Second Kiss (21 page)

“My dad’s lawyer thinks he should get us for the summer and every other holiday. But we’re hoping that I can just go, so the girls won’t have to leave my mom.”

I jerked my head around. “Does your dad’s lawyer know that he’s an abusive jerk?”

Jess shook his head. “I guess because it was the first time he ever showed physically abusive behavior, they’re letting him off pretty easy. He had sixty days in jail, and he’s pretty much off the hook.”

“So what now,” I was starting to get angry, and my words were defensive, “you’re just going to be gone all summer with your dad?”

“Maybe, I don’t know.” Jess didn’t look up from his hands.

I was frustrated at Jess’s apathetic response. “Where does he even live?”

“He moved back to where he grew up. I think he’s sharing an apartment right now with my uncle.”

“Where did he grow up? Is it far away?” I couldn’t imagine a summer without Jess. We always spent every second together at the lake, the snow cone shack … it didn’t matter, we were always together. I couldn’t bear to face the school break without him.

Jess looked up toward the lake and rubbed his hand over his hair. His expression was still and lacking in emotion as he answered, “California.”

As the days and weeks passed, my dad didn’t look much different. I suppose I expected him to start losing his hair like the people with cancer in the movies. I thought he’d start looking feeble nad old and inherit a hunched back or something. But he looked completely normal. he was tired. Oftentimes when I returned home from school in the afternoon he was alredy home lying on the couch with a blanket draped over him. But for the most part he was just the same old Dad. I thought the fact that nothing had changed would bring me comfort, but instead it was the exact opposite. It only confused me more, and confusion is never comfortable.

Neither is rejection. I hadn’t spoken to Drew for over a month. I sat on the opposite side of the room from her in German and did everything I could do to avoid her locker as I walked from class to class, which meant I was spending a lot more time at my own assigned locker in the dreaded eighth grade hall.

I needed to stop there before heading home, and as I passed all the unfamiliar eighth-grade faces, a tornado of fluttering butterflies swirled around my stomach when I saw Trace Weston standing at his locker. Even though I had been using my own locker for a while, I had only seen Trace a couple of times.

I approached my locker and started turning the combination lock. I could smell the sweet aroma of Trace’s cologne-he was probably the only boy in junior high that could wear cologne and get away with it. I finished the combination and lifted the locker handle. Darn! It was still locked. I hated it when I got the combination wrong. Those lockers were so temperamental, and of course I would struggle with it the one time all week that Trace was at his locker!

I started again from the beginning, twisting the lock a few times to make sure it was reset. I turned the knob to thirty-seven, then turned it the other way one and a half times to nine, then back the final time to seventeen. I took a deep breath. Please open. Please open. Please open. I lifted the handle. Still locked! I shook the handle with a grunt of frustration. From the corner of my eye, I could see Trace put his last book in his backpack and zip it up. He was going to walk away, and I was going to be stranded here looking like the moron that couldn’t open her own locker!

Trace closed his locker smoothly. It barely made a sound as it clicked into place. He lingered for a moment before clearing his throat. “Uh… ” He was facing me when the sound came out of his mouth. Was he actually talking to me? Was Trace Weston actually talking to me? “Gemma, I think you are trying to open the wrong locker.”

“What?” I looked at him with the most utterly disgraceful look of confusion, and then I turned back to the locker handle that I was holding between my fingers. He was right. I was one locker off. In my nervous and excited state, I had actually gone to the wrong locker! And failed at opening it! Twice!

Humiliation swept over my body as I let my head fall against the locker that wasn’t mine. “It’s been a long day,” I muttered mostly to myself-not thinking that Trace really even cared. I was amazed to find him still standing next to me when I finally lifted my head again.

“All the lockers look exactly the same.” He was smiling and leaning casually against his locker as he spoke. “I went to the wrong locker about five times during my first couple weeks here.”

I couldn’t believe what was happening. Besides the one moment in the hall when he teased me about the German video, we had never said a word to each other-not ever. “Yeah, you’d think they’d paint them different colors or something,” I answered hesitantly. I kept waiting for him to decide that I was boring or annoying and walk off down the hall.

