Leah's Song

by Daphne James Huff

  Flying against all the advice of the voices in my head telling me not to, I let myself fall completely into the kiss. One became two, then three, then I lost track. The kisses grew dangerously deeper, and I knew I had to pull away, but I just couldn’t find the will. I wanted just a few more seconds of this, of what it might be like to have him for my own.

  A sudden crash from my front yard jerked us apart. I turned to see Luke had opened up the garage door. He was moving around some boxes, looking for something. I could feel my breath coming out in short bursts as he gave me a long stare, box in his arms, before turning back to the garage with a bored look.

  I stepped away from Josh, wiping away the few tears that had escaped my eyes and fallen onto my cheeks but savoring the tingle that remained on my lips.

  “I’m sorry,” said Josh softly. “I just wanted one kiss.” He gave me a small smile. I returned it, with a little chuckle.

  “Me too,” I said. I stared at him, his head surrounded by a halo of light from the streetlamp. It had gotten later than I’d realized. Lilly would be home soon.

  “I’ll see you in choir,” I said and turned to head back into the house. He was still there, a sad smile on his face, when I walked in and closed the door.

  Chapter Eleven

  Holy crap. I just kissed Josh.

  I just kissed Josh!

  I let the warmth spread through me as I stretched out on my bed thinking about the kiss. It had been a pretty great kiss. Well, kisses really. I squirmed happily thinking about what he’d said. He liked me. I was gorgeous. And funny.

  And a totally horrible friend.

  The guilt and terrible feelings washed over me like a bucket of cold water.

  Lilly. I had to tell Lilly.

  Well, said a tiny voice in my head, buried beneath all the years of watching Lilly and Jenn do great things while I watched from the sidelines, do you really have to tell her?

  I mean, technically, I hadn’t gone after him. He came to me. He liked me, despite my best efforts. Well, at least my sort of efforts. I hadn’t actively pursued him, which was the deal I’d made with Lilly.

  Was I supposed to push him away when he kissed me? Is that what a good friend does?

  A good friend would understand the situation, and be happy for me, said the tiny voice.

  I turned over in bed and buried my head in my pillow, letting out a low sound that was something like “gahhhhh.”

  Okay, time to think things through from the beginning. I was going about this all wrong. Let’s be logical.

  Lilly liked Josh. I liked Josh. Josh liked me.

  I had promised her that I wouldn’t try to get him. And I hadn’t tried. It had just happened. Hadn’t it?

  I thought about the little lies of omission: not mentioning how close our lockers were, the times we’d talked in the hall, the invitation to the haunted corn maze. Was I supposed to tell her every single time I spoke to him? No, that wasn’t the agreement.

  Besides, Lilly kind of likes Jeff now, doesn’t she?

  She was being so secretive about him. I’d barely heard a word about him since the corn maze, and she hadn’t wanted to talk about him at the game. That was really strange.

  Maybe her feelings about Jeff were like mine for Brandon. He liked her but she liked Josh and couldn’t let herself even consider another guy. Did Brandon even like me that much? Josh had said so, and I really didn’t think I’d misinterpreted the hand holding, despite my mind’s best efforts to turn it into something platonic.

  I sighed and turned onto my back. I looked up at my ceiling, and the star stickers dotted there. I thought about when Lilly and I had put those up, when we were nine or ten. We would turn off my lights, and put a blanket over the curtain rod to block out all the light, and stare up at them. We’d tried to recreate the constellations but had gotten bored halfway through, and then a few had fallen off over the past few years. So now it was just a random smattering of stars with no method to their madness.

  When was the last time we had done that? Had a sleepover and turned off the lights and told secrets in the dark?

  I knew I should tell her, but I just couldn’t. It would ruin everything, and things were already feeling weird this year, even without the Josh thing. She was getting ready to audition for music school, and she’d probably go far away to college. I would probably end up out of state as well. We only had a little over a year left before we’d have to go our separate ways. I didn’t want to spend it fighting about some boy. Even if it was a nice, funny, insanely cute boy that, amazingly, liked me back. He’d barely been in our lives three months. Lilly and I had been Leah-ly since the second grade.

