NATALIE PALMER
For James - my best friend (and secretly more
Crack! I was awakened by a sharp object hitting against the glass of my bedroom window. I rubbed my eyes and blinked in the darkness at my clock. It was almost midnight. I rolled out of bed and grabbed my coat that was hanging on the closet door. I flipped the overhead light on and then off again just as quickly. That was the signal that I was awake and on my way.
By the time I made it downstairs and out my back door, Jess was sitting on my porch steps with his head resting in both hands.
"Your dad?" I said after I closed the door.
Jess jerked around to look at me. "Were you asleep?"
I sat next to him on the step. "I don't mind. I was dreaming weird tonight."
Jess rubbed his hand over his exhausted eyes. "My dad lost his job."
I cringed. Jess was a slightly shorter, better-looking, and much thinner replica of his father. But their personalities couldn't be more different. While Jess never thought about himself, his father thought about nobody but himself. And as soft spoken and kind as Jess was, so his father was loud, abrupt, and downright mean.
Jess had started coming to my window at night when his dad first began drinking. And now, six years later, Jess was sitting in his usual spot on my back porch, still trying to escape him.
"Not again," I groaned as I thought about how many times his dad had lost his job. He always drank more after getting fired.
Jess hadn't said much since I joined him on the steps, but this wasn't unusual. On nights like this I was the one doing all the talking. Jess didn't want to acknowledge what was going on at his house. But he couldn't bring himself to talk about anything of less importance either. He smiled as I rambled on about my day, telling him things that were inconsequential enough to not have been brought up on our walk home from school, but things that now-at the late hour-seemed hilarious. Somewhere in the middle of all my chatter I went inside and got us some hot chocolate. It was the early part of February, and the grass beyond our porch was still covered in gray snow.
Jess held the yellow mug of hot chocolate up to his face, letting the steam sweep around his cheeks. "So what was your dream about?"
I took a sip of my hot chocolate as I tried to recall the dream. Images of the Polaroid camera and Trace Weston skipped around in my brain. I shook my head at the memory. "It was about Trace. I did something stupid in fifth period today, and I can't seem to get it out of my head." I poked at the chunks of unmixed chocolate powder in my mug. "I'm surprised I forgot to tell you about this earlier."
Jess set his mug down and leaned back on his hands. "I'm glad you saved it. I need a good laugh tonight."
"Well, I took my camera to school today because I needed it for my photography class. We had a pop quiz in the class before, and I finished early. So I took out my camera to make sure it was working."
Jess puffed out his bottom lip. "So far not too stupid."
"Just wait," I moaned. "Trace Weston sits in the row next to me and one seat up in that class."
"Ah, Trace." Jess nodded his head with exaggeration. "So what happened?"
"Well, my camera wouldn't turn on, so I got nervous because we had to have it all ready for my photography class. So I'm pushing all the buttons on my camera, trying to figure out what's wrong." I moved my hands and fingers in a mime as though I had the camera in my hand at that moment. "Next thing I know, the camera is on and I'm accidentally taking a picture! The flash went off and everything!"
"So?" Jess shrugged his shoulders as though asking, What's the big deal?
"The camera was in my lap, but when it flashed it was pointed directly at Trace. The whole class saw it. They were all making jokes about how I'm stalking him and was secretly taking his picture!"
Jess watched me with humored eyes as I reenacted the whole scene. As horrible as it all seemed during fifth period, it was something I could laugh about now. Because even my most humiliating moments seemed funny somehow when I told them to Jess.
Jess was trying to conceal a smile. "Well there was one good thing that came from it."
I looked at him with one eyebrow raised. "Yeah, what's that?"
"You got a picture of the guy you like. Now you can put it in your journal and look at it every night." His eyes were full of humor as he took another sip from his mug. "Isn't that what girls like to do?"
I let my head fall into my hands. "I flipped through my pictures after class to see if I had at least gotten a good shot of him. All I have to show for it is a fuzzy picture of Trace Weston's knee."