“Or write our names on them at least.” He chuckled at his joke, and I thought he looked cuter than he ever had before.

“I would need mine in big flashing letters,” I added.

“Maybe a neon sign. Or an audible voice recorder calling your name.” He cupped his hands around his mouth and pretended to talk through a speaker, “Gemma Mitchell, your locker is right here. No, you’re at the wrong locker, Gemma. This is your locker; the bright purple one with the neon sign!”

I didn’t know what surprised me more; the fact that he was so funny, or that he knew my full name. Wasn’t this the same guy that rejected me at last year’s Valentine’s dance? The same guy who had said two words to me during an entire year of German together? Why was he now suddenly deciding to acknowledge my existence?

“I liked your movie in German class a while back.”

“Oh, thanks.” I blushed. “It was Drew that made it so great.”

“I don’t know. You have some pretty wicked dance moves.” He snapped his fingers and pretended to dance in a retro style. “And that dress was awesome. It must have cost you a fortune.”

“It was my mom’s!” I shouted. “I swear! I didn’t buy that ugly thing!” I felt myself actually feeling at ease around him. I couldn’t believe how natural it felt to laugh and joke around with Trace Weston. I opened the locker that was mine and got out what I needed while Trace asked me how long I had lived in Franklin.

“Forever.” I pulled my backpack over my shoulders, and we started walking down the hall. “I was born here. How about you?” As if I didn’t know.

“We moved here a year and a half ago from Michigan. My dad got transferred here for his job.” We were walking down the main hall now toward the front doors of the school. I felt curious eyes on us as we passed. Trace continued, “We thought we were going to move back to Michigan this summer. We were all packed up and everything. But the day before school started, my dad got a call that we were staying here for another year.”

“Hence, the eighth-grade hall locker.” I gave him a humorous glance from the corner of my eye.

“Yeah, I guess.” He cocked his head to the side. “What’s your excuse?”

“Oh, I requested it,” I joked. “I get along better with people who are shorter than me. It makes me feel better about myself.”

Trace looked confused, so I quickly told him the truth. “No, my family is always in Cape Cod during registration So every year I get the locker that nobody else wants.”

“What about your seventh grade year? Where did they put you then?”

“Back in the elementary,” I joked. Trace’s eyes sparkled at my humor. “It was so weird being back there sharing a cubby hole with a sixth grader.”

Trace shook his head as he opened the front door of the school and waved for me to pass through in front of him.

As soon as we got outside, Trace squinted his eyes toward the line of buses. “My bus is here.” He almost sounded disappointed. Then he looked back down at me. “It was nice talking with you, though. I hadn’t seen you at the lockers for so long that I thought you had changed yours or something.”

He had noticed that I wasn’t there. “But you see me every day in German class. Why don’t you ever talk to me?”

Trace lifted his hands in defense, “Why don’t you ever talk to me?”

Um, hello? Do the words last dance ring a bell? But I was too embarrassed to say that out loud. So I said, “I think I thought you were too popular for me to talk to.”

He grunted, “I’m not popular. I’m the dorky new kid that no one talks to.”

“But everybody talks about you. Everybody thinks you’re so cute and the dancer girls all call you `Tray’ like you’re their prized poodle or something!”

Trace gripped his notebook. “The kid that everyone talks about but no one talks to.” Then he shrugged. “I’d rather be the kid that nobody talks about but a few people talk to.”

He shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot, waiting for me to reply, but something else had caught my attention. It was Drew and Carmen. They were sitting on the grass by the carpool pick-up lane. They were watching us so intently that they seemingly had no plans of averting their gaze even after I made eye contact with them.

“What are you looking at?” Trace asked as he turned around to follow my eyes. Only then did Drew and Carmen turn their heads away from us. Trace looked back at me with a concerned expression. “What’s going on with you and Drew? I thought you guys were good friends.”

