The Kissing Diary (9 page)
Authors: Judith Caseley
So here are my thoughts for the day. I know I'm very far from kissing Robbie, but I'm closer than before. There's nothing worse than being talked out of believing in yourself. Like the time I was in kindergarten and I splashed water down my pants at the water fountain and somebody said I'd peed in my pants, and I knew I hadn't. I absolutely, positively knew I hadn't. But everyone was telling the teacher that I had, and the teacher told my mother to bring dry clothes, and I never said to her,
But I did not pee in my pants!
My mother took me into the teeny tiny kindergarten bathroom and discovered that I wasn't wet at all. I remember she said, “You're bone-dry, honey,” because it was a funny thing to say. And she said, “Why did you think you'd peed in your pants?” And I said, “They told me I did, so I believed them.”
So. I'm not going to let Mary convince me that Robbie didn't tell me I was cute or that overnight I've lost my mind. It's like she's trying to make me believe that I peed in my pants! The next time anyone tries to win my day, I'm going to look into the mirror and smile real wide, and let those
endorfins
?
endorphins
? (however you spell it)âanyway, I'll let them do their happiness thing.
I am yours,
Rosie Go-get-a-life-Mary-glitt
P.S. I still worry that I'd gag if Robbie ate mint chocolate chip ice cream before he kissed me. I guess that should be my worst problem.
Rosie lay in bed wishing it weren't Monday morning. A whisper of sunlight trickled through her window. An alarm went off, and the noises began: a grunting sound as her mother rolled out of bed, slippers shuffling down the hallway, teeth being brushed, a splash of water. Then, “Jimmy! Rosie! Time to get up!” which made Rosie pull the covers up to her nose.
Her own morning noises had begun inside her head. Mary, Robbie, buzz buzz buzz. Mary, Robbie, buzz buzz buzz. Does he like me, does he not? Buzz buzz buzz. It made Rosie feel tired all over and want to snuggle down deeper under the blankets, but she made the momentous decision to shut the noises out.
No, no, triple no!
Mary Katz would not be allowed to operate the happiness button inside Rosie's head, and that was final.
She dressed for school in her favorite pink T-shirt with the strawberry ice cream cone on the front. She put on her best pair of jeans, the Steve Madden shoes that her father had bought her at the mall, and her Cherry Malt lip gloss. She smiled at her reflection in the full-length mirror on the door. Grandpa was right. The mirror didn't lie. Rosie Goldglitt looked better than cute.
She heard Jimmy bellowing about a pair of socks, and her mother bellowing back,
“In the clothes dryer!”
He glanced into her room, and caught her vamping as if she were a fashion model. Jimmy stuck out his butt and snaked his arms through the air, his mouth in a pout. Rosie surprised him by laughing instead of punching him in the arm.
“Big date at school?” her brother joked as they made their way down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“Nope,” said Rosie. “I'm in a good mood.” She poured herself a bowl of Corn Pops.
Hurrah for sugary cereal,
she thought, setting the box on the table for her morning read.
“So I see,” said Jimmy, choosing Cap'n Crunch for himself.
Mrs. Goldglitt arrived, carrying a basket of laundry. “You're walking to school. I told you last night that my car is in the shop.”
Rosie's brother didn't bother to wait for her. He put his bowl in the sink, slung his book bag over his shoulder, and shouted, “See you later!” as he slammed the door. Rosie knew the unspoken siblings rule. Older brothers didn't want to be seen with their younger sisters.
Mrs. Goldglitt leaned the basket on her hip. “He's so fast I couldn't yell at him to put his dish in the dishwasher. Where's he running to?”
“Maybe he has a date,” said Rosie, surprising her mother by kissing her goodbye.
Rosie walked to school at a leisurely pace. She plucked a leaf off a neighbor's bush and snapped it in half. It made such a clean satisfactory sound that it made Rosie think of English class. Mr. Woo and his love of language. A shiny green leaf. What was the word?
Symbol,
that was it. The snapping of the leaf was a
symbol
of Rosie's morning decision. Crisp, new, starting over.
Snap.
She threw the leaf in the gutter and laughed out loud. Okay, now the leaf was crushed and discarded, but Rosie wasn't.