Jess pushed himself to standing then turned to help me up as well. "I'm sure you could sell it on eBay. There are probably a thousand girls who would give their allowance for a picture of Trace Weston's knee." Jess laughed softly at his joke, and I could tell he was happier now than when he had come. "Thanks for coming down," he spoke quietly. "I always feel better after we've talked."
"I'm glad that my humiliating experiences lift your spirits," I said playfully. Then I lowered my head and asked, "Are you going to be okay?"
But of course Jess never liked the attention on him so he replied, "The question is, are you going to be okay?" He began walking away from the deck, leaving me standing alone with my arms hugging my waist. His words were fading as he joked, "If you want to stalk somebody you should really learn not to do it in the middle of a full classroom." He waved goodbye with one hand held high above his head as he disappeared at the side of my house. And then he was gone, and I felt cold for the first time since I stepped outside.
Jess really didn't need to walk me to school anymore since I was fourteen and would probably beat someone up before he would. But over the years he became my best friend. I felt proud walking to school with Jess. He was tall and confident, and he looked older than a fifteen-year-old. Sometimes people asked me if he was my boyfriend. Of course he wasn't. Jess didn't date in junior high. Neither did I, but that was because I was terrified of talking to boys (except Jess of course). Jess didn't date because it was one of his rules.
"Rule number three," Jess had announced on a walk home from school last year. He was trying to decipher his hand writing that he had scribbled on a crumpled piece of lined paper during seventh period. The first two rules he had made for himself were: no drinking from the school drinking fountains-which was entirely understandableand never pass gas in public-to which I was particularly grateful. But his third rule was anything but acceptable.
"No dating," he had read aloud with his chin high and a voice full of dignity.
"Ever?" I moaned.
Jess squinted his eyes toward the clouds. "No, not ever. I'll start dating when I'm a junior in high school." He made the addendum to his list with a pen he had fetched from behind his ear.
"Great," I grumbled. "You are going to be a complete loser for the next two years."
Jess shrugged. "I don't care."
And he really didn't.
Jess and I talked a lot. We had a half mile walk to and from school every day to talk about whatever we wanted. When he was walking me to school for the first time, my first question to him was why his parents gave him a girl's name. I knew a girl named Jessica, whose mom called her Jess for short. Jess had said that his name was Kevin Jessop Tyler. It was a name that had been handed down from generation to generation for a gazillion generations. But since his dad's name was Kevin, he went by Jessop. No one ever called him Jessop though, just Jess.
My name is Gemmalynn Judith Mitchell. Like Jess, no one called me by my full first name except for teachers on the first day of class, or my grandmother, who insisted on calling me the full Gemmalynn Judith every time she saw me, along with squeezing what was left of the skin on my cheeks between her cold, leathery fingers.
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But to everyone else and to myself, I was Gemma. I was born in a small town nestled in the center of the Nantahala National Forest in Western North Carolina. Our town is called Franklin, or "The Gem Capital of the World." I'm sure a few hundred years ago that was a pretty cool thing. But these days people just order their gems over the Internet. They don't really care where they come from. But, as an obvious conclusion, that's how I got my name, Gemma.
Jess and I were done discussing the basics, like names and favorite pizza flavors, by the time I was three weeks into kindergarten. So we told each other stories and embarrassing moments, plans for when we grew up and places we wanted to visit someday.
And now, nearly ten years later, he was still holding the door for me as we both made our way into school. Valentine's Day was only a week away, and as we walked through the halls we were bombarded with pink balloons and cutout paper hearts that dangled from the ceiling and walls. Jess was a year older than me in school, so he told me to have a good day as he turned down the ninth grade hall, leaving me to fend for myself through seven torturous periods. Even through the pinkish mess I eventually found my locker-which actually wasn't my locker at all. Since I was eight my family had been taking a yearly vacation to Cape Cod. Every year our timeshare fell on the same week as school registration. Because I registered late I always got the worst pick for my locker location. This year I was assigned to the seventh grade hall. I was in eighth grade and wouldn't be caught dead hanging around a bunch of seventh graders, so luckily, my friend Nina Riley let me share hers. Nina was a genius. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the conversations she had with people were about chemistry, and yet she was somehow graceful and undeniably beautiful at the same time. All the boys liked her, but most of them were too scared to approach her. Clarissa had the locker next to us. She was pretty too, but she tried too hard to look older than she was. She didn't care much about school, but she never missed a day to avoid being behind on any of the gossip.
