Second Kiss (5 page)

I willed myself to walk out of the bathroom and into the hall one lead footstep at a time. I gradually reentered the gymnasium. It felt smaller this time. Clarissa and Nina were up by the ninth graders again, talking to each other. Jess was by the back wall, drinking punch with a couple other ninth grade boys. I didn’t look for Trace. I wouldn’t be able to bear making eye contact with him now. As soon as Clarissa and Nina saw me, they ran over to me-both of them looking awkward in their way too grown-up high heels.

“Gemma! We asked him!” Nina balled up her fists like a cheer leader.

“What did you say? What did he say?” I braced myself for their answers.

Clarissa spoke this time, “We just told him you liked him!” She shrugged her shoulders as though it wasn’t a big deal at all. “He didn’t seem that surprised. And then we told him that if he likes you back he should ask you to dance the last dance.”

I felt so exposed.

“He smiled!” Nina added, and her words changed the situation entirely.

I looked straight into Nina’s eyes, then to Clarissa’s. “He smiled? Really? A nice smile or a disgusted smile?”

Clarissa looked at Nina questioningly. “Mmm, hard to say.”

“No,” Nina disagreed, “it was definitely a nice smile.”

“Don’t get her hopes up,” Clarissa said as though I weren’t standing right there.

At that moment the music was hushed and our principal’s voice blared through the speakers, “The next song is going to be our last, so let’s see everyone out on the dance floor. And be safe on your way home.”

A romantic song started as everyone around me began to break off into pairs. Nina and Clarissa were asked to dance before the introduction was over, leaving me standing alone waiting for Trace to find me in the crowd. I could feel my face starting to get hot as the singer began the first verse. I wondered how long the song was, and I wondered how long I should wait for Trace. I had just about given up when I felt a warm hand on my shoulder. I stopped breathing as I slowly turned around. It was Jess.

“Hey,” he smiled apologetically, “I know I’m not the person you wanted to see right now, but-“

Before he could finish, I threw my arms around his neck. “I couldn’t be happier to see you!” I squeezed him so hard. Maybe I was holding on for dear life. I knew that if I let go I would slip into the most humiliating experience of my life.

Jess grimaced when I finally let go of his neck. “No Trace, huh?”

I shook my head.

“Well, I know I said I would never dance the last dance, but I figure-“

“I would love to!” I quickly stepped toward Jess, but he stepped away as quickly as I moved in. “What’s wrong?” I felt a pang of embarrassment flash through my body. Maybe he hadn’t been asking me to dance after all.

“We can’t dance right here.”

I looked around me. We were in the back of the gymnasium right by the punch table. The only people around us were teachers and a couple of uncomfortable and un-asked seventh graders. “Okay, where should we go then?” I was afraid of his answer. If I knew Jess as well as I thought I did he’d want us to go out on the soccer field away from the rest of the crowd. So I was surprised when he pointed to the front of the room where the ninth graders were packed together. “Up there? There’s no room!”

“Sure there is. Besides, we have to let this Trace kid know what he’s missing.”

Jess took hold of my hand and led me toward the front of the gymnasium. Holding his hand made me feel safe from the disappointment that was surrounding my head. Jess stopped as soon as we were close enough to the crowd to look “involved” but far away enough to breathe. He pulled my hand across my body until I spun under his arm. When I had completed the spin, I was locked safely in his arms.

“Are you kidding me?” I looked up at his face and was surprised to see him so close.

He looked genuinely confused. “What?”

“Where did you pull that move from? Mr. `I wouldn’t dance the last dance if someone paid me.’ You’ve always made it sound like you couldn’t dance!”

Jess rolled his eyes. “I have two sisters. What do you expect?”

I stared up at Jess; he used to seem so much taller. I didn’t realize I had grown so much over the past couple of years. The last time I stood this close to Jess was when he was hoisting me up into our old tree fort in the woods behind my house. That was at least two summers ago. Back then my eye level was about to his chest. Now my forehead came right about to his chin. And he had even grown a couple inches himself. Being this close to him I couldn’t help but take in his smell. Jess wasn’t the type to drown himself in cologne, but instead he smelled like fresh soap from this morning’s shower mixed with the electrifying scent of men’s deodorant. As the song played on, Jess and I stopped talking, and soon we were dancing so close that my cheek was nuzzled into the side of his smooth neck. I always thought that I knew Jess so well. I knew the exact laugh lines that would appear on his face when I made a funny joke. I knew what made him angry, frustrated, or annoyed. I knew when he needed a haircut and when he hadn’t studied enough for a test. But in all the years that we had spent together, I had never been this close to him. I had never felt the softness of his skin against my face.

