How to Keep a Boy from Kissing You

by Tara Eglington

  ‘You’re leaving?’ I gasped.

  As if in answer, a taxi pulled up at the end of the drive.

  ‘Aurora, it’s Sony. I have to be there.’ Dad pushed a bag of Crispy Treats, Snookums’s favourite, into my hand. ‘Give this a shake when you call out for him. He’ll come home soon. I’m sorry.’ His voice was distracted.

  ‘But …’

  My voice faded as I watched him race away from me. Once again, I was completely invisible to a parent. I tore after him, panic rising in my chest.

  ‘No! You can’t leave me here alone.’ I clung to his jacket sleeve like a toddler being dropped at daycare.

  Dad twisted away from me. ‘Aurora, I’ve got to go!’

  ‘I can’t believe you’re doing this,’ I babbled, stumbling as I tried to keep up with him. The sky was dark with the approaching storm.

  ‘Aurora, stop being unreasonable!’ Dad yelled.

  I stared at him. Something deep inside me quivered.

  ‘I’ll be back tomorrow night,’ he called through the taxi’s window. Lightning flashed behind him.

  ‘Just go!’ I screamed.

  I saw his face drop as the taxi pulled away.

  The sky opened up — a deluge of water that slammed through my clothes and drummed at my skin. But I didn’t care. I ran up and down the deserted street, calling Snookums’s name and listening with all my might for the meow that would make everything alright again.

  I desperately shook the box of Crispy Treats, which had become a soft, soggy cardboard mess. ‘Here, puss!’

  Silence.

  My voice broke. ‘Snookums! Come back, please!’

  I stumbled through a vacant lot, the long grass a blur through the tears that burned my eyes. I was trying desperately to hold back the flood that threatened to overwhelm me.

  ‘Snookums!’

  I tripped and fell, my palms slamming into the muddy ground. Half a dozen Crispy Treats tumbled out of the carton onto the grass.

  ‘Aurora, wait!’ There was a loud shout from behind me.

  As I stumbled to my feet, I saw who was calling. And finally the tears came.

  Hayden’s eyes were heavy with concern. ‘Aurora, what are you doing out here in this storm?’

  I just cried harder. And then Hayden was pulling me to him, drawing me into his arms, sheltering me under the white umbrella he carried.

  ‘Snookums has gone,’ I sobbed. ‘Snookums has gone and it’s my fault. If I’d been home today, then he wouldn’t have annoyed Ms DeForest and she wouldn’t have let him out. But I wasn’t. I was off trying to please my mum yet again, and I couldn’t, and I’m so sorry, Hayden, I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Sorry?’ Hayden pulled slightly away from me and looked at me intently. ‘For what?’

  ‘The day before she left.’ The words rushed out of me. ‘The day before Mum left, you invited me over to your place to go swimming. Remember, how the pool was finally finished? I was just heading out the door when Mum’s car pulled up. I was surprised because she never came home early. She said she wanted to spend the afternoon with me, but I wanted to go over and see you, so I said no. And she looked at me with these disappointed eyes — I’d never seen her look like that before. And then the next day she was gone! And I thought … I thought that it was my fault, that maybe if I’d spent that afternoon with her she might not have left. And every time I saw you after that, I was so angry at myself. And so I dropped you!’ I sobbed. ‘I dropped my best friend and acted like I hated you! Just so I could cope! I’m so sorry!’

  ‘Hey …’ Hayden gently pulled me into his arms again. ‘You don’t have to be sorry at all. I knew how much of a hard time you were going through.’

  ‘I’m so sorry!’ I whispered into his tear-stained blue shirt. Even though he said it was okay, I needed to repeat the words. ‘For the other day as well, for what you heard — I’ve wanted to explain it to you since Monday. And … and I can’t stop crying for some reason … I’ve drenched your shirt.’

  ‘Shhh,’ Hayden soothed, stroking my back. ‘You cry as long as you like, okay?’

  I clung to him, the steady rise and fall of his chest guiding my own shaky breaths, his heartbeat reminding mine to keep time. I was not alone. The rain thundered down on our umbrella, but Hayden’s arms were a stronghold.

