New Year's Kiss

by Lee Matthews

  “Sorry.” He raised his hands. “How are my two favorite people? With whom I have gone skiing?”

  “Better,” I replied with a nod. “We’re fine. We’re going to build the coolest gingerbread houses here.”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Felicia over there has mad skills.”

  He nodded across the room toward an old lady with purple hair who was already putting a second story on her house. It looked like it was going to be a high rise.

  “Wow. I cannot compete with that,” Carina said.

  “You don’t have to. You’re a rookie,” I told her, and squirted some icing down the side seam of a corner on my house.

  “We missed you at the party last night,” Damon said to me.

  The party. Right. I had temporarily spaced on that. “Oh, sorry. Turned out I was pretty exhausted after the skiing and the almost-dying.” I threw that last part in for good measure, hoping it would make him back off.

  “Got it,” he said. “Well, we have a second chance, anyway. One of my friends from school is having a party at his house tonight on the other side of town.” Damon leaned his hands on the backs of our chairs and hovered his face between ours. “His parents are away, so it should be pretty epic. Are you two ladies in?”

  “Do you guys have a party every night around here?” I asked, incredulous.

  “It’s holiday break.” He shrugged and smiled. “Besides, what else is the point of working at a ski lodge?”

  I didn’t exactly follow his logic there, but I let it slide.

  “What about when you’re in school?” I asked.

  “What’s school?” he and Carina both said at the same time, perfectly straight-faced.

  “Oooookay,” I said with a laugh, and attached another wall to my house. It was kind of amazing that my type A self had found the two most not-type-A people in the world to hang around with. I looked around for Loretta again, half wishing she were here to rescue me from having to say yes or no to this party. She must have had something planned for me and Lauren tonight, not that I could remember what it was. But there was still no sign of her. The clock over the door read 3:30. I had just over thirty-two hours to complete the last four things on my list. Maybe there would be sushi at this party? There would certainly be guys whose names I didn’t know that I could potentially smooch with, though the very idea gave me the sweats. I considered Damon. We’d already kissed once. Maybe I could just get it over with, with him.

  How very romantic.

  Although, there was one other thing.

  “How close are you with this guy throwing the party?” I asked.

  He stood up straight and crossed his arms over his chest, making his biceps flex attractively, I couldn’t help noticing.

  “Pretty close,” he said. “I’ve known him since kindergarten. He once helped me get a marble out of my nostril. After he’d shoved it up there, naturally.”

  Carina and I locked eyes again and laughed. “Charming,” Carina said.

  “Random question: Is he the type of person who would mind if we TP’ed his house?”

  Damon laughed. “Mind? He’d probably love it. Dude, he’d probably help.”

  Carina eyed me curiously. “TP his—”

  I gave her a pointed look, and her eyes lit up. “Oh…right! Brilliant!”

  “Why do I have a feeling you two are leaving me out of something here?” Damon said.

  “Because we are,” Carina told him.

  “Text me the address and time,” I said. “And I’ll be there.”

  “Me too,” Carina said. “Sounds like fun.”

  “Perfection!” Damon said with a grin. He took out his phone and texted the details right then and there. “See you tonight.”

  He moseyed away, still tapping on his phone.

  “I kind of love that he didn’t even ask me why I wanted to TP his friend’s house.”

  “Hey, I have a question. Why do you want to TP his friend’s house?” Carina asked flatly. She had taken a handful of M&Ms and was popping them into her mouth one by one. She and my dad would have definitely hit it off. “Why is that an item on this all-important list? No, actually, I don’t want to know. What I do want to know is why you started this list in the first place. Why call it a bucket list?”

  I took a breath and put down the piping bag. Carina had already helped me cross off two of the biggest items on my list, so really, she was already a part of this. Plus, if I wanted to finish it off before tomorrow night, I could use her help. If she was up for it.

  “You know how some people make new year’s resolutions?” I began.

  “Ugh, I hate that tradition. If you want to change something about your life, just change it. Why do you have to wait for an arbitrary holiday to do it?”

  I smiled. “Exactly.”

  And then I told her the whole story.

  * * *

  • • •

  Damon’s buddy, Chase, lived on a quiet street on a hill, a small house on a large piece of property with trees dotting the front yard. Mature trees, my mother would have called them. Which made the place perfect for toilet paper. Lauren, Carina, and I had bought a few packages on our way over, making our Uber driver stop at the little drugstore in town. But Damon had gone all out. He’d shown up with a trunk full of discount toilet paper and a half dozen friends who were super excited for the task. So while some people were inside doing the normal party stuff, and others were hanging out on the front porch watching, Carina, Damon, and I, along with his rando friends, were going to town with the TP.

  “This is completely ridiculous,” Carina said, pulling her arm back with a full roll of toilet paper in her hand. “And I love it!”

  “I don’t know why I haven’t been doing this my entire life!” I shouted, tossing streamers over low-hanging branches all around me. I held a long string of paper above my head, executed a very ungraceful spin move, and flung it. It fluttered and floated and landed on top of the mailbox. Inside the house, music pumped and somebody screeched, then laughed. Clearly the party was as fun on the inside as it was on the outside.