“Can I cut in?”

I knew that piercing female voice all too well.

I pulled myself a few inches away from Jess’s firm grasp to see Clarissa standing at our sides with her hands clasped behind her back. Both Jess and I looked at her with our mouths gaping.

Jess spoke first. “Right now isn’t a good time,” he started. But before he could say more, I interrupted him.

“It’s okay, Jess.” I was still staring at Clarissa, wondering how she could take Jess away from me now when Trace had obviously decided not to ask me to dance. But I didn’t want either one of them to feel sorry for me. I wanted to prove that I was okay on my own. I released my hold on Jess’s neck, and I felt him do the same. The air around me felt cold without Jess’s heat surrounding me. Jess watched me with uncertain eyes as I stepped away and Clarissa inserted herself in my spot between his arms. I left the dark gymnasium, and even though it was against the rules, I walked down the hall to my locker and took out the bag I had packed with jeans and a sweatshirt. My first last dance had been horrible. Trace didn’t like me. And now Jess was dancing with Clarissa for the second time, up close and intimate. I went to a distant bathroom where I could no longer hear the music from the dance. I changed out of my dress and mismatched shoes and put on my comfortable clothes. The clothes that didn’t reek of rejection.

Twenty minutes later Jess and I were walking across the old soccer field headed for home. So far it was as though the dance had never existed. Jess was playing with a helium balloon when I met him, and he had been sucking out the air and talking like a chipmunk ever since. Once he used up all the helium, he stuffed the saggy balloon in his pants pocket and cleared his throat. “So, Clarissa cut in while we were dancing.”

I raised an eyebrow at his subtle approach of bringing the subject up. “Yeah, I know. I was there.”

Jess looked down at his shoes as he walked. “You don’t have to let someone cut in when they ask, you know. It’s not a rule.”

“Well apparently it’s also not a rule to ask someone to dance just because their friends asked you to do it.” I kicked at an old wrapper that was floating around on the grass.

“Trace just doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

I knew Jess was just being nice. Trace knew exactly what he was missing. He was missing an eighth grade moron who stalked him during algebra class. But it felt better to agree with Jess, so I puffed out my chest and said, “Yeah! Trace Weston doesn’t deserve me. I’m done with him!”

Jess clapped his hands once, but then both of our hands fell to our sides. We walked in silence for a moment, soaking up the fact that I had been undeniably rejected today.

I squinted into the sun that was finally peering through the clouds. “Can I ask you a question?”

Jess shrugged his shoulders once. “Sure.”

“Are you popular?” I hadn’t been able to lose the image of the girls at the dance, how they had watched him and hung on his every movement. Even the guys were impressed by him.

“What are you talking about?” Jess’s voice became higher suddenly, like he was embarrassed. He knew exactly what I was talking about.

“Are-you-popular?”

“Gemma, you need to forget that word popular. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t even exist.”

“I knew it.” I folded my arms roughly around my chest and scowled at the ground in front of me. “You are popular. You’re just trying to deny it.”

“Where is this coming from?”

“The way you talked to that Conrad guy at the dance and the way all the girls-even the pretty ones-were swooning over you! It’s so obvious! I can’t believe I never saw it before!”

His hands smacked against the sides of his legs with exasperation. “Popularity doesn’t mean anything.”

“It means that you’re cooler than everyone else.”

“Says who?”

“Says the other cool people,” I fought back.

“What makes them so cool?”

“Nicer clothes, good looks, lots of money.” I could have gone on.

“Look at me, Gemma. Do I wear nice clothes?” I looked at his un-tucked blue button shirt that he had on at the dance. His brown tie was now tied around his head like a bandana. Before I could answer, Jess continued, “The reason a lot of people know me and talk to me is because I talk to them. It’s not about nicer clothes or money or looks.”

“No one wants me to talk to them. Everyone thinks they’re so cool.”

Jess sighed. “Nobody in junior high thinks they’re cool.”

“Humph.” I twisted some hair between my fingers. “I don’t care anyway. I don’t need any of them.”

