by Gina Ciocca
Candy stood in the Kensings’ kitchen, her hand pressed against the glass. My eyes met hers, and I knew she’d seen exactly what I’d seen. The look on her face, though, told me she’d seen something else, something far worse.
She’d seen the look on my face when it happened.
Eight
Connecticut
Winter, Freshman Year
David and I weren’t the only ones to become fast friends after he and his father moved into our neighborhood. My parents loved his dad, and whenever David stayed for dinner, my mother always invited Mr. Kerrigan, too. They fit into our lives like they’d been there all along. So naturally they were both invited the night my mother cooked up a storm for my fifteenth birthday.
I looked around the table, feeling happy and glowy at having all my favorite people gathered in my honor: my parents, David and his dad, Aunt Tess and Uncle Tommy. And Miranda, of course.
My mother had asked me a hundred times if I’d wanted a party, but I hadn’t. I knew my parents were still struggling financially, and the last thing I wanted was to put another burden on them. I also didn’t want to admit that most of my girlfriends had followed in Maddie’s footsteps and boarded the Sloppy Ho train, deciding school was little more than their personal runway. Or maybe they’d always been like that and I hadn’t noticed. Either way, we’d drifted, and it didn’t make sense for me to sponsor the next occasion where they’d break their backs trying to outdress and outmakeup each other.
Nope. I just wanted the people who cared about me the most, and whom I cared about the most, sitting at one table. And that’s exactly what I got.
Halfway through dinner my dad stood up and cleared his throat. “Amanda and I have an announcement we’d like to share with all of you.” He put his arm around my mother, who’d stood up too.
Miranda’s fork clattered to her plate. “Oh my God, are you having a baby?”
“No!” my mother cried.
The whole table laughed and Dad shook his head. “No, no babies, sweetie. But it’s something almost as exciting.” He stopped to kiss Mom’s temple. “After a very long, very trying couple of years, this morning I signed a contract for my very first book deal.”
An explosion of screams and cheers immediately filled the dining room. My mother teared up on cue. Within seconds we were all out of our seats, piling hugs and handshakes and back slaps on my father, and the intensity of my happiness could have burned a hole through the floor.
“Daddy, how did this happen?” I asked when we’d all taken our seats again. “You never even told us someone was interested!”
“I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. We’ve been down that road before, and this time I wanted to know it was real.” His grin widened and he winked at me. “Happy birthday, Kelsey.”
He looked at me with a mixture of such pride, such love, that I almost wanted to cry. I couldn’t have asked for a better birthday present.
As if he’d read my mind, David leaned over and whispered, “My gift seems pretty lame right about now.”
My head whipped toward him. “What? You weren’t supposed to get me anything!”
David shrugged and motioned to his father. “It’s from both of us.” He smiled, clearly proud that he’d found a loophole. “Come upstairs. I put it in your room.”
We excused ourselves from the table, and I followed him up the short flight of stairs. The upper level of our house had three bedrooms and one bathroom clustered off a tiny hallway at the top. Once we’d reached the landing, he pulled me in front of him and covered my eyes with his hand.
“For real?” I said.
“Yes, for real.” I heard the light switch flip up and shuffled into the room, afraid I’d trip over my own feet even with David guiding me.
“Okay, look.”
I blinked as his hand lifted from my eyes and my bed came into focus. Then I gasped. And then I burst into laughter. On top of my quilt sat a beige-colored stuffed cat wearing a red and blue cheerleading uniform. The red bow perched atop her right ear matched the outline of the white letter A printed on her shirt. A card with my name scrawled in David’s handwriting stood propped up against it.
“Oh my God!” I threw myself on the bed and hugged the cat to my chest. “Did you get this because—”
“You hung a picture of the Grand Canyon by your bed right after I saw you take two hundred flyers from the guidance office about the University of Arizona?” He laughed. “Yeah.”