  Some things were more important than cute boys.

  I sat up, my mind made up. She didn’t need to know. It wouldn’t be happening again. I picked up the phone on my bedside table and dialed her phone number. It had been too long since our last sleepover.

  As the concert approached, I was on edge. Not just because of preparing the solo, but because I was constantly worried about Lilly somehow finding out about the kiss. During the sleepover, it had been harder than I’d expected to not gush about what had happened. Part of me was still so incredibly excited, but spending that time with her one-on-one outside of school, like we used to so much when we were younger, reminded me that I had made the right choice.

  So I buried it in the back of my mind, trying my best to forget it had ever happened. But every time I saw him at his locker, it was like I could feel his lips on mine. I had to consciously ignore him in the halls, but my eyes were like traitorous magnets, unable to stop from locking onto him whenever he was in the vicinity.

  He seemed to be trying to ignore me, too, and was having much more success. Besides a few quick glances - so quick I wondered if I hadn’t imagined them - he never looked at me. I didn’t notice him at his locker as much between classes. He got to choir just before class started and left the second the bell rang.

  I was grateful that these were the things that Lilly wouldn’t notice, wouldn’t question. But Amanda did.

  “Did something happen with Josh?” she asked about a week after ‘the thing that happened’. I tried to call it something besides a kiss since I still blushed just thinking the words. Josh kissed me. Josh likes me.

  We were on our way to our next class, and he had run out so quickly even Mr. Price had raised an eyebrow at his hasty departure.

  “What? No, of course not,” I said, hiding the panic in my voice with a slightly forced chuckle. Amanda frowned and looked at me closely, but didn’t press the issue. Still, I wanted to be sure she didn’t say anything to Lilly in band. “He’s probably just worried about the playoff game this weekend.”

  It had been awhile since our school had gotten so far in the season, and people were getting pretty excited at our chances of making it to the state championship. The playoffs were at a school over an hour away and, during morning announcements, they encouraged everyone who could to go support the team. Lilly asked at lunch the next day if we wanted to go.

  “Definitely not,” said Amanda immediately.

  “You don’t want to see Jason perform?” I asked, surprised.

  She shook her head, laughing.

  “He’s not the one in the playoffs; the players are,” she said. “It’ll be freezing, and it’s way too far. I’ve seen him play enough this year.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief. If she didn’t want to go, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t go. The others at the table shook their heads as well. None of us were really that into football, after all.

  “Come on, Leah,” said Lilly pleadingly. “Let’s go just the two of us. Road trip!”

  “You want to see Jeff play?” I asked carefully. I had seen her talking to him in the music wing a few times recently, and was holding onto a hope that maybe she had forgotten about Josh.

  Her blush let me know that she definitely hadn’t.

  “I just want to support the team,” she said quietly.


  “Maybe if they make it to the finals,” I said. “I’ve sat through too many freezing soccer playoffs for Jenn. And football games are way longer than soccer matches.”

  She pouted for a few minutes, picking at her sandwich. She never got the cafeteria food. Her mom always made something amazing and, most days that included extra dessert to share with the rest of us. Today, I guess she didn’t feel like sharing.

  My attention was suddenly drawn away from her, not by Josh for once, but by a commotion on the other side of the cafeteria.

  “Leah, is that your brother?” Amanda asked, her voice full of concern and surprise. I could see, even from this distance, Luke was in the middle of a group that seemed to be fighting.

  I looked around and caught Jenn’s eye from a few tables away. She shook her head. If we got involved, it would only mean trouble for us. I looked at Lilly and she was biting her lip. She wanted to say something, I could tell, but she was holding it back.