Jess squinted at me. “Sounds like you have it all figured out.”

We were approaching the hole in the fence, so Jess reached for my backpack while I climbed clumsily through the hole. When Jess made it through, he stood right in front of me and watched me with serious eyes.

“We’ve sort of been having some serious conversations lately, haven’t we?” His eyes traced the lines of my face as he spoke.

I nodded, but I was physically unable to do anything else. The way he looked at me so closely, putting the rest of the world out of focus, took my breath away, and I couldn’t find my voice to speak.

Jess hesitantly lifted his hand toward my face and cleared a stray piece of hair that had blown against my cheek.

My heart was pounding in my throat as I memorized the feel of his skin against mine. His eyes were locked with mine as he tucked the hair behind my ear. But as he lowered his hand, his eyes brightened with a new thought and he stepped around me while saying, “It was kind of sad when Clarissa cut in like that.”

I recomposed myself and turned to follow him. “Sad? Why?”

He cocked his head to one side. “Clarissa and that hairspray.” He forced himself to cough. “I wonder if it could cause damage to my lungs.”

“Plus, you were probably sad that you weren’t dancing with me anymore, right?” I was dying to know, but I laced my words with a hint of humor in case the answer wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

Jess pursed his lips and nodded with a reciprocating hint of sarcasm. “Really sad.”

“I bet it was my mismatched reds that made you miss me so bad. Guys really go for that kind of thing.” I resorted to joking because I was nervous-no, terrified-that he actually wasn’t sad to have had our dance cut short at all.

Jess let his head fall back. “Yes,” he agreed with his lips lifted into a half smile. “Mismatched clothes are irresistible.” We were approaching our houses. I hoped that Jess would follow me onto my lawn, but he began heading in the direction of his driveway.

“You shouldn’t feel too bad,” I spoke louder as Jess continued to widen the gap between us. “I did give you half a dance.”

Jess swung around and continued walking backwards as he nearly yelled at me across the street, “Yeah, and maybe one of these days I’ll ask you to dance for a reason besides feeling sorry for you.”

I knew he was joking-or rather I hoped he was joking-but his words stung, and my shoulders fell with disappointment.

Jess smiled at my response and waved his arm in my direction as he stepped up onto the curb and walked across his lawn. “I’m only joking, Gem.”

He turned back toward his house to watch his footing on the porch steps, and as he did he said something that I couldn’t quite make out. Because what he said wasn’t meant to be heard. What he said almost sounded like-for a moment I thought I heard-he couldn’t have possibly said it-but I thought I heard the words, “I asked you to dance because I love you.”

Before I could blink it was nearly June, and the energy level throughout the school was rising. Teachers were collecting the last of the make-up homework. Students were cleaning out their lockers, and orange cones were spontaneously showing up around the courtyard awaiting the big summer project of expanding the faculty parking lot. I usually lived for these last days of school. I loved how the hallways always smelled like cleaning liquid from students wiping down the desks and chairs. I loved the scattered boxes in all of the rooms being filled back up with used textbooks and rented calculators. I even loved the cafeteria running out of food because the lunch ladies didn’t want to buy more food just to have leftovers after the last days of school. But this year these things made me feel a twinge of sadness. This year wasn’t just the end of a school year; it was the end of Jess and me walking to and from school together-again.

I had already encountered this heartbreak once before when he’d gone to junior high without me three years before. Though when I was only eleven, the fact that Jess and I weren’t walking to elementary together didn’t occur to me until I was getting ready to leave for school the first day of sixth grade. I had been eating my breakfast when I looked at the clock and realized that Jess was late (and he was never late). I slurped down my cereal and hurried to put my shoes on as I casually mentioned to my parents that I was going to go to Jess’s house and make sure everything was okay. I remember Mom and Dad looking at each other with concern in their eyes. Dad looked so casual when he told me, “Jess isn’t going to be walking you to school this year.” He had said it so nonchalantly, as though it was no big deal. Now, I think he knew how big of a deal it really was; he just didn’t know how else to say it. My parents had watched me with pained eyes as I melted to the floor, tears streaming down my face. Mom had called the school nurse and told her that I was going to be late for school that morning. I think she felt guilty for not warning me about it earlier. The next nine months of sixth grade had been a lonely time for me, and I was not excited to relive those years again.