by Jenny Han
Josh opens the window and leans his head out. “Hey. Did Kavinsky leave already?”
Surprised, I say, “Yeah. I left my bag in his car. Can you throw down the spare keys?”
Josh sighs, like I’m asking for something huge. “Hold on.” Then he disappears.
I stand there and wait for him to come back to the window, but he doesn’t. He comes outside the front door instead. He’s wearing a hoodie and sweatpants. It’s Margot’s favorite hoodie. When they first got together, she used to wear it all the time, like it was a letterman’s jacket or something.
I hold my hand out for the keys and Josh drops them in my hand. “Thanks, Joshy.”
I turn to leave, but he says, “Wait. I’m worried about you.”
“What? Why?”
He sighs heavily and adjusts his glasses. He only wears his glasses at night. “This thing with Kavinsky . . .”
“Not that again. Josh—”
“He’s a player. He’s not good enough for you. You’re . . . innocent. You’re not like other girls. He’s a typical guy. You can’t trust him.”
“I think I know him a lot better than you do.”
“I’m just looking out for you.” Josh clears his throat. “You’re like my little sister.”
I want to hit him for saying that. “No I’m not,” I say.
An uneasy look crosses over Josh’s face. I know what he’s thinking, because we’re both thinking it.
Then, headlights are beaming down our street. It’s Peter’s car. He’s come back. I hand Josh his set of keys and run over to my driveway. Over my shoulder I call out, “Thanks, Joshy!”
I come around the front to the driver’s side. Peter’s window is down. “You forgot your bag,” he says, glancing over toward Josh’s house.
“I know,” I say breathlessly. “Thanks for coming back.”
“Is he out there?”
“I don’t know. He was a minute ago.”
“Then just in case,” Peter says, and he leans his head out and kisses me on the lips, open-mouthed and sure.
I’m stunned.
When he pulls away, Peter’s smiling. “Night, Lara Jean.”
He drives off into the night and I’m still standing there with my fingers to my lips. Peter Kavinsky just kissed me. He kissed me, and I liked it. I’m pretty sure I liked it. I’m pretty sure I like him.
* * *
The next morning I’m at my locker, putting my books away, when I see Peter walking down the hallway. My heart thumps in my chest so loud I can hear it echo in my ears. He hasn’t seen me yet. I duck my head into my locker and start arranging my books into a pile.
From behind the locker door he says, “Hey.”
“Hey,” I say back.
“I just want to set your mind at ease, Covey. I’m not going to kiss you again, so don’t worry about it.”
Oh.
So that’s that. It doesn’t matter if I like him or not, because he doesn’t like me back. It’s kind of silly to feel so disappointed about something you only just realized you wanted, isn’t it?
Don’t let him see that you’re disappointed.
I face him. “I wasn’t worrying about it.”
“Yes you were. Look at you: your face is all pinched together like a clam.” Peter laughs, and I try to unpinch my face, to look serene. “It’s not going to happen again. It was all for Sanderson’s benefit.”
“Good.”
“Good,” he says, and he takes my hand, and he closes my locker door, and he walks me to class like a real boyfriend, like we’re really in love.
How was I supposed to know what’s real and what’s not? It feels like I’m the only one who doesn’t know the difference.
50
MY DAD’S THRILLED WHEN I ask him to sign the permission slip. “Oh, Lara Jean, this is great. Did Peter convince you? You’ve been scared of skiing ever since you were ten and you did the splits and you couldn’t get back up!”
“Yeah, I remember.” My boots froze onto the skis, and I lay there in the splits for what felt like days.
Signing the paper, my dad says, “Hey, maybe we can all of us go to Wintergreen over Christmas. Peter too.”
So that’s where I get it from. My dad. He lives in a fantasy world. Handing me the slip, he says cheerfully, “You can wear Margot’s ski pants. Her gloves, too.”
I don’t tell him that I won’t need them, because I’ll be cozy in the lodge reading and sipping hot cocoa by the fire. I should bring my knitting stuff with me too.
When I talk to Margot on the phone that night, I tell her I’m going on the ski trip, and she’s surprised. “But you hate skiing.”