“Were being the operative word,” I replied dryly.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I… “

“Oh, no. My bus is leaving!” Trace cut me off mid-sentence. “I’m sorry. I really want to talk to you more.” He looked toward his bus then back at me. “Do you want to hang out this weekend or something?”

The same tornado of butterflies that had invaded my stomach at the lockers was back. Hang out? With Trace Weston? I was excited and absolutely terrified at the same time. “Uh,” I stuttered, “sure. Yeah. That would be fun.”

Trace looked at my face as though he were trying to figure out what that meant. But he was in too big of a hurry to analyze it. “Okay,” he replied. “I’ll get your cell number tomorrow, and then I’ll text you or something.”

I nodded nervously. The world was spinning around my head.

“I better go.”

I nodded stupidly again, and he ran off to catch his bus. What had just happened? I had never ever hung out with a guy before. Not a guy that wasn’t Jess. And my first time was going to be with Trace Weston? I had to do something. I had to tell someone. I grabbed hold of my backpack straps and ran toward home.

I actually wasn’t all that surprised when Drew made her way to the seat next to me in German class the next day. It was the last twenty minutes of class, and we were supposed to be quietly working on our homework assignment. But Drew didn’t think that rules applied to her.

“Hey,” she said in a low tone.

I didn’t look at her. I just stared deeply at my assignment.

“Hey,” she repeated. I could tell from the corner of my eye that she was staring at me with those dark, piercing eyes.

I finally decided that I had to say something. But I was still angry and hurt, and I wanted to punish her. “What?” I mumbled, still looking at the paper in front of me.

“Are we seriously going to stay mad at each other forever?”

I looked at her in shock. “You are the one that didn’t want to be friends with me!”

“I know.” She dropped her head for a moment. “I really do feel bad about that.”

“Are you kidding me, Drew?” I couldn’t believe I was saying this, but I was so mad at her, I couldn’t hold it in.

“What?” Her eyes were wide and confused.

“You are so obvious! You saw me talking to Trace yesterday, and now you want to be my friend again!”

“That’s not it.”

I had to give her credit; she was either a really good actor, or she was genuinely hurt by the accusation. “Then why? Why are you suddenly so keen on being friends with me?”

Drew pulled at the piece of gum in her mouth as she gathered her words. “I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

I waited for her to say more. That wasn’t enough for me to just drop everything and become friends with her again.

She let go of her gum and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “Look, I felt so stupid after the party. I felt stupid that I got you in trouble. I felt stupid that my brother and his friends brought alcohol. I felt stupid that Jess found out, and I’m sure he hates me now. And I don’t know, I just-“

“You thought you’d feel better if you ditched me.”

She sat back with a sad expression. “It didn’t work.”

“Girls!” Frau Fart’s voice pierced through our conversation. “If you don’t have any homework to do right now, I can certainly assign you more.”

Drew didn’t even look at Frau Fart, but she ducked her head toward me and said, “Friends?”

I didn’t have much time to think about it, so I went with what came naturally. “Sure, I guess.” I took a quick look at Frau Fart before turning back to my homework.

Drew got up to go back to her desk but then turned back to me in the last second.

“What are you doing this weekend?” she whispered.

I thought about Trace. Did she already know what I was doing that weekend?

When I didn’t respond, she continued, “Will you come to my house on Friday? I’m inviting a few people to play games and stuff.”

“I’m not sure. I toldTrace I’d hang out with him this weekend.”

I studied her reaction carefully. Her eyebrows shot up, and she genuinely looked surprised. “You’re hanging out with Trace? Are you two like … going out?”

I was thrown off by her distressed expression. She was so vulnerable when it came to Trace. “No, we’re just friends.” I have no idea why I said the next part: “Do you want me to invite him to your house?”

Drew looked skeptical and hopeful at the same time. “You don’t have to do that. That’s not why… “

I cut her off again, “It’s okay, really. I can invite him.” I was terrified of being alone with Trace that weekend. The idea of having other people around made the whole situation seem a thousand times less daunting.

She shrugged her shoulders. “If you want to. Does that mean you’re coming?”

“Yeah, I’ll come.”

“Girls!” Frau Fart yelled louder this time.