  After what seemed like a century, I pulled away and looked up at him. ‘I have to keep looking,’ I said softly, wiping my eyes. ‘Snookums is out there in this storm. I have to find him.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ Hayden assured me. ‘Let me go grab a torch. It’s going to be pitch black any moment.’

  In Hayden’s arms, I’d been oblivious to the creeping shadows all around us.

  ‘Wait here.’ Hayden handed me the umbrella. Before I could stop him, he’d dashed out into the downpour.

  I stood under the umbrella, feeling oddly numb, listening to the happy croaks of the neighbourhood frogs, until Hayden raced back to me.

  ‘Alright.’ He switched on the heavy-looking torch. ‘Let’s start the search.’

  And search we did. Under hedges and parked cars, in people’s frontyards, along bike trails, up trees. As it grew later and later, I felt myself panicking. What if I never saw Snookums again? What if my furry family member, the one who had seen me through endless trials and tribulations, was gone forever?

  ‘We’re going to find him.’ Hayden answered my unspoken fear.

  ‘What if it’s too late?’ I whispered, looking fiercely at the ground so I wouldn’t cry again. ‘He doesn’t know how to take care of himself out here in the wild.’ I gasped as a new thought hit me. ‘What if he becomes a victim of the fur trade? I saw this program on SBS about it. Neighbourhood cats poached under their owners’ very eyes.’ I felt like I was going to be sick.

  ‘Aurora.’ Hayden took my hand, and I looked up. ‘We’re going to find him. I promise you that.’

  I stared into his earnest eyes, at the droplets of rain glistening in his hair, and I believed him. Hayden would search with me for as long as it took. He squeezed my hand and a realisation hit me like a thunderbolt. I was free to love him. There was no secret admirer any more. I was free to hand him my heart.

  And wait for his reply.

  Suddenly I started shaking. My responsibility to my secret admirer might have fallen away, but I was terrified. What if Hayden did feel the way my soul ached for him to feel, and I let him in and he ended up hurting me? Turned away, like my mother had? He would become yet another scar on my heart; another warning to slam the door, turn the key and live out my days in solitary confinement.

  ‘Hey, you’re trembling,’ Hayden said softly. ‘I think I should get you home.’

  ‘No, I’m fine.’ The concern in his eyes made me shake even more.

  Hayden began guiding me home. ‘You’ve been drenched for two and a half hours.’

  ‘But Snookums …’ He was counting on me to come through for him. I just had to get a grip on myself.

  ‘It’s going to be really difficult to find him tonight,’ Hayden said. ‘He’s probably hidden somewhere to get out of the rain. I think we’ll have more of a chance once the storm clears. We can start looking again at dawn.’

  ‘But —’

  ‘And that will give me a chance to create some “Missing” posters to put up,’ Hayden continued as he gently steered me up the driveway. ‘It’ll increase the odds of finding him.’

  I knew he was right.

  ‘You go take a hot shower straight away,’ Hayden said as I unlocked my front door. ‘I’ll make you some tea.’

  I stood in the shower, feeling the hot water sink into my skin, wishing the warmth could permeate my insides. I got out, got dressed, and numbly tried Jelena’s number. Still no answer.

  ‘Feeling better?’ Hayden asked when I joined him in the kitchen.

  I nodded absently as I watched him pour water from the kettle into a mug. He carefully spooned two teaspoons of honey into my herbal tea. How had he remembered that after
all these years?

  ‘I should get started on the posters as soon as possible,’ he said.

  ‘I could help you.’

  He shook his head. ‘You look exhausted.’ He handed me my drink.

  ‘But I need to do something.’

  I needed a distraction or else I’d go mad imagining Snookums in various dangerous scenarios.

  ‘Why don’t you find a photo of Snookums for the posters?’ Hayden suggested.

  He left the room and returned with several bound albums. Our family photos. I hadn’t looked at them in years.

  ‘Wait a minute.’ I ran upstairs and grabbed a copy of the shot of Snookums in a Santa hat. ‘This one’s nice and clear.’

  ‘I’ll head home and do the posters straight away.’ Hayden squeezed my shoulders. ‘Don’t get up. I’ll see myself out.’