“I’m going to try out snowboarding.”
“Just . . . be careful,” she says.
* * *
I’m thinking she means on the slopes, but when Chris comes over the next night to borrow a dress, I learn otherwise. “You know everybody hooks up on the ski trip, right? It’s like a school-sanctioned booty call.”
“What?”
“That’s where I lost my V freshman year.”
“I thought you lost it in the woods near your house.”
“Oh yeah. Whatever, the point is, I had sex on the ski trip.”
“There are chaperones,” I say worriedly. “How can people just have sex with chaperones around?”
“Chaperones go to sleep early because they’re old,” Chris says. “People just sneak out. Plus there’s a hot tub. Did you know that there’s a hot tub?”
“No . . . Peter never mentioned that.” Well, that’s that, I just won’t pack a bathing suit. It’s not like they can make you go in a hot tub if you don’t want to.
“The year I went, people were skinny-dipping.”
My eyes bug out. Skinny-dipping! “People were nude?”
“Well, the girls took their tops off. Just be prepared.” Chris chews on her fingernail. “Last year I heard Mr. Dunham got in the hot tub with students and it was weird.”
“This sounds like the Wild West,” I mutter.
“More like Girls Gone Wild.”
It’s not that I’m worried Peter will try something with me. I know he won’t, because he doesn’t see me that way. But are people going to expect it? Am I going to have to sneak into his room in the middle of the night so people think we’re doing something? I don’t want to get in trouble on a school trip, but Peter has a way of convincing me to do stuff I don’t want to do.
I grab Chris’s hands. “Will you please come? Please, please!”
She shakes her head. “You know better than that. I don’t do school trips.”
“You have before!”
“Yeah, freshman year. Not anymore.”
“But I need you!” Desperately I squeeze her hands and say, “Remember how I covered for you last year when you went to Coachella? I spent the whole weekend sneaking in and out of your house so your mom would think you were at home! Don’t forget the things I’ve done for you, Chris! I need you now!”
Unmoved, Chris plucks her hands away from mine and goes to the mirror and starts examining her skin. “Kavinsky’s not going to pressure you to have sex if you don’t want to. If you minus the fact that he dated the devil, he’s not a total dummy. He’s kind of decent, actually.”
“What do you mean by decent? Decent like he doesn’t care that much about sex?”
“Oh, God, no. He and Gen were in constant heat for each other. She’s been on the pill longer than I have. Too bad everyone in my family thinks she’s this angel.” Chris pokes at a zit on her chin. “What a fake. I should send an anonymous letter to our grandma . . . Not that I really would. I’m no rat, unlike her. Remember that time she told our grandma I was going to school drunk?” She doesn’t wait for me to answer. When Chris gets going on a Genevieve rant, she is single-minded. “My grandma wanted to use the money she saved for my college for rehab! They had a family meeting about me! I’m so glad you stole Kavinsky from her.”
“I didn’t steal h
im. They were already broken up!”
Chris snorts. “Sure, keep telling that to yourself. Gen’s going on the ski trip, you know. She’s class president, so she’s basically organizing it. So just beware. Don’t ever ski alone.”
I let out a gasp. “Chris, I’m begging you. Please come.” In a burst of inspiration I say, “If you come, it’ll make Genevieve really mad! She’s organizing this whole thing; it’s her trip. She won’t want you there!”
Chris purses her lips into a smile. “You know how to play me.” She juts her chin at me. “Do you think this zit is ready to pop?”
51
THANKSGIVING DAY, DADDY CLEANS OUT the turkey for me and then leaves to go pick up our Korean grandma, who lives an hour away in a retirement community with a lot of other Korean grandmas. Daddy’s mom, Nana, is spending Thanksgiving with her boyfriend’s family, which is fine by me, because I know she wouldn’t have anything nice to say about the food.
I make up a green-bean dish with orange peel and dill, in an earnest effort to be jazzy and inventive. I nominate Kitty to be my taste tester and she takes a bite of green bean and says it tastes like an orange pickle. “Why can’t we just have green-bean casserole with the fried onion rings that come in the can?” Kitty ponders. She’s cutting out different-colored feathers for her turkey place mats.
