The Serious Kiss

by Mary Hogan

  That’s when the doorbell rang.

  “Get lost!” Dad shouted.

  A tiny voice on the other side of our new metal front door squeaked, “I’m from Trailer Life. I’m here to photograph your mobile home.”

  FIFTEEN

  Desert Valley High School was a disaster area. Cracked asphalt, peeling paint, tired old cinder-block buildings that looked more like bunkers than classrooms. Everything was litter-box grey or dirt brown, even the grass, the trees, and the distant Calico Mountains.

  Getting there was even worse.

  “There’s just so much I can take,” Mom muttered to herself, the car leaping forward at green lights, jerking to a stop at reds. “He thinks he can ruin my life? I don’t thinkywink so.”

  An open bag of Doritos sat between my mom’s legs. Her fingers were stained orange. We’d been driving around in circles for half an hour, past the same tiny taco stand, exhaust repair shop, dentist’s office, insurance storefront. Nobody said a word. Except Mom, of course, who talked mostly to herself in angry, guttural grunts.

  “I’m at the end of my rope. It’s about time he was at the end of his.”

  Finally, she looked right and left out the windshield and sighed. “Rif, will you please get the map out of the glove box? That school is somewhere around here.”

  While Rif rummaged around, Mom kept circling. Past the tiny taco stand, the exhaust repair shop, dentist’s office, insurance storefront. Sitting in the backseat, with Juan Dog on my lap, I watched Barstow pass by the window yet again. It never looked any better. I felt sad, scared, angry, upset – so many emotions; it was impossible to fully wallow in just one. Well, there was one feeling that rose above all the rest: confusion. Complete mind-numbing confusion. A mere week ago, I was struggling with Geometry, memorising the back of Zack Nash’s neck. Now my life was spun around and plopped on its head, totally disoriented. It took all the strength I had just to keep my eyes open and focused so I could see the bad news coming and dodge it before it hit me, splat, right in the face.

  “This is a map of California, Mom,” Rif said. “I can get you to San Diego or Sacramento.”

  “How hard could it be to find a high school?” Mom circled Barstow one more time. Suddenly, Dirk leaned forward from the backseat and blurted out, “Is Dad an alcoholic?”

  I held my breath. Juan did, too. We leaned forward with Dirk, listened to the hum of the engine and the soft blowing of the air conditioner. My brothers and I looked like an exhibit in the wax museum, waiting, locked in anticipation. I felt thrilled and terrified at the same time. The palms of my hands tingled. I’d been waiting for this moment all my life. A moment of truth. No more hiding. No more secrets. The other shoe could finally drop. My family would finally face what we’d secretly known for so long. Mom took a deep breath, licked her fingers clean. We braced ourselves.

  “There it is!” she cried. “Desert Valley High. I should have stayed on the road I was on before!”

  I groaned. Story of my life.

  I felt tears well up again, felt my chest pinch. Desert Valley High made Fernado High look like a Hawaiian postcard. WISH YOU WERE HERE. Wish I was there.

  Mom parked right in front of the front steps. Wouldn’t you know it, we got there exactly at three o’clock, just as the metal double doors were spitting out students. She stopped too suddenly and the car lurched and screeched, causing everybody to look at us.

  “Oops,” she said. “My heel caught.”

  “Don’t stop here!” I shrieked, sinking low in the seat, pulling my sunglasses out of my pack and slipping them on my red, puffy face. Now my main emotion was complete and utter mortification.

  “Mom! There’s a parking lot!”

  Ignoring me, she said, “I’ll only be a few minutes.” Then she heaved herself out of the car, tugged at her too-tight lime green dress, and took the car keys with her. I wanted to shrivel up and tuck myself into my own crumpled Kleenex. Better still, I wanted to disappear altogether.

  “Nice car, man.” Some students walked past us, looked at Rif, and laughed. Rif reached into his hair for a cigarette.

  “Do you think they have a pool?” Dirk asked. Rif and I both rolled our eyes. A pool? This high school looked like it didn’t even have a cafeteria. While Fernando High was all spread out, my new school seemed like it had fallen into a trash compactor. There were a lot of kids, but they were squished among the tired old buildings.