  Despite all the time we spent together, she had never really gotten that friendly with Luke or Jenn. Without siblings, she had a hard time understanding how important they were to me, even when they were being ridiculous or mean to me.

  I think part of her was jealous, but the other part was relieved that she didn’t have to share her parents’ attention. Just like I was usually split between my jealousy at her only child status and my relief at not having all the parental pressure to perform on my shoulders.

  Today, however, my jealously at her sibling-free life was definitely winning. I wanted to sink into the floor and disappear. I kept staring, though, anxious to see what would happen to him.

  It didn’t take long for a teacher to come up to the fray and separate the two boys that were hitting each other. Luke wasn’t one of them, but he was escorted out along with them, presumably for having egged them on. He was yelling something angrily, but a few words from the teacher and he closed his mouth, his face suddenly scared.

  The cafeteria was eerily silent as everyone watched as they were taken away. I buried my face in my hands, embarrassed beyond belief. Did he have to do that in front of the whole school? They couldn’t have waited until after school to wail on each other?

  I could tell when they were finally out of the cafeteria because it was as if someone had turned the volume all the way up. The chatter was loud and intense. I groaned quietly to myself. This would be the talk of the school for days.

  I was grateful that there were only a few minutes left in the period, but I could feel the stares of everyone as the bell rang and lunch was dismissed. I kept my head down, despite Amanda and Lilly’s reassurances that it wasn’t a big deal. I walked out slowly, trying to let everyone else leave ahead of me, so that I wouldn’t feel their eyes on the back of my head.

  Suddenly, I heard my name. My heart leapt at the familiar voice.

  “Leah!” I turned to see Josh walking towards our group, weaving in and out of the crowd that flowed around us and out the double doors of the cafeteria. “Can I ask you something?”

  My breath caught in my throat. We were shoved together by the crush of bodies around us. I was trying hard to avoid touching him. I took as far a step back as the crowd would allow, super aware of how close his body was to mine. He seemed completely oblivious, all cool and collected, not ashamed or embarrassed. And why should he be? I was the one who had done something wrong, not him. And now I was the one acting weird, my face turning red and my eyes jumping from him to Lilly.

  “My parents are coming to the playoff game this weekend, and they want to know if you can babysit,” he said, his voice raised a bit to be heard over the chatter.

  There was an interesting shift in the voices around us. They were now focused on Josh coming to talk to us rather than Luke’s spectacle. I wasn’t sure if that was why he had chosen this moment to come talk to us, but I felt a flood of gratitude rush over me. The wall I had been trying so hard to build up against him over the past few days came crumbling down in an instant.

  “They’ve never asked me to babysit before,” I said, trying to keep my voice even. Lilly was at my side, oblivious to my anxiety at having them both so near. I could almost see the secret swirling in the air above my head. Amanda had wandered off already towards the music wing. The hallways were slowly clearing out.

  “Usually, only one of them will come to my games,” he said. “But they both want to go to this one.”

  “We were thinking of going,” Lilly piped up. I restrained the glare I so desperately wanted to give her, reminding myself of ‘the thing that happened’.

  “Oh, well, that’s nice of you,” he said, without a trace of annoyance. He so easily could have brushed her off, but was just a genuinely sweet guy. It was like he’d changed his mind over the past week and wanted to make me like him more instead of leaving me alone. “But it’ll be really cold, and it’s really far.”

  Her face fell, and I felt a sudden urge to kick Josh, despite his adorableness. I hated seeing Lilly upset. I wanted to give her so desperately what she wanted.

  “I have plans,” I lied, as we made our way towards the choir room. We were walking so incredibly slowly, it was starting to make me nervous. We were going to be late if we didn’t pick up our speed a bit. “But Lilly probably could do it, if she doesn’t go to the game.”

  There, I was being a good friend. I was making things a bit more even. Not that babysitting his siblings was really the same thing as kissing him. But it soothed my guilt the tiniest bit. She would be in his life more than she had been.

