The Things You Kiss Goodbye (3 page)

A day after tryouts, they posted the names on a list in the girls’ locker room. Bad timing: I met a cluster of girls ushering out a slump-shouldered friend who was weeping her way along the tiled wall. “Who is
Bettina Vasilis
, anyway?” she choked between sobs. “She took my spot!”

“Oh, so sad for you, Jenna . . .” came a consoling voice. “I think she’s that
art room
girl—the one with the long, long braid. She wears metal. . . . She’s into grunge. . . .”

Then a redhead locked eyes on me and hushed her friends with a few nudges and the words, “Hey, you guys . . .”

I
was Bettina Vasilis. Right smack there. I couldn’t do much but give them all a “sorry” look. The group went on by, moving like a single organism, I couldn’t help noticing. The
redhead doubled back to whisper to me. “This is just hard for Jenna. It’ll be her senior year. She really wanted a spot on the squad. But, hey, no mean stuff intended, okay?”

“Same,” I said, but I felt like I should apologize and hand over a pom-pom.

I’d made the winter squad, which, I learned, was more competitive than the fall squad in our all-about-basketball town. Who knew? With the posted roster was a message saying we would start practicing in September. That was months before basketball season began and that seemed excessive to me. But, hey, there it was: my legit reason not to get on the bus for home right after the bell and, if the team made the play-offs, we’d be hollering and jumping through spring vacation. So, except for poor, crying Jenna Somebody, I started to like the idea.

Brady was thrilled.

“It’s going to go like this,” he said, and he drilled an imaginary ball toward the floor. “Every time I take a foul shot, you watch ’cause I’m going to bounce it seven times for the letters in your name.
B-E-T-T-I-N-A
. It’s for good luck,” he said.

Of course, between making the squad in spring and starting practices in the fall, summer happened. Brady and I had our two nights a week together: the two that Bampas allowed, and I snuck out a handful of times. Brady didn’t want me to use up my nights out to go to crowded games in the park.
“I want to really
be
with you on those nights,” he insisted. My heart worked overtime, doing all the things a heart will do when it is letting someone close—the flutters, the swells. Nothing had ever felt so good as bursting out of the house and into Brady’s arms—all summer long.

By then, I was sixteen. But since Bampas had not even thought of letting me learn to drive, he didn’t know the rules. He didn’t know that even though Brady was older than most rising high school juniors I wasn’t supposed to be riding in a car with him, and Brady’s parents didn’t seem to care. So he’d pick me up, and take me to his house in the village. From there, we’d walk under miles of twilight together, through village streets and around the town parks. Maintenance guys locked up gates behind us and we pretended to leave. But really, we lurked, and we squeezed past posts or climbed fences after they’d gone. One night when the orange trucks had bobbed away for the night, I sat across Brady’s lap while we kissed by the base of an oak tree. Gently, he slid his hands under my shirt, touched my belly skin with his fingertips. A long time later, he’d gone no higher—and no lower—than my first rib. His tentativeness melted me. No more one-shot graveyard kissing for me. No jawing on each other like there was no tomorrow. I had a nice boyfriend. I had him before anyone else had him—I was fairly certain of that—and I liked it that we were taking our time. Every so often I remembered
what Bampas had said and I felt like I was proving him wrong; this was a relationship.

On a starry night in July, Brady and I stood in a fort of rhododendrons not far from a darkened baseball field. Loose buttonholes made it easy and my shirt fell back over my shoulders. The skinny straps of a cami slid easily down my arms. He touched me so lightly. His breath went crazy and he told me, “Sweet Jesus, I’m gonna pass out.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I giggled, and his forehead met my shoulder and together, we knelt safely down.

“This is so . . .
embarrassing
. How out of my league am I?” He lay back in the grass, hands over his eyes, and laughed at himself. I wedged up against him, felt his heart pounding through his chest. We lay nestled together, looking up through the leaves at the shining pinholes of light in the sky until he felt a little brave again. “I—I don’t even know exactly how to say it,” he stammered. “I guess being with you like this . . . just blows me away, is all.” I leaned over and kissed his summery neck.