  My heart sank. How could this happen? How could life keep getting worse ? My spirit felt like a marble in a fishbowl, sinking quickly and permanently to the bottom. Peeking out the car window, I observed my future classmates in their natural habitat. Most looked like thugs to me. Tough nosmilers. Girls with thick black hair and even thicker black eyeliner. Boys with buzz cuts and tattoos and way-too-baggy pants. Very scary. What terrified me most, though, was the incredible amount of skin. Yeah, it was hot out, but man! The girls wore short shorts with platform sandals and spaghettistrap T-shirts with no bra. They clipped their long hair up in messy twists and laughed and chatted as if there wasn’t less than a skimpy yard of fabric between their naked bodies and the whole wide world. Two different couples were all knotted up, making out right there on the front steps. In front of everybody. As I sat there, the car getting hotter and hotter, it felt like I was stalled on the railroad track – nothing to do but hope the white puff of smoke in the distance isn’t the locomotive.

  “Look, Libby, I found Wally.” Dirk pointed to some nerd in a red-and-white-striped T-shirt sitting on a retaining wall, reading a book called Calculus and You.

  “Now maybe you’ll finally have a boyfriend.” Snorting as he laughed, Dirk sounded just like a wild boar.

  “Wally” didn’t look half bad. At least he didn’t scare me to death.

  By now, tons of students had swarmed around the car, checking us out. Some pointed through the window, others indicated there was fresh meat in their midst by flicking their heads in our direction. It was so hot, sweat marks were expanding in my armpits. My sunglasses slid down the damp bridge of my nose.

  Through a clenched jaw I declared, “I’m not going here. I’ll live with Nadine. I’ll join the circus.”

  It got harder and harder to breathe inside the car. We didn’t dare roll down the windows, clinging to last bit of air-conditioned air. Just as I was on the verge of hyperventilating, Rif startled me out of my impending panic attack by opening the car door and stepping out. Dirk, wiping his nose on his sleeve, followed them.

  “Where are you going?!” I screeched. Neither one of them paid any attention to me. Typical! They got out of the car and let the crowd swallow them up. Calm as you please. Rif glanced right and left and lit up. Can you believe it? Just like that. Rif was Rif no matter where he was or who happened to be with him. And Dirk, well Dirk basically imitated everything his older brother did without thinking too much about it. Which left me, the emotional psycho.

  Soon it was clear I’d suffocate if I stayed in the airless car much longer. No way was I going to sit there and fry alone. I swung open the door and squirmed out of the back seat. “Stay,” I commanded Juan Dog. But it was so hot and he hung his head so pathetically I relented.

  “Oh, all right.” I picked him up, slammed the car door shut, and scrambled after Rif and Dirk across the school parking lot to the edge of a brown football field. Breathless, I commanded, “Rif, get back in the car.” But even as I said it, I knew he’d scoff at me. Which he did. Dirk, the idiot, stuck his tongue out and shoved his hands deep into his pockets, trying to look cool.

  “Rif . ” I said again. This time I tapped my foot. That ought to do it.

  “Get lost,” Rif said to me. Then he walked away and merged into a nearby group of lowlifes. Dirk joined him.

  “You new?” one of the guys asked Rif.

  “Will be,” said Rif, taking another deep puff before stamping out his cigarette.

  “Cool, man.”

  “Hope so.”

  “What year?” />
  “Junior.”

  “Whoa, dude.”

  Their Neanderthal sentences drove me crazy. I spun on my heels and loudly stomped back to the car.

  “Your girlfriend?” I heard one of them ask.

  “My sister.”

  “Oh, man.”

  “No kidding.”

  Mom still hadn’t returned. Right back? Yeah, right! Juan was panting and I was sweating so much my hair was plastered to my forehead. Everyone was looking at me, talking behind their hands. I hurried to the car, got in, and sat there like a blob of bread dough in the oven.

  “The girl and the mutt are two hot tamales,” I heard somebody say. Then I heard lots of somebodies laugh. Totally red-faced, I rolled down the window, but it was no use. The air was so stifling, Juan and I had to get out of the car before we both passed out.

  “Oooo, how cute.”

  I froze.

  “Look, Sylvana, the Taco Bell dog!”

  Oh, God.

  Before I could turn around, a swarm was upon me. There must have been only three or four girls, but it felt like hundreds. Juan Dog and I were instantly swallowed up in CK cologne, lip gloss, squeals, and skin. Lots of skin.