Holy cow,
she thought, smiling at the expression her mother used when she wasn't cursing. She was laughing and smiling and turning over a
new leaf,
that was it! The endorphins were working.
Lauren noticed. “You look beautiful!” she said, the way only a totally non-jealous friend can.
“You do too!” said Rosie happily, hooking arms with Lauren.
“I'm glad you're not letting Mary get to you.”
“I refuse,” said Rosie. “I know what I know. Robbie talks to me now. He doesn't hate me. Mary is nuts.”
A block before they reached the school, Lauren stopped in her tracks. “Isn't that your brother with a girl?”
Rosie watched Jimmy as if he were a space alien. His eyes were closed, and he was kissing Linda Reeves in the shadow of the overhanging shrubbery, way better than Rosie remembered her mother kissing Sam. Slowly. Dreamily. Leisurely. Like Rosie's walk.
“That's why he rushed out of the house,” said Rosie. “He'll be late for school.”
“He doesn't seem to care,” said Lauren, laughing. “She's very pretty!”
“I can't believe it!” Rosie answered, thinking if Jimmy could get the girl he liked, why couldn't she get Robbie? Too bad he was her brother. Asking Jimmy for tips on kissing would be way too weird! The bell rang, and Rosie and Lauren ran up the steps into school.
Rosie couldn't pinpoint where things started going wrong. She was sitting in English class listening to Lauren talk about the seventh-grade dance for the twentieth time. Should she ask Tommy Stone? Could she get up the nerve? Should they all go together, the four girls, instead? Rosie figured she should listen without complaining. After all, she had bombarded her friend with remarks like “Do you think Robbie likes me? Does he really think I'm cute?” over a thousand times. Lauren hadn't run off screaming once!
“Remember when I spoke to my brother about asking Tommy Stone?” said Rosie. “He said it's fine to ask a boy if you know he likes you. If he doesn't, you might not get the answer you want.”
“That was so helpful,” said Lauren, making a face. “Are we early, or is Mr. Woo late?”
Billy rushed past them, and Rosie felt like laughing. If she were making a cartoon character based on Billy, puffs of smoke would billow behind him, with
BODY ODOR BOY
written underneath. Her mother had a friend who drank too much alcohol, and her family and friends had held an intervention, with everyone telling her why they hated it when she drank. Maybe that was exactly what Billy needed. A body odor intervention. Rosie looked at Lauren, who wrinkled up her nose. She giggled and put her head in her hands. Billy turned and cast her a long glance with the clear blue eyes that had shone with kindness when he had helped Grandpa. How could she forget? Her giggling stopped. Maybe if she made an anonymous call to the Billy Jones household, it would help.
Just at that moment, Mr. Woo walked in, and Rosie nearly died because he sniffed the air and said out loud, “It smells funny in here. Did someone's lunch go bad?” Then Tommy breezed in, late as usual, and said, “Gag me with a spoon, what
is
that pong?” Everyone started laughing, and Tommy gathered steam, the center of attention and of Lauren's heart, and he called out, “Tell me it ain't you, Billy Boy! Tell me the
pong
ain't you!”
“It could be Rosie,” Mary volunteered, her words actress-clear, as if she'd rehearsed the line and intended it to be heard in the very last row.
Rosie was ready to die a second time. It was one thing having Billy ridiculed. Billy seemed to laugh it off. Rosie scribbled furiously in her English notebook, making a dark cloud of crisscross anger across the lined page.
Mary continued ruthlessly, saying, “It smells like rotten fruit or something, doesn't it? Rosie, weren't you fruit in a former life?
Yes!
You were fruity in our Greek skit!”
Rosie couldn't believe her ears. She tried to recall what her mother had said: Mary feels better by putting people down? But the wave of class laughter made her feel sick.
Billy said loudly, “It's not Rosie,” and Mr. Woo added, “It certainly isn't. Rosie smells as sweet as her name.” Then he quoted Shakespeare about a rose by any other name smelling as sweet, but the damage was done, because half the class was snickering, and a couple of people were flapping their arms and sniffing their armpits.
Rosie looked at Robbie, who had a smile on his face, flickering like a nasty little moth. Then and there, Rosie invented a brand-new mantra:
Mean Mary, Mean Mary, I hate Mean Mary,
but it didn't soothe her, and her endorphins scattered helplessly as if they'd run away.