  “Probably because you’d get arrested.” Lauren, who was sitting on the front porch under several blankets and sipping from a red Solo cup, kept offering sarcastic commentary. She had chosen not to participate, and instead to film the entire thing on her phone. Tarek had to work tonight, so she was flying solo, which had made her a bit more subdued. She leaned over toward the girl sitting next to her and explained, “We live in a very lame suburban town.”

  “Well, they’d arrest you here, too,” Damon offered from above, “if we didn’t have the homeowner’s permission.”

  I looked up into the high branches of the biggest oak tree on the lawn. Damon had strapped an entire twenty-four-pack of two-ply onto his back and was now sitting up there, looking quite comfortable, TP-ing the tree from the inside out.

  “I like your technique,” I told him.

  “Thank you. I thought it was rather genius myself.” He smiled and tossed another roll toward the ground. “Plus I like the view from up here. I can see all the stars.”

  I tipped my head back even farther. It was a gorgeous, clear night and the deep purple of the night sky was completely blanketed in pinpricks of light. You could never see stars like this where I was from. Chalk up a point in the “pro” column for Vermont.

  “Do we have the homeowner’s permission?” Carina asked, stepping out from behind the tree’s trunk. “Because if I get arrested, my father will murder me. Or maybe buy me a puppy.” She looked me in the eye. “He has a rather unpredictable parenting style.”

  I laughed, making a huge cloud of steam with my breath, and flung more toilet paper.

  Damon lifted his shoulders. “Well, technically the homeowners are away, but we have their son’s permission.”

&
nbsp; Carina and I exchanged a look. “Good enough for me,” I said, and she giggled.

  “Let’s go deal with that little shrub over there,” she suggested, pointing. “It looks lonely and bare.”

  “I’m in.”

  We tromped across the front lawn, the frost-covered grass crunching under our boots. There had been no natural snow in these parts for days—all the snow on the ski trails was manmade—but it was plenty cold. I had my hat pulled down all the way over my ears and forehead, and my fingers were frigid even inside my gloves. I wasn’t going to last out here much longer.

  “You take that side and I’ll take this side,” Carina suggested.

  I complied, and then we launched our toilet paper, but the shrub was so small, Carina’s roll hit me dead in the face.

  “Oops! Sorry!” she said, cracking up.

  I picked up the roll. “No problem!” I said, and launched it right back at her. It pinged off her shoulder and went flying, and then I was suddenly embroiled in an epic toilet paper fight. I ran to gather more rolls, Carina enlisted backup, and before long a couple of guys had joined her team and I found myself wrapped up like a toilet paper mummy and begging for a truce.

  “Okay, okay. Let her go, men,” Carina said, waving off the pair of Damon’s friends who had joined her team. I busted out of the toilet paper wrap rather easily, and we stood back toward the street to check out our handiwork.

  “Not bad,” I said, taking off the gloves so I could blow warm air into my hands.

  “This is basically the most normal thing I’ve ever done for fun,” Carina told me. “Well, this and the gingerbread house making.”

  “Wait, seriously?” I said. “Why? What do you normally do for fun?”

  “I don’t know…I travel a lot, so whatever’s going on where I am. I played roller hockey basketball a couple of weeks ago, if you can imagine that. And I had a hot pepper–eating contest with a WWE wrestler. Oh, and for my birthday we went to Bali, and my best friend and I got matching butt tattoos.”

  Okay. I was basically the lamest person ever. Here I was, trying to get outside my comfort zone and do something crazy, and my crazy thing was the tamest thing Carina had ever done. I mean, butt tattoos? Seriously?

  “I know what you’re thinking, and yes, I totally regret the tattoo.”

  “Not at all what I was thinking,” I said, my insides burning with thinly veiled humiliation. God, she must have thought I was such a loser. I looked around at the entirely toilet-papered front yard, of which I’d been so proud just moments ago, and kind of wanted to set fire to the whole thing.

  Then, Carina put her arm around me and squeezed. “Thank you, Tess.”

  “For what?” I asked, baffled.

  “I’ve always wanted a normal-kid existence.” She smiled at me wistfully. “This has honestly been more fun than any of that other stuff. And I wouldn’t have done any of it without you.”

  My heart flipped and I smiled, mood changed on a dime. “You’re welcome,” I said. And my chest swelled a bit. My list had gone beyond me to make Carina’s life a little better, too. Just like, for a hot minute, it had made Christopher’s life a little better.

  I tugged out my phone to check for messages. I hadn’t even thought about Christopher since we’d been here, but he would have really loved this one. Still nothing from him, though, and my spirits sunk.

  But I wouldn’t let them sink entirely.

  “Come on. Let’s take a picture of this.”

  “Abso-freaking-lutely!” Carina said.

  She leaned in as I angled a selfie so that we could get the big tree in the background, and I captured the shot. Just like earlier, I fired it off to Christopher with a text:

  #6 Complete! Still wish you were here!