"I have my first zit!" Clarissa exclaimed as she twisted the lock on her locker. For those of us-me-who were impatiently waiting for any sign of maturation to hit their frail, childish body, I felt anything but bad for her. Clarissa had started her "woman cycles," as my mom disgustingly called them, last year. She was one of the first girls in our grade to "start." I was one of the last girls in our grade to have "not started." I didn't even need a bra. Sometimes I wondered if something was wrong with me. Even though I didn't need a bra, my mom still bought me a little white "training" bra at Kmart a couple months ago. The first day I wore it I had felt like I was walking around all day with bandages across my chest. I had felt like the whole world knew that I was wearing this new piece of underwear with white and pink bows, and they all knew that I was faking it. Clarissa opened her locker and peered into the mini mirror that was hanging from the inside of her locker door.
Nina walked up to the lockers just in time. "Don't pop it, Clarissa! I read in a book once that the puss spreads and makes you break out more." Nina and Clarissa had instantly become best friends on the first day of school. I attributed it to the fact that they both could have passed as tenth graders; Nina for her intelligence and Clarissa for her body shape. I retrieved my history book that I had thrown on the top shelf the day before. I secretly glanced toward Clarissa-who was viewing her face from four different angles-and wondered how it would feel to actually have a need for a mirror in my locker. There wasn't much that I could alter with my boring, brown ponytail and make-up-less complexion. Clarissa batted her eyes in the mirror as I sighed and walked toward my first class. I was ten feet down the hall when Clarissa suddenly realized that a world existed beyond her face.
"Hey, Gemma! Are you going to the Valentine's dance on Friday?" Of course I was going to the dance. It was during school hours, and you needed a note from your parents to be excused. I told her this matter-of-factly before she responded with an annoyingly flirtatious voice, "Are you going to ask Trace Weston to dance?" It had been a huge mistake to tell Clarissa about my crush. She had caught me off guard one day between fourth and fifth period. She had asked me so blatantly who I liked that I didn't know what to do but tell her the truth. I had regretted it ever since.
I scowled at Clarissa. "No! I would never ask him to dance. Just because I kind of like him," not completely accurate, "doesn't mean I want to dance with him!" It was true. Sure, I thought Trace was the most perfect male to walk the face of the planet. And true, I got crazy butterflies in my stomach whenever he was within twenty feet of me. But the thought of talking to him or-even worse-dancing with him made me sick to my stomach.
Nina and Clarissa followed close behind me. "Lemma!" they yelled over the crowded hall. "You have to ask him to dance! You just have to!"
I ignored them and walked faster through the maze of students lining the hall. "Lemma!" they continued. I couldn't separate who was saying what, they sounded so alike. "What do you have to lose? It's Valentine's Day!" I kept walking as I yell-whispered to them over my shoulder that I had everything to lose! Especially my dignity! Then Clarissa said the unexpected. "If you ask Trace Weston," she provided a dramatic pause, "then I'll ask Jess Tyler." My feet came to a screeching halt. I didn't mean to be so dramatic, but her proposition was huge! And unpredictable. Clarissa ask Jess to dance? Was she serious? Clarissa and Nina caught up to me and crunched in so close at my sides that the three of us formed a blockade in the middle of the hall. I stared seriously into Clarissa's overly mature face and whispered in a low, dangerous tone, "You swear?" Clarissa raised one corner of her mouth into a mysterious grin and nodded her head only once. We shook hands and the deal was done.