  ‘Will you help me look tomorrow morning?’ I asked.

  I knew he would, but I needed to hear him say yes. I needed the certainty.

  ‘I’ll see you at 6.30 am,’ he called back as he headed for the front door. ‘Goodnight, Princess.’

  His voice was so full of reassurance that I felt like crying again.

  I sat at the kitchen table, staring at the family albums in front of me. Before I knew what I was doing, I reached for them.

  Here was my family history — laid out on the pages of these rust-brown albums. A run-through of the past sixteen years. Photos of Mum and Dad with radiant faces and eyes that were full of love for one another. Studio photographs of me as a baby, carefully posed. The three of us on a holiday at the beach. Me in my mother’s high heels, playing dress-ups. Hayden and I grinning at the camera. Snookums as a kitten. Then my parents’ smiles, so loving only pages before, became forced-looking. There were pictures of my mother’s many dinner parties, with a tense-looking Dad sitting at the head of a table that had long since disappeared. Shots from a holiday in Tahiti, which Mum and Dad had taken alone. I’d stayed with the Parises. I remembered the strained look on my parents’ faces when they’d returned two days early to pick me up. I hadn’t understood — wasn’t Tahiti supposed to be relaxing?

  Then the shots stopped and the record got messed up. The person who’d taken charge of the camera had left the picture. The camera lay in a drawer, unused, because Dad and I didn’t want any reminders of how we felt then — like zombies, going through the motions of living with dead eyes and locked hearts.

  A year later, when time had somehow started again, there were photos of my thirteenth birthday. The NAD had gone all out with a party at a rollerskating rink, and I stood amongst a huge group of grinning girls, all long-legged and gangly. No Hayden in the photo. He’d left a present on the doorstep, but I’d hidden it away in a drawer, unable to bear the reminder of our friendship.

  Mum had forgotten my birthday that year.

  I slammed the album shut. But the camera in my mind, which recorded and stored everything so carefully, was streaming images frenetically.

  Me gazing up at my mother in awe when she was all dressed up to go out — this beautiful, mysterious mother, who looked so happy as she headed downstairs, wearing her wide smile, not the tight one she wore on weekends.

  Me waiting by the school gate long after everyone else had left, making up stories for myself so I wouldn’t count every car that went by that wasn’t hers.

  Me making a Mother’s Day cake at the Parises’ house. Mrs Paris had shown me how to crack eggs without getting any shell in the bowl, and Hayden had measured out the cocoa powder just so. When the cake was cooked, we’d squeezed the icing bag together, making swirls and hearts. Mum had given me a kiss when I’d surprised her with the cake, but she didn’t eat any of it because chocolate was fattening.

  Me listening to her sighs when I was at home on school holidays and Hayden wasn’t there to play with me. She’d announce that we were ‘going visiting’, which meant sitting patiently on other people’s couches, then getting bored and wandering round an unfamiliar house, hoping to find a bookshelf so I could escape into a new world. Feeling angry about how long the visits took, but also feeling guilty because you weren’t meant to get angry at your mother, were you? You were meant to love her. And she loved you back.

  Me sitting in my room, trying to do my homework while I listened to Dad and Mum fight. Holding my breath each time one of them slammed the front door and drove away, yelling that they were going to leave.

  And then one day, Mum had.

  I opened the album back up, at the empty pages, and photos from my mind filled them. The NAD presenting me with a key so I could let myself into the house after school. Getting home one day and realising that I’d left the key inside on the kitchen table. Panic coming over me, and beating at the door until my fists were red and I realised that I had to be my own mother now. Going to the library to get books that taught me how to cook, how to take care of things in the house, how to cope with growing up. I became the girl with the answers to everything, the girl who was confident and didn’t cry. Only it hadn’t worked, because here I was, sitting at a cold marble table, feeling lost and scared.

  Why didn’t my mother want to know me, even though I did everything I could to be agreeable, likable, lovable? Why had my father dashed out on me this afternoon? Was my whole family destined to leave me? Even Snookums?

  The tears came again. I cried for all the times I’d called out for my mother and she hadn’t come; for all the times I’d tried my best to make her love me, but couldn’t. I cried for all the things she didn’t know about me and didn’t want to know, and the ache I felt inside when I looked at her. For how pathetic it made me feel to want to be loved so badly.