  • • •

  TESS’S NEW YEAR’S BUCKET LIST

  Make a paper airplane that actually flies (20 seconds at least) ✓

  Sing in public ✓

  Strike up a conversation with a stranger ✓

  Wear high heels outside the house ✓

  Make out with a guy whose last name I don’t know (???)

  TP someone’s house ✓

  Get Adam Michel’s autograph ✓

  Get a short, stylish haircut

  Ski a black diamond slope ✓

  Eat sushi

  * * *

  • • •

  An hour later I was dancing. With Damon and Chase and two of their other friends whose names I couldn’t remember. Lauren was schooling some guy in a basketball game on the Xbox, and Carina was nowhere to be seen, but I was pretty sure she was in the kitchen showing people how to make her famous microwave tacos.

  Damon slipped his arms around my waist and pulled me in close so that our bodies felt like one connected thing. I blushed and tried to pull away, but he held me tighter, and I felt the need to look up. To see if I could figure out exactly what he was thinking. But when I looked up, his eyes were closed, his head tipped back as he danced.

  Miraculously, I still didn’t know his last name. I could just kiss him. Right here, right now. I could kiss him and cross #5 off my list. It was looming closer and closer to midnight with every passing second. Soon I’d have only twenty-four hours to finish my list. This might be my last chance.

  I was just about to grab his neck and pull him toward me when a bright white light hit me dead in the eyes, blinding me to everything. A scream pealed out from very nearby, and then someone pounded on the door. Three hard, serious knocks.

  “This is the police! We’re shutting this party down!”

  And then, all hell broke loose.

  Suddenly I was on the floor. And it wasn’t until I looked up and saw Damon running for the back door that I realized he’d shoved me. On my shoulders I could feel where his hands had pushed me away from him. Then, someone stepped on my fingers, and I shouted. People were careening everywhere. My sister threw the Xbox controller onto the hardwood floor, where it shattered in ten pieces.

  “Tess!? Where are you?”

  “Down here!” I shouted, waving my injured hand.

  She lunged for me as everyone else scattered.

  “Are you okay?” Lauren asked, dragging me up.

  “Yes. No. I don’t—Damon threw me on the freaking floor!”

  “I know! I saw him. Jackass. I hope you didn’t hook up with him,” Lauren said, pulling me toward the back door.

  Really? That’s what she was thinking about right now?

  “Open the door or we’re busting it down!” someone yelled.

  But then, impossibly, they were inside. Two cops streamed in from the back entry, shining their flashlights in everyone’s faces. Lauren took a quick turn and dragged me toward the staircase, where I saw Carina standing, frozen like one of the ice sculptures back at the lodge.

  “Come on!” Lauren cried, trying to pull me upstairs.

  “What? Why? What good is that gonna do?” I demanded. “Are we going to jump out a second-story window?”

  And then a hand came down on my shoulder. I was turned roughly around, and a cop with a skinny moustache held his phone up next to my face. “Yep. This is her.”

  What? What were they talking about? Her who?

  “I’ve got one of the other ones,” another guy said, hand clasped around Carina’s arm.

  “I’d let go if I were you,” she said. “I have a very famous father, and he has two dozen lawyers on emergency retainer.”

  “Yeah. Right, kid,” the cop said with a smirk. “Let’s go. Outside.”

  They half shoved, half dragged us out the front door. Lauren made a desperate sound, and I knew she was trying to decide between running with the rest of the party and following us to make sure I was okay. As much as I wanted her by my
side, I kind of wanted her to run. She didn’t need to get in trouble, and if she left, she could get Loretta.

  God, Loretta. The last time I’d seen her, she’d called me a child to my face, and now I’d gone and proven her right. She was going to lose her mind when she found out about this. But what even was this? There were dozens of kids at the party, and I hadn’t even drunk anything. Why were they zeroing in on me and Carina?

  Then, we made it to the porch, and I knew. The other cops had corralled Damon and two of the friends who had helped us in our toilet paper mission. Even now, the front yard looked sort of beautiful, all that white paper fluttering gracefully in the breeze under a blanket of twinkling stars. Though the flashing red and blue lights of the three police cars did muck it up a bit. The cops forced us down onto the porch steps next to the other perpetrators. I couldn’t even look at Damon. My ribs still hurt from where I’d hit the floor when he’d pushed me.

  “Are these the kids who toilet-papered this property and yours?” one of the cops asked.

  My brow scrunched, confused. Then a wizened old man stepped out from behind the line of blue-clad officers. He looked us over one by one and then nodded. “Yep. I caught it all on video, as you’ve seen.”

  “Wait, we didn’t do anything to his property,” Damon said, earning a shhhhh and a kick from the friend on his other side. “What? We didn’t! We only TP’ed Chase’s house, and he said it was okay.”

  “Well, young man, I happen to know that the Hansens are in Florida right now, so I don’t see how you could have gotten their permission to do this to their property,” the old man said, hitching up his pants with both hands.

  “Oh, I don’t know, cell phone? Text? Email?” Damon said. “What year are you living in?”

  “Would you shut up?” Lauren spat from behind us.

  “You should probably listen to your friends, there, kid,” Skinny Moustache said.