more power to her.

But Adrienne's "So now what?" was a good question. Did I really want to go through weeks of pursuit again? And who would I pursue? Someone on campus had to be in possession of a crimson kiss, but who?

How could you tell?

At break Adrienne reported that she'd barely started reading the book, so that was no help. And since she was tied up with school-newspaper duties during lunch (leaving me to fend for my self in the quad with a still-angry Sunshine within striking distance), I wandered around thinking about kissing.

Obviously extreme hotness was no guarantee.

Maybe the place, the
setting,
was a factor. I took stock of my own setting and suddenly realized that I was
surrounded
by couples kissing. Against the buildings, on benches, under a tree...one, two, three, four,
five
couples kissing!

What was this?

The kissing corridor?

Justin Rodriguez was shuffling my direction, flanked by his friends Blaine York and Travis Ung. Justin had been in my sophomore biology class, but all I really knew about him was that he'd spent the year pining away for Lolita Rey.

He was obviously over that, because (despite his sorta geeky friends crimping his style) he had a confident swagger. "Hey," he said with a crooked grin.

"Hey," I said back. And as he swaggered by, we sort of locked eyes and smiled at each other. That was it. No polite long-time-no-see conversation, no clever repartee, just "Hey" and the locking of eyes. And as I exited the kissing corridor, I found myself thinking,
Nice....

Nice eyes.

Nice smile.

Nice hair.

Nice mouth.

Just
nice...

During fifth-period chemistry I was still considering Justin Rodriguez's niceness. He
was
really cute. And maybe he was a romantic! He
had
pined away for Lolita Rey. Most guys don't show their vulnerable side, but he hadn't been able to hide it.

Yes, I decided, with his good looks and the right setting, Justin Rodriguez could very well be a crimson kisser!

I was brought back to the fascinating world of covalent bonding by Roper Harding's tap on my shoulder. "Do you get what he's talking about?" he whispered, eyeing the chalkboard where Mr. Kiraly had scrawled a series of complex molecular diagrams.

I tuned in to our teacher's heavy Hungarian accent and watched as he pointed to various parts of the diagram with his middle finger. (The middle finger may be used for pointing in Hungary, but someone should point out to
him
that an upended middle finger has an entirely different purpose in America.)

"No," I whispered over my shoulder.

"Yes, you do!" he said.

"Shh!" I whispered back.

I try to be kind to Roper Harding, but it's not easy. He's zitty, he's whiny, he's always borrowing paper, and he stinks. You haven't experienced full-throttle B.O. until you've sat near Roper Harding. Honestly, he smells four days dead.

"I know you get it. You've got an A in here!" he whispered.

"Shhh!" I whispered back, then leaned forward in my seat, wishing it was not just light but also
smell
that was reduced in strength by the square of the distance.

And then, to escape the smell of Roper Harding and the chalk-covered birdie-flipping finger of Mr. Kiraly, I returned to thoughts of Justin Rodriguez, wondering how I could set the scene to kiss him.

13

Groovy, Baby

O
N MY WALK HOME FROM SCHOOL
, I took a little detour to Groove Records. It's one of my dad's favorite hangouts, too, but going there after school is safe, because he's tied up with his day job doing network installations for the phone company.

Talk about making history come alive. Groove Records is like the world's coolest museum. There's not one new thing in the whole place. The walls are covered in old concert T-shirts and framed album covers, there are signed posters and collector guitars in glass cases, there are beads between rooms (and there are a
lot
of funky little rooms), and there's rock 'n' roll kitsch everywhere. I think I'm in love with the sheer funkiness of the place. The floors are creaky and slanted, and there are bottomed-out couches where you're welcome to park yourself all day and read ancient issues of
Rolling Stone.

"Hey there, Bubbles!" the owner called over Black Sabbath's "Electric Funeral" when I jingled through the door. To him I've been "Bubbles" since my dad introduced us when I was a baby. Apparently I had a major talent for blowing spit bubbles.

"Hey, Izzy," I called back. With his frizzy gray hair and beard, and his round, blue-tinted glasses, Izzy looks like one of the Jerry Garcia bobble-head dolls he has on the shelf behind the register.

"Saw your old man at the Bluez Barn last weekend. His band was smokin' hot, as usual."

"Izzy...," I warned him. "We've discussed this.... You need to keep that sort of information to yourself."

He came out from behind the counter, making his way past long wooden crates of LPs and bins of trade-in CDs. "I...I just miss the old days."

I looked around his shop and chuckled, trying to lighten the mood. "No kidding."

"No, I mean you and him."

"Stop it," I said firmly. "This is my favorite place to be, but I can't come here anymore if you're going to keep bringing him up."

"I hear ya, I hear ya," he said quickly, but then brought him up again. "He hasn't been in in ages." He flipped through some LPs, shuffling a few that were out of order. "He's probably buying online now, huh?"

"I don't know! I don't care!" I almost stormed out, but then an odd connection gripped me. After shopping at Groove Records for nearly twenty years, my father probably
had
started shopping elsewhere.

Just like he'd done after close to twenty years of marriage.

Suddenly my heart went out to Izzy, and I reached for his arm. "I'm sorry."

He nodded. "You just gotta wonder why."

I snorted softly. "Exactly."

BOOK: Confessions of a Serial Kisser
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