  “He’s so cute.”

  “Look at the darling puppy!”

  “Can I hold him?”

  “Number one, he’s not a puppy. He hates being called a puppy. It’s not his fault that he’s so small. Do you call short people little babies? No? I didn’t think so. Number two, we bought him years before that stupid Taco Bell commercial. He’s not the Taco Bell dog. He’s Juan Dog, a beautiful canine in his own right. Number three, my mother will be here any moment and we have to get going, back to our very complete lives, away from this dust bowl dump. So in answer to your question, no, you can’t hold him. He’s mine and he hates girls named Sylvana who have long, straight hair and tanned legs and flat belly buttons with gold hoops sticking out of them.”

  That’s what I wanted to say.

  Instead I said, “Yeah. Okay.” Then I just stood there. Like a dope. I let them pass Juan from one set of pastel-painted fingernails to another like he was some kind of hairy, shivering football or something. That’s what I did, feeling as small and ashamed as I’m sure Juan did.

  “Can I let him run around a little?” one of the Sylvanas asked.

  “Well . ”

  She set his tiny paws on a patch of hot, prickly, dead grass and he hopped around pitifully.

  “How cute! ”

  Before I could bend down to save him, Juan hunched up his back, brought his hind legs up close to his front legs, and squeezed one off. In front of God and the Sylvanas and all of D.V. High, Juan Dog pooped.

  “Oh,” one of the girls covered her white teeth and tittered.

  “Eeewwww,” said another.

  Beet-faced, I lamely asked, “Anyone have a plastic bag?”

  They looked confused, like I wanted to take it home or something. “Or a tissue, scrap of paper, gum wrapper, anything?” My voice was growing weak.

  Nobody said a word. They stared at me as if I’d ruined the party. Juan beamed. Yeah, he was feeling fine.

  “This your car, ma’am?”

  Wheeling around, I saw a police officer standing at the front of our car. In his mirrored sunglasses I could see my tiny purple-red face.

  “Uh . no . it’s . uh, my mom’s.” The flashing lights on top of his squad car had attracted the attention of the whole school. What, he was going to arrest me? Wasn’t the Robo-Cop routine a tad over the top? I wanted to die.

  “You can’t park here,” he said. “The school buses pull in here.”

  “Oh. Well . my mom . ”

  “Let’s go,” Sylvana said to her friends. The other Sylvanas nodded and stepped over Juan’s poop, away from me as fast as possible.

  “You going to clean that up?” the officer asked me, pointing to the little Tootsie Roll Juan had left on the grass. We were now encircled by a growing crowd of silent, gaping students. I looked up and saw Wally with his calculus book under one arm and a superior smirk on his face.

  Lord, please take me now.

  “Bethy?”

  Her voice pierced the crowd, panicked and shrill. “Bethy?!” The students receded like low tide and made way for my mom. Fingers splayed, her tight green dress wrinkled, her baby toe poking out of her high-heeled sandals, Mom rushed forward, her face flushed with worry. “What happened?”

  “Nothing, Mom, we—” Before I could say more, she took one more fatal step and landed smack dab on the centre of Juan Dog’s poopadilly.

  “Eeewwww.” The crowd groaned in unison. Turning my head away, I silently prayed for a quick, massive heart attack to put me out of my misery.

  “What on earth?” Mom looked down.

  “Oh, Bethy!” “Oh, Bethy!” Someone in the crowd loudly mimicked her. It was Rif.

  Not the type of coronary from which you can be revived, please, but instant, permanent, chest-clutching death.

  “Move along, kids. Party’s over.” The cop sidestepped the poop pancake and dispersed the crowd. Someone joked, “Ah, don’t be a party pooper!” and everyone howled. Mom slipped her shoe off and scraped it on the kerb while Juan toddled up the hill with the group.

  “Juan! Get back here, you little runt!” Juan, looking scared, ignored my mom and quickened his pace. “Bethy, go get him.”

  “Rif, go get him!” I said.

  “Dirk, go get the dog.”

  Dirk, low man on the Madrigal totem pole, skulked up the hill to get Juan, who had stuck his head inside somebody’s lunch bag.

  “Where are your keys, Mom?” All I wanted to do was crawl into the back seat, turn on the air-conditioner, and stay there till college.

  “Will you at least give me a Kleenex?” Her smelly sandal dangled from one chubby finger.