“Because I’m trying to be jazzy and inventive,” I say, dumping a can of gravy into the saucepan.
Doubtfully Kitty says, “Well, are we still having broccoli casserole? People will eat that.”
“Do you see any broccoli anywhere in this kitchen?” I ask. “No, the green in this meal is the green bean.”
“What about mashed potatoes? We’re still having mashed potatoes, right?”
Mashed potatoes. I jump up and check the pantry. I forgot to buy the potatoes. I got the whole milk and the butter and even the chives to put on top like Margot always does. But I forgot the actual potatoes. “Call Daddy and ask him to pick up Yukon gold potatoes on the way home,” I say, closing the pantry door.
“I can’t believe you forgot the potatoes,” Kitty says with a shake of her head.
I glare at her. “Just focus on your place mats.”
“No, because if I didn’t just ask about the mashed potatoes, the meal would have been ruined, so you should be thanking me.”
Kitty gets up to call Daddy, and I yell out, “By the way, those turkeys look more like the NBC peacock logo than actual turkeys, so!”
Kitty is unfazed, and I take another bite of the green beans. They do taste like an orange pickle.
* * *
It turns out I have cooked the turkey upside down. Also, Kitty kept hounding me about salmonella because she watched a video on it in science, so I wind up leaving the bird in too long. The mashed potatoes are fine, but there are some crunchy bits here and there because I rushed to boil them.
We are seated around the dining room table, and Kitty’s place mats really do add a certain something.
Grandma is eating a whole pile of green beans, and I shoot Kitty a triumphant look. See? Someone likes them.
There was a minute or two, after Mommy died, when Grandma moved in to help take care of us. There was even talk of her staying. She didn’t think Daddy could manage on his own.
“So, Danny,” Grandma begins. Kitty and I exchange a look across the table, because we know what’s coming. “Are you seeing anyone these days? Going on dates?”
My dad reddens. “Er . . . not so much. My work keeps me so busy . . .”
Grandma clucks. “It’s not good for a man to be alone, Danny.”
“I’ve got my girls to keep me company,” my dad says, trying to sound jovial and not tense.
Grandma fixes him with a cold stare. “That’s not what I mean.”
When we’re doing the dishes, Grandma asks me, “Lara Jean, would you mind if your daddy had a girlfriend?”
It’s something Margot and I have discussed at length over the years, most often in the dark, late at night. If Daddy absolutely had to date, what kind of woman would we like to see him with? Someone with a good sense of humor, kindhearted, all of the usual things. Someone who’d be firm with Kitty but not rein her in so much that it would squash all the special things about her. But also someone who wouldn’t try to be our mother; that’s what Margot is fiercest about. Kitty needs a mom, but we’re old enough to not need mothering, she says.
Of the three of us, Margot would be the most critical. She’s incredibly loyal to Mommy’s memory. Not that I’m not, but there have been times, over the years, where I’ve thought how it would be nice to have someone. Someone older, a lady, who knows about certain things, like the right way to put on blush, or how to flirt to get out of a speeding ticket. Things to know for the future. But then it never happened. Daddy’s been on some dates, but he hasn’t had a steady girlfriend he’s brought around. Which has always been sort of a relief, but now that I’m getting older, I keep thinking about what it will be like when I’m gone and it’s just Kitty and Daddy, and then before long it will just be Daddy. I don’t want him to be alone.
“No,” I say. “I wouldn’t mind at all.”
Grandma gives me an approving look. “Good girl,” she says, and I feel warm and cozy inside, like how I used to feel after a cup of the Night-Night tea Mommy used to make me when I couldn’t fall asleep at night. Daddy’s made it for me a few times since, but it never tasted the same, and I never had the heart to tell him.