I eyed the postcard I’d taped up next to my headboard, a gorgeous photo of a sunset casting rainbow-colored shadows over the cavernous walls of the canyon. Uncle Tommy had sent it from one of his many vacations. He’d written:
It’s a beautiful world, beautiful girl. Can’t wait for you to get out and see it.
I’d promptly grabbed some tape and hung it up. My fascination had been growing since.
“They weren’t all for the University of Arizona.”
“A lot of them were. And the ones that weren’t were all schools on the other side of the country.” He grabbed a pillow from my bed and propped it between his head and the leg of my dresser, sprawling out on the floor. “What’s up with that?”
I picked at the bow in the cat’s hair—Wilma the Wildcat, the mascot for the University of Arizona. I knew I had plenty of time before I needed to seriously consider college, but I’d been thinking about it a lot over the past few months. Obsessively. “I’ve never left the East Coast. Do you know how small Connecticut is in relation to the rest of the United States? Like a crumb of apple compared to an entire pie.”
“Apples don’t make crumbs.”
I faked like I was going to throw the cat at him and smiled when his arm shot out with baseball-player instinct. “You know what I mean. I figure if I’m ever going to get out of here, college is my chance. Arizona has a great journalism program, it’s close to California—which I’ve always wanted to see. I think I’d really like it there.”
“You say that now, but Arizona is far. Don’t you think you’ll be homesick?”
I shrugged. “I wouldn’t miss this place. I’d miss my family.” A flash of blond hair and blue polka dots in the corner of my eye betrayed Miranda lurking outside my door. “Except my nosy sister.”
“Hey!” came the indignant cry from the hallway.
“Go back downstairs!”
So what did she do? Came in the room, sat next to me, and stuck her hand out, of course. “I helped get her in here; you can at least let me hold her.” I handed over the cat and she stroked its head.
“So, Miranda,” David said. “What do you think of your dad’s news?”
“I think it rocks. I hope everyone on the planet buys Daddy’s book and he gets famous and we become rich, rich, rich!”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up. Daddy’s told us a hundred times that getting published doesn’t mean getting rich.”
David bobbed his head from side to side, his face contemplative. “You never know. It could happen. Especially if it’s a bestseller and they decide to make a movie out of it.”
“Could I be in it?” Miranda squealed.
“Don’t give her any ideas,” I warned.
But David didn’t have it in him to frost her cookies. “If it were my movie, I’d let you be in it, Miranda.” That was all it took to set my sister beaming. I swear if she worshipped him any harder, she would’ve broken something.
I shot David an admonishing look. “There’s not going to be a movie. Although I wouldn’t complain if the book were a little successful. Like, successful enough to buy a house near Uncle Tommy’s cabin.”
David pretended to be aghast. “What happened to waiting for college? You’d leave me high and dry like that? Just take off with Wilma and ditch me for Newport?”
“You? No. Norwood? In a heartbeat.”
“Wh
at? But Norwood has so much to offer! There’s restaurants and stuff to do on every corner. Oh, wait—no, there’s not. But wait, we’re right on the water. Oops, that’s Newport too. I know—no one has a Weed-’n’-Feed supply store on every other street like we do. Try to find that in Newport.”
“See,” I said through snickers, “you’ve only been here six months and you already have a firm grasp on the lameness.”
He shrugged. “Portman Falls wasn’t much better.”
“Miranda!” my mother called from the bottom of the stairs. “Leave your sister alone. Come help me with the cake.”
Miranda scowled, but dropped Wilma in my lap and stalked off to help my mother. Only then did I notice something peeking out from beneath Wilma’s skirt, and I peered closer at her stubby thigh.
“Um, why is there a Band-Aid on her leg?”
David didn’t bother keeping a straight face. “She had a bruise the size of Texas.”
Laughter bounced off my bedroom walls as I hurled the cat at his face. “Ass!”
He threw her back, and I sank into my pillow, stroking the soft fur, allowing myself a momentary lapse into fantasies of my father’s roaring success.
