The Things You Kiss Goodbye (4 page)

“I set us up a little spot,” Brady said. I sighed. It was rare that we had a private place to be together. He wrapped me in his arms.

Holding me close and kissing me, he pulled me down and laid me on my back. Quickly, he peeled off his T-shirt. He slid my sweater up, undid the catch on my bra with a flick of his fingers. Our skin was damp from the rain and I shivered. He hovered over me, as if to warm me for a moment. But then
he sat back just enough so he could slide his hands up under my skirt. I felt his fingertips curl around the thin elastic at my hipbones. “Brady . . .” I whispered. He eased me out of my panties. “Hey, Brady . . .” I whispered again.

I guess I wanted to say that I thought we were skipping a few steps. But he didn’t want to talk, and now I seemed not able to. A few seconds later, a condom wrapper with the corner torn back lay curled near my shoulder.

I never saw what he looked like that first time, and I can’t describe what I felt. Not pain. But not nothing. When I twisted underneath him, he pressed closer. He whispered, “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

I braced, and for a second or two, I turned my face into the sheet underneath me. I saw the yellow of Big Bird’s beak, the white, cartoony eye with the black-dot pupil. The thought of my little brothers—their TV shows and stuffed animals flashed through my mind. Was that even appropriate? Wasn’t I supposed to be perfectly, completely, and passionately linked to Brady right now? And what was he thinking and feeling way up there above me? How could I be this close to him yet feel like he was far away?

He gasped several times, grunted, then rested heavily on top of me. I squeezed my eyes shut. I’d once watched our rabbits mate—the buck had fallen off the doe at the finish but he’d clung to her, wheezing once or twice before he’d righted
himself. I wished for Brady to roll off, roll away.

The Cullen’s basement ceiling whirled. I was shaky. Brady knew it. He started kissing me and hugging me. He tried to cajole me with huge, handsome smiles shining in the dim basement light. “I—I’m so glad we did this now.” He pressed those words into me—his hands on my face. “I love you
so
much. I do. So much.” Finally, he thought to ask, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I am.” I slid out from under him. I began to grope for my clothes.

“Hey. Come on.” He pulled me back against him but I sat forward, clutching my sweater in a ball at my chest. My head swam with thoughts. I felt surprised and weird and maybe scared.

“I—I just want to know that—” I swallowed hard and began again. “That you . . .”

“What? Tell me.”

“I—I don’t want everyone to know.”

“Uh, well, people are going to figure,” he said, and I could tell he meant it. “We actually waited kinda long. People hook up all the time—”

“No,” I said. “No. This is
us
. This is
ours
, what we just did. I—I’ll feel sick if you race out of here and tell your friends as if it were nothing—”

“You think I’m going to do that? Really?”

I felt bad then. “No . . . but please, Brady. I didn’t know we were
here
yet. I mean I thought eventually . . . b-but I didn’t think we’d do this
now
.”

“Well, I kind of know what you mean. But I think you were just . . . nervous. It’ll be better the next time,” he said.

Well, the next time was a few days later—same place. We’d cut a lunch period together. I went willingly—didn’t think he’d go for it
all
in the middle of the day, though that sounds idiotic even to me now. Anyway, it was worse. I was tense, still trying to catch up to where Brady felt we were. I’d gotten a look at him this time, and that made me even more apprehensive.

“Jesus, P’teen-uh! Stop making that face,” Brady finally said. “Christ! I can’t do it if it’s gonna be like this.” He stopped and stripped off the rubber. “Do you know how much these things cost?” He shot the empty condom at Big Bird’s head. “You have to
try
,” he said. “And be glad I protect you! Not all guys are that good about this stuff,” he told me. All I could think was,
Hey, protection is a
given. But of course I didn’t say it. In fact, I was speechless. Again.

It was bad. Really bad. I thought we might have ruined every good thing we’d had. Dressing again and hurrying back to school for the afternoon was horrible. I felt like crying, and he wouldn’t speak. This was worse than the first time. His angry tone had stunned me. I was heartsick. I spent the next
hours at school asking myself what happened to the sweet, shy boy who’d nearly passed out the first time he’d touched me. I was desperate to have that boy back.