  I cried for the twelve-year-old girl who’d believed that her mother’s sudden disappearance was her fault. I cried for my father, and how his life had changed. I cried for the way I’d treated Hayden, for the hurt I must have caused him, for the lost years of friendship. For the new way I felt about him and the terror that had me crippled and unable to risk telling him I loved him. I cried for Snookums, who was out in the storm, and the possibility that I might never see him again. I cried for the news I had to tell Jelena that would make her cry, and the way it would make her more cautious about giving her heart away. I cried until I couldn’t see, until I was exhausted, until four years of feeling had drained from me.

  What was the way out of this? How did I lift the heaviness from my heart to try to forgive my mother, to make peace with the past, as impossible as it seemed? How could I learn to look forward, to let myself experience love, affection?

  The thoughts spun round and round in my head as the night went on and the rain spilt down outside. Finally, I lay my head down on the cool marble of the table, overwhelmed.

  And then I heard a pounding noise. I lifted my head off the table and realised from the faint light in the kitchen that the night had ended and the pounding was someone at the door.

  The kitchen clock read 6.57 am. Hayden hadn’t come!

  The banging at the door came again. Was it him? Why was he so late? I rushed down the hall, feeling hurt that he’d broken his promise.

  I pulled open the door. ‘Oh!’ I gasped.

  There on the doorstep was an exhausted-looking Hayden, with a wet, bedraggled Snookums in his arms.

  He’d found Snookums! He’d found him just like he’d promised.

  I threw my arms around the both of them, laughing and crying as Hayden grinned at me and Snookums yowled in protest at being squashed between the two of us.

  ‘But how?’ I asked, staring at Hayden.

  I could hardly believe that Snookums was right here with us, that last night’s storm had vanished and the sky was a heavenly blue. I felt like a new person.

  ‘I kept looking,’ Hayden said as I rained kisses down on Snookums’s damp head.

  ‘But you went home.’

  ‘I only said that so you wouldn’t insist on coming with me. You looked so exhausted. Finally, at 6.30 am, I found Snookums in the park, scari
ng some geese.’

  ‘You rescued him!’ I cried, thinking of the hours he must have spent out in the rain. ‘You stayed up the whole night — why?’

  ‘Because I wanted to see you smile again,’ Hayden said softly.

  And I did smile as the three of us stood in that embrace in the early morning light, listening to the sound of the birds, feeling the cool breeze tickle our skin.

  It was a new day.

  CHAPTER 31

  Rumours

  When I’d said as many thank yous as humanly possible, Hayden raced home to shower and have breakfast, while I bathed and blow-dried a protesting Snookums. He settled down happily once I filled his food bowl and gave him a pat.

  I made it to school five minutes before the bell rang. As I walked in the school gate, a hush fell amongst the groups in the courtyard and heads began turning my way.

  What was going on? Was it still the Facebook thing? I’d have thought that everyone was over it by now, but maybe not. Whatever it was, I couldn’t worry about it. I had to find Jelena. I had to let her know what had gone down on the weekend.

  There she was, standing with her back to me over by the fountain. As I walked over to her, I felt even more heads turning my way. I suddenly had a very bad feeling.

  ‘Jelena …’ I began.

  She turned around, her eyes fierce. ‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

  She knew. Somehow she’d heard about what had happened.

  ‘Please, Jelena, just let me explain —’

  ‘Explain what?’ she interrupted. ‘How you ruthlessly set out to steal my boyfriend?’

  The crowd let out an outraged ‘Ooh’.

  ‘I had no idea he felt that way about me!’ She couldn’t think I’d intentionally gone after Alex! ‘Please, Jelena, if we could just talk about this privately —’

  She let out a laugh. ‘You want to talk privately with me when the whole school knows about your off-the-Richter-scale kiss with him yesterday?’

  ‘My what?!’

  ‘Oh, don’t play innocent, Aurora,’ Jelena snapped. ‘How do you think I felt coming home last night to find dozens of messages about my boyfriend and my best friend kissing on her driveway?’