  “Here.” Rif appeared out of nowhere with a fresh tissue in his hand. Prince Charming.

  “Thank you,” Mom said to Rif, sneering at me.

  What did I do?

  “Your keys, Mom?”

  “Your dog, miss?” An unfamiliar voice spoke behind me. Turning, I was suddenly face-to-face with the most gorgeous creature I’d ever seen. Okay, scratch that. He wasn’t Brad or Leo or Zack Nash. He wasn’t drop-dead dazzling in a traditional Hollywood hunk way. This guy was deep, soulful. I could tell. He wore glasses, though they were the way cool kind. His T-shirt was untucked, his baggy shorts well-pressed, his deck shoes brand-new. This guy had blond hair and pearly-white fingernails and firm ancillary veins that snaked all the way up his naturally muscled arms.

  This was a guy I could definitely seriously kiss.

  “Miss?”

  “Eliza beth.” Mom’s impatient voice felt like a toothpick in my ear.

  “What?”

  “Take the dog.”

  Oh. I suddenly became aware that the guy was holding Juan Dog out to me. Juan’s little legs were wiggling frantically, his neck strained. He looked like a cockroach flipped on its back.

  “Oh! Sorry.” I came to, blushing instantly, grabbing my dog. “This is Juan.” Great, Libby, introduce your dog!

  “I found him in my lunch sack,” the guy said. “Apparently Juan likes leftover meat loaf sandwiches more than I do.”

  I laughed way too loud and long for the joke.

  “Elizabeth, take the damn dog, get your brothers, and get in the car.”

  Mortified, I stammered an awkward “thank you” and glared at my mother as I struggled to slither gracefully under the seat belt strap, into the back seat of our crappy old car. Let her get my brothers, I thought. What, I’m their babysitter?

  As soon as I was settled in, I looked out the window to watch the boy who just replaced Zack Nash in my dreams, a serious candidate for my serious kiss. But he was already gone. I sighed. Juan sighed, too, curled up on my lap, and licked his lips. To my utter amazement, I found myself thinking maybe Barstow wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  SIXTEEN

&nbs
p; “Lance!”

  Dressed in a fresh kaftan, this one a blinding chartreuse, Nana completely encircled my father in fabric. Tears streamed down her wrinkled brown cheeks.

  “My baby boy, Lance!”

  I held my breath, braced for another explosion.

  Dad simply said, “Mother.” Then he busted free from her embrace.

  “Let me look at you,” Nana squealed, fluttering after him.

  Mom, pale with panic, lunged for the table in the centre of Nana’s trailer kitchen. “Something smells scrumptious! Shall we sit anywhere?”

  “You look tired,” Nana said to my dad. “It’s been rough, hasn’t it?”

  “Rif, you sit there. Libby, sit there . ”

  Nobody moved. We stared slack jawed at my dad and his mom. Nana kept pawing him; he kept inching backward. Dad was nearly pressed against the toilet armoire when Nana said, “I’m so proud of you, son. How long have you been sober?”

  “How ’bout I sit here and, Dirk, you sit there?” Mom’s voice screeched like a long skid. She flashed us a black look that said Sit. Down. Now.

  We sat.

  Dad said nothing, skirted past his mother, and took a seat at the far end of the large table.

  “All that matters is we’re here now, right, Lance? The whole family.” Nana smeared the last of her tears across her face with the back of her hand.

  “Lot,” Dad muttered, reaching for one of the steaming, aromatic tureens in the centre of the table.

  “Yes.” Nana sniffed. “There’s plenty for everyone.”

  “My name is Lot now,” said Dad. “Lance died twenty years ago.”

  Dinner that night was so tense it nearly snapped. My parents weren’t speaking to each other, we didn’t dare say a word, and my grandmother was oblivious to the fact that her newfound family was on the verge of a meltdown.

  “Everybody unpacked?” she chirped.

  Dad guzzled colas all dinner. He flung his head back, opened his mouth, and poured the carbonated sugar directly down his throat.

  “That can’t be good for you, Lance,” his mother said.

  Dad responded with a deep, round, gaseous belch.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nana said. Then she repeated, for like the millionth time, “I’m just so happy to finally have you home.” Puppy-eyed, she stood and reached across the table to squeeze his hand. He snatched it away.