By late afternoon, Brady had flipped. He tracked me down before I got on my bus to go home. “I’m sorry. Man, I am so, so sorry. I was a total shit.” His eyes pinked up as he spoke. He buried his face in my neck. He called to apologize again before I went to sleep that night.

Rough starts
, I thought. This had probably happened to other couples. The next morning, he brought me flowers. We hugged in the hall and fought off tears. We told each other everything was okay, and I knew we’d go on.

When the next opportunity came, Brady sure made it was better. He slowed down, gave me time. We’d had a bad patch, Brady Cullen and I. But now he wanted to learn how to make it
good
for me.

“Don’t be embarrassed, just tell me,” he said. At first I couldn’t. But he just kept encouraging me and finally, one afternoon in Brady’s basement, I got to the good part.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

S
O
, I
HADN
’
T HEARD FROM ANY OF THE CHEERLEADERS
over the summer—no time to become friends. I was worried about fitting in with them but I’d been so wrapped up in Brady that it didn’t seem so important. I was aware that they were comprised of a pair of cliques that brushed up against each other and traded members. Our first gathering of the school year took place a few weeks in. It was not a practice but a meeting to set the schedule. After that was done, there was some socializing that had nothing to do with me—until I felt them circling up. The redhead from spring tryouts asked, “So, hey, Bettina . . .” (Ah, someone remembered me . . . and was that going to be good or bad?)
“How was your summer?”

I played it friendly. “Great!” I said. “Except for too much hanging out at home. I’m so glad school has started again.”

“Oh, you didn’t work?” another girl asked. She skewed her jaw, twirled her hair around her finger.

I shook my head no. I had wanted a job. But that was another never-ending bone between my parents and me. Mamma was a broken record: “Your Bampas provides for you, gives you money when you need it. In return, you’ll babysit when we ask.” To me, they were keeping me home and keeping me from having much money of my own. But it was okay. I had been so happy all summer. I’d been allowed to go out with Brady.

Then someone said it. “So . . . you’re still
with
Brady. . . .”

“Yeah. I am.” I smiled.

“Ooh, that’s Brady Cullen, right? He’s
adorable
!” one girl blurted, then giggled in a genuine sort of way. I had noticed her before. She was little and sort of hyper, bouncing about the open lobby like a free satellite.

Before I could nod at her, someone squelched her, saying, “Emmy, don’t be a freak. . . .”

Emmy bit her thumb, closed her eyes tightly, and said, “Okay, I’m being quiet now,” and she laughed again. I pegged Emmy as the most cheerful cheerleader right then and there, and I began to think of the rest of them as the
Not-So-Cheerleaders. They weren’t done with me yet.

“So, that whole thing is all good? You and Brady?”

“Real good . . .” I said, and all of us laughed, and I felt one little second of warmth. I very nearly blurted something non-detailed about that recent bad patch. But I caught myself. That was between Brady and me, and we’d worked it out.

“But how come we never saw you at summer league games?” They wanted to know. “
Everybody
goes . . .”

“Right. Well, it’s complicated but, um . . .” I was not going to try to explain the uncool style of my upbringing to these girls. “Brady and I saw each other a couple of nights a week. Just not basketball nights,” I said.

“Oh. I guess if I had a boyfriend I’d want to see him play. But you did see him? And he really doesn’t see anyone besides you?”

“Well . . . n-no,” I said. There was a roaring moment of silence in which I could almost feel Brady’s fingertips on my skin—new inch by new inch.
We were close, close, close all summer. Shed our shyness, shed our clothes . . 
.

I wasn’t sure what those girls were getting at but it seemed like something was up. I looked at their faces. Most of them looked either down or away. “We had an awesome summer,” I managed to say. There was another stretch of dead airtime. Then somebody chirped.

“Well, that’s
good
!”

Something about that high note stuck in my craw.

So, in the late afternoon, as I was pulling my head back through my shirt down in Brady’s basement, I asked him about it. “Hey,” and I touched his arm so he’d look at me and listen, “We’re all good right? I mean, have you . . . has there been . . . anybody else? You’re just seeing me, right?”