“You’re thinking about it, aren’t you?” David said. “About your dad’s book.”
I flushed guiltily. “It would be nice.”
“Would you really leave?”
“If my parents went, I wouldn’t have a choice. But it’s not going to happen.”
“It could happen.”
“It won’t. Besides, it’s more fun when you’re there with me. You’d have to come too.”
David smiled. “That’s definitely not happening.”
I smiled back. “Anything is possible.”
Nine
Rhode Island
Senior Year
Candy’s shoulders rose and fell rhythmically as I tucked my comforter around her and Wilma, whom she’d fallen asleep clutching the night before. She’d come home with me after Violet’s party, where I’d left Crowley to babysit Ryan.
Lucky for Matt, Ryan wasn’t a puker when he drank. But Candy? Yeah. I wound up holding her hair somewhere around two in the morning.
Before I could tiptoe away from the bed, one of her eyes cracked open. “I’ve made fun of this cat eleventy billion times and you never told me she was the product of some torrid love affair you had before I knew you.”
Crap. After she’d caught me spying on Violet and David, I’d spent a good part of the night dodging questions about him. Considering what she’d seen, I’d been hoping she’d wake up this morning with a serious case of alcohol amnesia. My wish had obviously not been granted.
“It wasn’t a torrid love affair.” I sighed.
She sat up, dragging Wilma by the arm. Her hair looked like brown cobwebs, and remnants of midnight-kohl mascara rimmed her eyes. “You hid his picture in your goddamn closet. Which means it was torrid. So spill it, sister, because I saw everything last night and I want the real story.”
I plunked down next to her. “We were friends, Can. I know no one believes it thanks to my stupid sister, but we were.” I reached for the photo on my dresser, still sitting where Candy had left it the night before. “Besides, I didn’t want that from him.”
“Why?” Candy blurted, attempting to get her fingers through her tangled mane. “Did he smell bad? You know I love you, Kelse, but short of some serious noxious fumes, I can’t imagine why anyone would not want ‘that’ ”—she snatched the picture from my hands and thrust it in my face—“from that.”
I plucked the photo from her fingers and placed it facedown on the bed. “Believe me, plenty of girls wanted it. I guarantee he didn’t spend this past year crying into his pillow over me.”
Candy raised an eyebrow. “Do you wish he had?”
“No.”
My stomach turned a little as I remembered my and David’s conversation in English class earlier that week, but I pushed the memory away. I wasn’t a mind reader, and if he’d wanted me to know about his father, he could have called, or even e-mailed. At least that’s what I kept telling myself.
“Oh, come on. It’s always nice to know someone misses you.”
I turned the picture over and looked at it again. “I have Ryan, remember?”
“Then why are you eye-banging that picture?”
“I’m not!” I nearly bent the picture in half in my rush to flip it back over and push it away from me.
“You so are!” Candy’s eyes widened. “Shut. Up. You’ve seen him naked, haven’t you?”
“No! Oh my God, nothing ever—”
“Spill it!” Wilma’s soft, furry body collided with the side of my head. “Spill it, before I beat it out of you with your four-legged love child!”
I shrieked and nearly caught a mouthful of Wilma’s skirt with the next blow. “All right!” I scurried away from her on my hands and knees. “It was one kiss! One, and that’s all!”
Candy sat back and gaped at me. “I take it Smurf man doesn’t know about this?”
“No. And I know I should probably tell him, but it seriously happened once, and you saw how paranoid he got on the first day of school.”
Candy rolled her eyes and pretended to gag. “He’s been extra attentive since a certain someone came to town, hasn’t he? Your morning make-out sessions have been more barfworthy than usual.” She propped Wilma haphazardly against my pillow and pointed a finger in her face. “I don’t care who you are, you will never rock a cheerleading uniform like I do.” Then she turned to me. “Do you still want to go to Arizona? You never said anything about putting it on the ‘to-tour’ list, and as your future roommate, I think this is something I should know.”