We agreed to meet at lunch-as if we didn't eat lunch together every day-to discuss our dance plans. First, second, third, and fourth periods crawled on as I anticipated the Valentine's dance discussion. I found myself daydreaming in history class more over Jess and Clarissa than Trace and me. I knew that it was my mission in life to get less and Clarissa together ever since Jess told me on the first day of school that year that he thought she was cute. He would get angry at me when I would bring it up, though, insisting that he had said it to be nice, but he hadn't thought about her since.
I was convinced otherwise.
It made perfect sense in my mind. Jess was old, and Clarissa looked old. I had asked Clarissa once if she liked Jess. She had giggled for about five minutes before exclaiming that he was a ninth grader and she didn't date ninth graders.
"Besides," she had said the first (and last) night that Clarissa and Nina came to my house for a sleepover, "I like Joseph Horton because he wears a leather coat." Clarissa would like someone for something so stupid.
But now she had agreed to ask Jess to dance. It was going to be the dance that would be sure to make Jess the happiest boy in the world.
I reached the long yellow-gold lunch table and straddled the awkward bench. I set down my brown plastic tray that was balancing my wobbly plate of spaghetti and meat sauce, breadstick, and a chocolate milk. I couldn't understand those girls who insisted on just sprinkling cheese over plain noodles as though they were too cool to eat cafeteria meat sauce. I should have reminded them that they were already committing social suicide for ordering cafeteria food in the first place.
Clarissa and Nina were at the table when I arrivedNina with her own plate of spaghetti and Clarissa with her apple. Who did she think she was eating just an apple for lunch? It made me reconsider our dance plans. I wasn't sure that I wanted Jess dancing with a girl with such ridiculous eating habits.
I twirled my first bite of noodles around my fork as Clarissa bombarded me with her internal thoughts. "Okay," she began, "this is going to be the best dance ever! Not only are you going to dance with Trace, but Nina and I have decided that we're going to find out if he likes you!" My mouth was full of noodles and meat sauce, making it impossible for me to respond. I shook my head a hundred miles per hour with my eyes wide open until I had a chance to swallow.
"Absolutel
y not!" I yelled as little pieces of noodle spewed from my mouth. Clarissa seemed satisfied that I was so distraught with the idea.
"Do you want me to ask Jess to dance or not?" she threatened.
"Not!" I yelled back. "Who eats just an apple for lunch anyway?"
Clarissa was obviously stunned by my ease at releasing her from the contract. She waved the apple in front of my face in defense. "I had a huge breakfast! I'm not hungry!"
I sighed and looked around the cafeteria for another group of girls I could try to become friends with. Everyone looked so settled in their "groups." No room for a nerdy, hot lunch-eating eighth grader who didn't even need a bra. Clarissa could have easily blended into another group. She had all the traits of the cool kids; the apple for lunch, and of course the zit. Nina could have probably branched out as well. She was just too comfortable with us.
"You don't have to do a thing!" It was Nina's voice this time, and I was surprised that she was this involved in the planning. I was too stunned to talk, so Nina continued. "We're going to do all the work; we'll talk to him, we'll tell him that you like him, and that if he likes you back he should ask you to dance."
"The last dance!" Clarissa blurted out. She raised her eyebrows and took a big bite out of her apple. I had to think about this. Everyone knew that the last dance was the most important dance. You could dance to every other slow song, but the boy with whom you danced the last dance-was your truest of all true loves. It was like the first kiss. The first kiss and the last dance basically determined your fate for love for the rest of your life. If either one of them was terrible, you could count on a miserable future in romance.
I wasn't sure if I was ready to take that chance. But if I was going to be humiliated, I rationed in my brain, I might as well get something significant out of it.
Clarissa watched my facial expressions as she nibbled at her apple core. "You really have nothing to lose." She chewed loudly as she spoke, "He already knows you like him."
Second Kiss Page 1