“What? You mean have I been going out with other girls?” His head drew backward like he’d been knocked in the nose. “Sheesh! P’teen-uh! What the hell?”

“W-we didn’t ever talk about whether this was exclusive. Someone said something—basically asked me if you had cheated on me this summer.”

“Oh, who’s going around saying that stuff? Who the fu—” Brady didn’t finish but he plowed into me with a teeth-banging kiss—his only answer to my question.

As the weeks passed, I couldn’t ignore the feeling that between June and September, while I’d been falling all over Brady, I had missed something—and maybe it wasn’t even
exactly
what the cheerleaders had hinted at. But now I could see a change as we walked through the school together. Brady Cullen wasn’t a shy, skinny guy bouncing a ball just beneath everyone’s radar anymore. He was a nodding, fist-bumping, “jock machine,” working the hallway like it was his job. Younger girls were baking him brownies
and he was mugging for phone photos with them.
Everyone
knew him, and everyone prized him. For all I know, that’s exactly what turned him—exactly why he started to do bad shit to me.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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

I
T
’
S HARD TO REMEMBER EXACTLY HOW THE BAD STUFF
began . . . or when it turned from amusement to malice. One of the things Brady and I liked to do—when it was just the two of us—was play. In the beginning I’d bump off his shoulder to jostle him and he’d jostle me back. We would end up laughing and holding hands. As he got more comfortable around me he’d dump me on the ground—always protecting my landings—and maybe subject me to a raspberry on the neck. We ended up hugging and kissing every time.

In school, he started to make a game of coming up behind me, grabbing my braid tail, and wrapping it around my head
so it covered my eyes. Harmless enough. But there were times that he pulled a little too hard, or kept me blind for too long—with other people watching and laughing. I didn’t love it but I wouldn’t make a scene. A couple of times he made me late for class. Once, I was about to get written up. But Brady popped through the door to the classroom and took the blame. He talked the teacher into letting him take my half hour of detention, which made him legend in the world of boyfriends.

I guess one day does stand out. We were at his locker just before lunch. One of those little clay figures I had made for him back in the spring fell off the shelf of his locker and broke into crumbs except for the head.

“Oops,” I said, looking at the dirt our feet. It was a little sad. It was our favorite, the one I had named Sputnik for its cap full of toothpick horns. When we’d emptied our lockers before summer break, I’d carried Sputnik into the art room and had found him a shelf to summer over on.

I looked at Brady in a mock-solemn way. “Here lies Sputnik . . .” I began an epitaph. “Hold on . . . I’m trying to come up with a rhyme. . . .”

Brady picked the clay head off the floor. “Save me!” he squawked, and I thought it was funny. “Fix me!” He waggled the head at me. I played along.

“No, no. You are beyond repair and must accept your
fate. I shall return you to the bucket of clay from which you came—”

“No! Save me, bitch!” Brady jabbed the spiny head at me and caught me in the forearm.

“Ow!” I drew back. “Brady, you just
clawed
me with Sputnik!” I let out an incredulous gasp. I pushed up my sleeve. A pair of stinging red welts were rising on my forearm.

“I
toothpicked
you,” he said, and he laughed out loud. Then damned if he didn’t come after me for a second swipe. Thing is, I’m not sure how it would have stopped if it hadn’t been for several teachers who came down the hall. I slid my sleeve down over the scratches. They told us to clean up the clay crumbs and move on.

Brady didn’t feel bad about it. Plain and simple. But I needed a minute, so on the way to lunch I ducked into the silence of the girls’ bathroom.

“What the hell?” I muttered to myself. I took a squirt of soap at the sink and spread it over the marks. Some blood came up—enough to turn the suds pinkish. I heard a toilet flush, and freaked out. I was not alone. Bonnie Swenson came out of one of the stalls.

Big Bonnie—everyone called her that—was not really my friend. I knew her because she was a fixture in the art room. She was, well,
big
. Probably five foot eleven, and not fat, but large. She had dry, kinky hair the color of curry, and it seemed
to sit on her head in drifts rather than have roots there. Her skin was always chapped and ruddy. I started thinking
emollients
every time I saw her.