I shook my head, reaching out to smooth a dog-eared corner of the picture. “It was a phase.” I’d realized a while ago that my fixation on going away to college had less to do with the schools and more to do with the actual going away.
And I’d already done that.
I waited until Candy went home before I called Ryan. “Babe,” he said when he picked up the phone.
“Hey. How’re you feeling today?”
“I’m fine. Listen, is your sister sleeping at home tonight? Because I know she doesn’t like to be home alone, but I really want to see you. I miss you.”
We’d seen each other every day that week, but somehow I missed him too. All the, ahem, intrusions in my life lately had made me feel like I’d spent the past week in a drunken stupor, watching my life instead of living it.
“Oh. So you mean it’s been a while since you got laid?” I teased. To my surprise, Ryan sounded annoyed.
“No—I—geez, Kelse, I’m trying to tell you I want to spend time with you. Do you have to be such a pain in the ass?”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I miss you too, Ry. I talked to Miranda this morning and you’re in luck. She wants to stay at Carrie’s again. What did you have in mind?”
I swear I heard the dimple in his cheek reappear as he answered, “I’ll pick you up at quarter to seven.”
And did he ever. With flowers.
When I first started at Clayton, he’d told me he liked me by way of flowers. Orange and black carnations to be exact, sold by the cheerleading squad as a Halloween fund-raiser. He and I were in the same math class, and we’d chatted every now and then, but I figured he flirted with all the girls. Candy kept telling me he thought I was hot, but I found it hard to believe. I might’ve looked different, I might’ve acted more confident, and hell, I might’ve even felt more confident. But I was still afraid I wore it like a super-obvious disguise, one that people would see right through if they looked hard enough.
Which probably explained why I didn’t hesitate to accept the double shot of vodka Ryan offered me the first time I went to a party with Candy, even though I’d never attempted to chug anything larger
than a dose of liquid Tylenol. He’d been so cute about it—eyeing the fitted Yankees tee that, until that night, had sat in a drawer with the tags on because I hated the way it clung like a second skin. “You know,” he said, holding out the glass, “I’m a Boston fan, and I’m still gonna share this, if you want it. That’s kind of a big deal.”
He flashed a dimpled smile and I ignored my stampeding heart, reminding myself, as I accepted the shot, that my new life meant giving myself permission to do stupid things.
“Duly noted.” I closed my eyes, raised the glass to my lips, and opened my throat.
And immediately went into a coughing fit that resembled a seizure.
I felt so ridiculous that I avoided Ryan the rest of the night, certain I’d obliterated any interest he might’ve had in me—until the day he walked into class with two flowers, set them down in front of me, and watched my face turn every conceivable shade of red as the class hooted and hollered all around us.
Tonight he’d upgraded the carnations to a drop-dead gorgeous bouquet of red roses.
“Ryan!” I gasped as I opened the door. “What’s all this for?”
He bent to kiss me. “Because I love you.”
For a second I panicked. I wondered if he’d somehow seen me spying on David and Violet and decided damage control was in order, but then dismissed that idea as ridiculous. If he’d seen my reaction, he’d be birthing a giant green cow, not buying me flowers. I threw my arms around him, holding the flowers out so I wouldn’t crush them, and nipped at his neck.
“I love them.”
“You look beautiful tonight.”
I stepped back and smoothed the strapless purple sundress I wore. I’d had serious doubts about my outfit and my makeup after the comments David made at Violet’s party, but seeing the way Ryan looked at me gave my self-confidence a much-needed boost.
Screw David. He was nothing but a jealous ass wipe.
After I put the flowers in water, Ryan and I headed out to his car. I felt more like myself with every passing second. He refused to tell me where we were going, so we spent most of the car ride laughing at recaps of the stupid, drunken things our friends had done at Violet’s the night before.