52
THE CHRISTMAS COOKIE BONANZA STARTS December first. We drag out all of Mommy’s old cookbooks and cooking magazines and we spread them out on the living room floor and turn on the Charlie Brown Christmas album. No Christmas music is allowed in our house until December first. I don’t remember whose rule this is, but we abide by it. Kitty keeps a list of which cookies we’re definitely doing and which ones we’re maybe doing. There are a few perennials. My dad loves pecan crescents, so those are a must. Sugar cookies, because those are a given. Snickerdoodles for Kitty, molasses cookies for Margot, cowgirl cookies for me. White-chocolate cranberry are Josh’s favorite. I think this year, though, we should mix things up and do different cookies. Not entirely, but at least a few new ones.
Peter’s here; he stopped by after school to work on chem, and now it’s hours later and he’s still here. He and Kitty and I are in the living room going through the cookbooks. My dad’s in the kitchen listening to NPR and making tomorrow’s lunches.
“Please no more turkey sandwiches,” I call out.
Peter nudges my sock and mouths spoiled, and he points at me and Kitty, shaking his finger at us. “Whatever. Your mom makes your lunches every day, so shut it,” I whisper.
My dad calls back, “Hey, I’m sick of leftovers too, but what are we going to do? Throw it away?”
Kitty and I look at each other. “Pretty much exactly,” I say. My dad has a thing about wasting food. I wonder if I snuck down to the kitchen tonight and threw it out, if he’d notice. He probably would.
“If we had a dog,” Kitty pipes up loudly, “there wouldn’t be any more leftovers.” She winks at me.
“What kind of dog do you want?” Peter asks her.
“Don’t get her hopes up,” I tell him, but he waves me off.
Immediately Kitty says, “An Akita. Red fur with a cinnamon-bun tail. Or a German shepherd I can train to be a seeing-eye dog.”
“But you’re not blind,” Peter says.
“But I could be one day.”
Grinning, Peter shakes his head. He nudges me again and in an admiring voice he says, “Can’t argue with the kid.”
“It’s pretty much futile,” I agree. I hold up a magazine to show Kitty. “What do you think? Creamsicle cookies?” Kitty writes them down as a maybe.
“Hey, what about these?” Peter pushes a cookbook in my lap. It’s opened up to a fruitcake cookie recipe.
I gag. “Are you kidding? You’re kidding, right? Fruitcake cookies? That’s disgusting.”
“When done right, fruitcake can be really good,” Peter defends. “My great-aunt Trish used to make fruitcake, and she’d put ice cream on top and it was awesome.”
“If you put ice cream on anything, it’s good,” Kitty says.
“Can’t argue with the kid,” I say, and Peter and I exchange smiles over Kitty’s head.
“Point taken, but this isn’t your average fruitcake. It’s not, like, a wet loaf of neon jujubes. It’s got pecans and dried cherries and blueberries and good stuff. I think she called it Christmas Memory fruitcake.”
“I love that story!” I exclaim. “That’s my favorite. It’s so good but so sad.”
Peter looks puzzled and so does Kitty so I explain. “ ‘A Christmas Memory’ is a short story by Truman Capote. It’s about a boy named Buddy and his older lady cousin who took care of him when he was little. They’d save up all year to buy ingredients for fruitcake and then they’d send them as presents to friends, but also to, like, the president.”
“Why is it so sad?” Kitty wants to know.
“Because they’re best friends and they love each other more than anybody, but they get separated in the end, because the family thinks she doesn’t take good enough care of him. And maybe she doesn’t, but maybe it doesn’t matter, because she was still his soul mate. In the end she dies, and Buddy doesn’t even get to say good-bye to her. And, it’s a true story.”
“That’s depressing,” Peter says. “Forget the fruitcake cookies.”
Kitty crosses out fruitcake cookies on her pad.
I’m thumbing through an old Good Housekeeping magazine when the doorbell rings. Kitty scrambles up and runs for the door. “Check who it is before you open it,” I call after her. She’s always forgetting to check first.
“Josh!” I hear her squeal.
Peter’s head jerks up.
“He’s here to see Kitty,” I tell him.
“Yeah, right.”
Josh walks into the living room with Kitty hanging around his neck like a monkey. “Hey,” he says, eyes flickering in Peter’s direction.