So summer went. Little step by little step, I was falling in love.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

C
OME
S
EPTEMBER
, B
RADY AND
I
WALKED INTO THE FIRST
day of school together, me solidly on his arm. I felt his slight backward tug the second we hit the lobby and heard him swear under his breath. He scanned the hall like he was looking for something more to attach to than just me.

Brady was not in love with the “school” part of school; he had confided this to me. So on that September morning, I tried to console him. But he pulled forward and led me to a cluster of his basketball buddies. I stood outside the huddle, my hand still tucked in the fold of Brady’s elbow. I still hadn’t gotten to know his friends and now I wondered what my absence at all those summer games had cost me. The girls
seemed familiar with Brady in a way I did not remember from the spring. They’d look at me sideways and barely say hello. I felt like I had something that was supposed to be someone else’s. I heard one of the guys say to another, “Guess that’s still going on. . . .” while he cocked his head toward Brady and me. I was the girl he’d brought in from the outside. I shifted in the school lobby, turning myself a few more degrees away from the circle.

I wanted to move on to my locker and peek into the art room and see what Mr. Terrazzi had done with the art budget over the summer. But Brady kept on talking to his pack and I didn’t have the heart to pry him away. This was the
good
thing about school for him, his morning pep rally. If he could have skipped straight to basketball season he would have. I had half on ear on them as they talked about the state trophy they were going to bring home at the end of the winter. How they could focus on something that was still such a long way off, I had no clue.

Under my feet, there was the large mosaic of our school mascot—the White Tiger. I traced an arc across it with the toe of my boot. It had been designed by a group of senior art students some years before. This wasn’t the first time I’d studied it. The White Tiger wasn’t just white. There were dozens of colors of pale blues and pearly grays in that pelt.
How had they done it?
I wondered.
How did they plan for such a
large-scale piece of art?

“Hey, Bettina!” I looked up—way up—almost to the top of the stairs. There was Tony Colletti breaking into a grin. I had the thought that from where he stood, I must look like the tail on a big letter
Q
, standing outside of the jock circle like I was. I suddenly felt like a Brady Cullen accessory—like his backpack or gym bag. I waved to Tony with my free arm. He descended quickly and came to stand beside me.

“Hey! How was your summer? I can’t believe it—I never saw you,” he complained. “And now it’s over!”

“Oh, I know,” I said. “The families just don’t get to together anymore.” I flashed on old times—the block parties down in the little ethnic neighborhoods where we’d lived before Bampas built the house out near the river. Seeing Tony made me nostalgic for fat trees growing out of the sidewalks, for brick houses with white iron railings, and steamy bowls of pasta fagioli. I remembered the dozens of Virgin Marys watching over that neighborhood from turquoise-blue grottos in the narrow backyards. I cocked my head at Tony. “Actually, maybe all of you
do
still get together,” I said. I gave him an embarrassed smile. “We’re the ones that moved.”

“Eh, we don’t do that so much. You and me, we’ll have to light a fire under everyone again, huh? We’ll do something this fall. Bring your little brothers down for trick or treat.”

“Sure,” I said, but I doubted it’d happen. “How is
everyone? Your family?” I asked. He gave me a nod but his grin dropped in a dark sort of way.

“We should catch up,” he said. “Soon. I’ll look for you.” The first bell rang while I was watching him walk down the hall. Tony Colletti had had that same bouncy walk all his life, I realized, and it made me smile.

Suddenly, Brady was in my ear. “That guy—he
always
has to talk to you, doesn’t he?” The huddle of basketballers was dispersing. I stepped out of their way.

“Who? Tony?” I thought for just a second.
Always? More like he’s the
only
guy who ever talks to me
. “Yeah,” I said, “Our families know each other from wa-a-ay back. We used to live two doors down fr—”

“Yeah?” Brady interrupted me, and looked down the hall after Tony for a beat. Then he gave me an intense stare. He thrust his jaw at me a hitch. “Come on, let’s go,” he said. I was afraid I had somehow hurt his feelings but I let it go since I also knew that Brady was in a mixed mood about being back at school.