  Josh looked at me, his brow furrowed. He was confused. Why was I suggesting Lilly? He had asked me. He wanted me. I looked him in the eyes and gave the tiniest shake of my head back and forth. I couldn’t accept. I hoped he could see that it was for Lilly, and not because I didn’t want him. I wished I could tell him how much I still wanted him. So much, it hurt.

  “I’d love to!” said Lilly, thankfully not noticing the looks that passed between us in her excitement. “If having your parents there means you can win, then that’s how I can support the team! Go Marauders!”

  Her over-the-top enthusiasm for a game she had shown no previous interest in before this year made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. I settled for a resigned sigh.

  “Thanks, Lilly, you’re a lifesaver,” Josh said with a small smile. He turned to walk into the choir room without looking at me. I could feel Lilly brimming with contentment next to me, but I rushed into the room with a hurried ‘see you later’, not wanting to contribute anything else to her happiness. I’d done enough for one day.

  I glanced towards Josh several times throughout class, but he kept his head focused on Mr. Price. I guess the shake of the head hadn’t been as clear as I thought. I’d pushed him away because of Lilly, yet again. I only hoped it’d be worth it in the end.

  Chapter Twelve

  Even though I didn’t go to the game, I knew almost as soon as it was over that they lost. Jason called Amanda on his way home, who called Lilly, who called me. She was still at his house, babysitting, and I could hear delighted cries of the kids in the background at whatever fun activity she’d brought for them to do. I listened patiently to her disappointed musings interspersed with her happily gushing about how much fun it had been babysitting his brother and sister.

  Brimming with annoyance at Lilly, I decided to talk to him at his locker on Monday. We were still friends, weren’t we? I could handle that much. Maybe.

  “Hey, sorry you guys didn’t win,” I said with a smile. I held my books over my chest protectively, as if having my arms free would mean I would just wrap them around him without thinking.

  “Thanks,” he said smiling. “The guys are upset, but I don’t really mind.”

  “Really? Why not?”

  He frowned, hesitating.

  “It’s just not something you expect to hear from a football player,” I said. “It seems like winning is this life or death thing, the way most of them talk about it.”

&nbs
p; “Is that how I seem to you?” he looked curious, not mad, and I shifted uncomfortably under his intense stare.

  “Well...no,” I admitted. “You’re not like the other jocks I know.” I felt a blush start to spread across my face. “Not that I know that many, personally.” My entire face was on fire now. “You’re not like Jenn, I mean.”

  He smiled at that.

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It is,” I said, smiling shyly back, hoping my face had returned to a normal color. “So why don’t you care that you lost?”

  “If we had gone to the championship, I wouldn’t have been able to sing at the concert,” he said softly, looking down at his feet. “It’s the day after the concert, and we’d have been away overnight.”

  “Oh,” I said, not able to hide the surprise in my voice. “I didn’t realize you liked choir so much more than football.”

  “I didn’t think I would like it this much,” he said. “But I do. What about you?”

  He looked up at me, his bright green eyes dazzling, and all I could do was shrug.

  “It’s okay.”

  The first bell rang, and he sighed as he grabbed his books and shut his locker with a loud slam. I jumped a little at the noise.

  “I’ll see you in choir,” he said, and turned to go without looking at me.

  I replayed the exchange over and over in my head the entire day. I wished that it were some other guy causing me all this confusion so that I could ask Lilly about it. This was the kind of problem she loved solving. Had he been talking about liking choir or liking me? Did that mean he still liked me?

  It was hard to tell, since I spent so much of my time trying to avoid him. I was the one who pushed him away, because I didn’t want him to like me, right? But I also still wanted to be his friend. Which wasn’t really possible with the situation the way it was.

  Not being able to do anything without having to think about what Lilly would see and think was beyond frustrating. I considered talking to Amanda about it, but I wasn’t sure she wouldn’t say anything to Lilly. They’d been friends longer than I had been with Amanda.