Mr. Woo started his lesson, but Rosie could barely listen, and when the class was finally over, she had hardly taken a single note on plot and alliteration and onomatopoeia. Mercifully, the bell rang, and she was ready to flee, but Mary wasn't finished. She stood up with a big, fat smile on her pretty/ugly face. “You and Billy should go to the dance together,” she said, enunciating beautifully so that the words rang across the room. “We could crown you Class Farts.”
Rosie got to her feet, her books pressed to her chest. She slammed them down hard, and walked over to Mary, saying very clearly, “What have I ever done to you?”
“You exist,” Mary answered, which was exactly the moment that Rosie hauled off and hit her in the face.
Mr. Woo saw it. Most of the class saw it. Mary felt it, and her nose started to bleed.
And with that single punch, Rosie felt her endorphins say goodbye and flee her body forever. Pffft. Gone.
Later, Rosie wrote in her diary:
Monday evening
Today, I completely lost it. My life is wined. I hit Mary Katz in the face. I am so messed up. I have to sign this:
Rosie Gold-hitter
Rosie's father didn't believe in swearing, raising your voice, or using force. Her mother didn't believe in hitting either, but since she sometimes swore and often yelled, she couldn't preach against them too persuasively. When Rosie's class read about Mahatma Gandhi, Mr. Goldglitt gave a similar nonviolent lecture at supper that night. Rosie listened halfheartedly. School was over, and did they have to learn a lesson at dinnertime? She forgot about Gandhi when she shoved her brother in the kitchen after he cleared only the dishes that he had dirtied. How unfair was that, leaving Rosie with the rest? Her mother, however, didn't see it that way, and banished her to her room after she'd cleaned the whole kitchen. No hitting was at the top of the Goldglitt list of rules.
At the end of her parents' unraveling marriage, Rosie shut the door to the bedroom when she heard her mother begging for her father not to leave, that it would ruin the children, that she couldn't support them, that he was wrecking her life, that she hated him more than anything and should never have married him in the first place. It seemed as though the divorce was her mother's fault, with all the screaming and the shouting. Her father's voice was calm and quiet, as if he were narrating a movie about freshwater trout. Please don't raise your voice at me, Lucy. That's how the children get their potty mouths, Lucy. Take your hand off my arm, Lucy. Of course, it only infuriated her mother more. Mrs. Goldglitt became a stormerâstorming out of the room, storming up the stairs, storming out of the house and into the car, where she would sit until she had simmered down. If she'd remembered to grab her car keys, she would start the ignition and put on the radio, listening with eyes closed. She didn't have a mantra yet. That was afterward. But if Rosie was honest, she might have admitted that her mother yelled less when her father was gone, which made Rosie think that becoming a yeller might have had something to do with her father.
On the fateful day that Rosie hit Mary, Mr. Goldglitt's advice to turn the other cheek flew out of her head. The Gandhi/Goldglitt philosophy slipped stealthily away. She knew what she'd done was wrong. She knew it was horrible. It felt almost like a reflex action, as if a doctor had hit her elbow instead of her knee, with a little rubber hammer that made her hand slap Mary.
The very worst thing for Rosie, next to facing her mother, was the look Mr. Woo had given her. He'd been punched in the stomach without any warning. If Mr. Woo had become her favorite teacher, Rosie felt as though she was his favorite student. It thrilled her when he'd written across the top of her paper, “Rosie, you have such an original voice. You're a star!” It was hard finding people who thought you were a star. Grandma Rebecca was dead. Grandpa was half-dead. Her mother was dating and dressing like a teenager. Her father was building a new life with a wife who didn't yell. Not yet, anyway. Calling Rosie a star wasn't part of his vocabulary, unless she got straight A's on her report card or something. Just a month ago, Mr. Woo had handed back an essay, saying, “Another flash of Rosie brilliance,” for all the world to hear. It had made her day.
Then, out of the blue, his favorite student had hauled off and hit Mary Katz in the face. Rosie could almost see herself being plucked out of the constellation by Mr. Woo and flung into space. Rosie Goldglitt, falling star, crashing to the ground.