Walking so close to him in the halls I noticed how incredibly “eyes up” Brady was—meeting gazes and giving and receiving little nods and hellos every step of the way. This was new since last spring when we had both been pretty much invisible. People knew Brady now—about twice as much as they
didn’t
know me.

When we reached my locker, he kissed my forehead. “Maybe see you at lunch if our schedules work out, huh?”

“I hope so,” I said. Then I added, “Hey, hang in there. Have a good morning.”

“What?” he said, spreading his arms wide. “Are we some old farts getting up from the breakfast table, here?”

I tipped my head back and laughed.

Truth was, I liked that we weren’t a new couple anymore. We had lasted the summer, and that was always a big question with couples that met up in the spring. If anyone had asked, I might have said our relationship had been cemented by equal parts freedom and longing. It would have been nice to have more nights together. But I had warned Brady that it was best to push gently against the force that was my father.

“You’ve already performed a miracle where Dinos Vasilis is concerned,” I had said, and it was true. Bampas had noted offhandedly that he was surprised we’d lasted. He must have been solid in his belief that Brady was the right boy for me to date. After the first several weeks, he hadn’t even checked up on us the way I thought he would. Sure, I had curfew. But usually it was Momma who met me when I came in at night. I was freer than I ever dreamed I could be.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

S
O
, B
AMPAS GAVE ME SOME GRIEF ABOUT GOING OUT
that first Friday night after school began again. It was as if he had to. He rumbled about my homework and how the lazy days of summer were passed and how I needed a schedule again. But I bargained hard to have that Friday night with Brady. He was so low about being in classes; I took it upon myself to try and keep him bolstered him up.

I won out with Bampas, and Brady came to get me that night. We had to drop the car back at his house in the village so his mother could use it. Mrs. Cullen waved from the kitchen window. Brady held the keys up over his head, jangled them for her to see, then threw them onto the seat of the
car. She acknowledged, and Brady took my hand.

“Let’s walk to the park,” he said. “Then maybe we’ll come back here.” He was giving me a potent sort of look, and I felt like I was missing something—was it about the car? His mother? Or more stuff about the start of school? “I was just thinking we could hang a while,” he added.

“Yeah. Sure.” I agreed. “Let’s just have a kick-back night.”

We ended up making a quick loop that evening, rushed along by a metallic scent in the air and a sky full of rain clouds and then trees shaking in the wind. Half a block away from Brady’s house, he paused to point to a brick school building.

“See, Alcott Elementary,” Brady said. “My first and favorite place ever to shoot hoops,” he said.

“Really?” I asked. “Even now?”

“Yep. That’s where it all began. That’s where I found out I could sink six, then eight, then thirty in a row.”

I started to tell him how curious I was about Alcott—the school I had
not
gone to. But the rain began to come down so Brady took my hand and we started to jog.

That run in the rain was exactly what I would have planned if I could have, to keep Brady feeling light. He took us shortcutting across the last few lawns. We jumped little fences and avoided flower beds.

“This way, this way.” He hustled me along the narrow side yard at his house. He stopped us at the cellar door—the
kind that looks like a slide for little kids. He pulled it open and said, “Go ahead down. Careful.”

“Okay . . . but why? What’s down here?” I said. Was this the way in from the rain at the Cullen household? I two-footed my way down the cement stairs. Brady came in behind me, tucking himself below the door. He eased it down to so it wouldn’t slam.

“Why are we here?” I whispered. The rain pattered on the metal door. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. I had that excited, “safe inside” feeling. I grabbed Brady’s shirt and pressed my nose to his chest, giggling.

“Come on,” he said. He guided me along the cinder-block wall to a place where just a little more light came in through a ground-level window.

My toe bumped over something. I looked down and saw the raw edge of a big carpet scrap, then the old futon mattress covered in a worn
Sesame Street
sheet.