by Gina Ciocca
Grinning from ear to ear and tiptoeing as lightly as I could, I scurried over to him and grabbed him around the waist.
“Whoa!” he said, practically jumping into the locker. His startled expression melted into a grin when he saw me.
I wrapped my arms around his neck. “Guess I know who my secret Valentine’s Day admirer is.”
“Yeah, yeah, you caught me,” he fake-groused, kissing my nose.
“You don’t have to do this. The cookies were enough.”
“I’d buy out their whole supply of roses if you wanted them.”
Valentine’s Day was pretty much legendary at Clayton. It was sort of sad, because it was also a blatant popularity contest. The cheerleaders always sold roses and made cookie-grams, heart-shaped sugar cookies that could be sent to the person of your choice with a message of love, or secret admirer-ship, or insert sentiment here.
Two cookies had been delivered to me before lunch, courtesy of Ryan. One with the message I LOVE YOU and the other with HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY. Simple and sweet. Just like the single red roses he’d left in my locker before each period.
I kissed him, drawing it out with a long smacking sound. “You don’t have to buy me any more. I’m letting you off the hook.”
He shrugged. “What if I want to? Think of it as supporting Candle Wax and her rah-rahs. You’re always telling me to be nicer to her.”
I kissed his cheek and shook my head as if to say, What am I going to do with you? “Speaking of Candy, I have to get back to the cafeteria. I’m helping her man the rose table until the end of lunch.”
“All right. But remember, you never saw me here.” He kissed me again and started down the hall, watching me over his shoulder. We smiled at each other until I rounded the corner to the cafeteria entrance.
I wasn’t a cheerleader, but Candy and Violet were, and I was with them so often that I’d sort of become an honorary member of the squad. It was only natural that I spent my lunch helping Candy sell flowers.
“How many roses did Chester the Molester give you this year?” Candy asked with a devilish gleam in her eye as the lunch crowd finally started to clear. “What was it last year? Thirty? Forty?”
“No.” I waved off her exaggeration. “Seven. He left one in my locker before each period. Same thing this year, so far.”
“How romantic.” She batted her lashes, pretending to swoon before pointing her finger at the back of her throat.
“Kiss my ass! I saw you with a bunch before. Don’t act like you don’t love it when Crowley falls at your feet!”
“Hmm. I do love it, don’t I?” We both snickered until something caught Candy’s eye.
“Uh-oh,” she said with a smirk. “Here comes your lover boy.”
I followed her stare toward the cafeteria doors, expecting to see Ryan. Instead, my smile faded as David hesitantly approached the table. He had on red and white, not only the theme colors for the day but also the school colors. It was strange to see him in the same red Clayton High Baseball cap that Ryan wore so often. He had it flipped backward on his head, and his raglan shirt had red sleeves and a white trunk.
I had to admit, the way he filled it out was rather impressive.
Candy stood up with a flourish. “I think I need to hit the ladies’ room,” she announced.
I grabbed her arm. “I think your bladder can wait a minute. You have a customer coming.”
“Now he’s my customer? You’ve been handling sales all period; I think you can manage this one too.”
It was too late to protest, seeing as David had come within earshot. I let go of Candy’s sleeve with a small whimper of defeat, and she took off.
“Hey,” David said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. “I guess I’ll take a couple of those.”
I had to smile. “This is Violet we’re talking about here. You’re going to need more than a couple.”
David laughed. “Good call.” He surveyed the two plastic buckets in front of me, one filled with white roses and one with a dwindling supply of red. “What’s the matter, no one likes the white ones?”
I ran my fingers over the silky tops of the white roses. “Well, I like the white. I always have. I still have the—” I cut off, not wanting to finish what I’d started but realizing it was too late. “The, um, corsage you gave me. The white rose.” I glanced up at him. “Do you remember? The night of the Winter Swirl?”
“Of course I remember. I’m surprised you kept it, though. There’s sort of some bad memories associated with it.”
I stared at the roses, watching my red-and-white-painted nails graze over the petals. “No sense in taking it out on the corsage.” An awkward silence followed. “So,” I said a little too brightly, “you’ll take pity on a few of these white ones?”
“Sure. Give me three of each.”
As I gathered the flowers, I felt him staring at me. When I looked up and caught him, his eyes dropped to the floor.
“Why were you looking at me like that?”
“It— Nothing. You just never talk about the past. It’s like you try to act like it didn’t happen.”
“Some of it,” I conceded.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and snipped the ends of the roses, trying to ignore the way he continued to stare.
“What?” I finally said.
“Your hair like that. It’s cute.”
My hand flew to my hair, which I’d put up in a high ponytail and wrapped with curly red and white ribbons. I almost never wore my hair up anymore.
“I thought you didn’t like my new hair,” I said, only half teasing.
“I never said that. I always liked your hair.” He handed me his money in exchange for the roses, concentrating a little harder than necessary on putting his change in his wallet. “So, um, speaking of the Swirl. Are you sure you’re okay?”
I managed a small nod and a forced laugh. “Taking my vitamins religiously. Healthy as a horse.”
Ugh. Did I really say that?
David nodded, and mercifully did not call me out for avoiding his real question, the one that had nothing to do with my physical health. “Good. See you later, Kelse.”
“David?” He stopped and turned back toward me. “I know I said this already, but no one here knows about that night. No one knows about any of it. I’d really like to keep it that way.”
He nodded again, and when our eyes met, I knew from the honesty and warmth in his that I could trust him. The same way I used to, before the literal and figurative distance between us.
David’s fingers drummed against the stems of the flowers. “You know, the night before you left.” He paused. “I didn’t do it to upset you. The point wasn’t to hurt you.”
But you did. More than you know.
David’s gaze held steady. “You believe me, right?”
Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. My throat felt thick and tight and I had a sudden urge to throw my arms around his neck and bury my face in his shirt.
Almost as if he’d read my mind, he took a step closer to the table. Instead of hugging me, though, he pulled his wallet out again. “On second thought, I’ll take one more white one. I can’t let them sit there all pathetic like that.”
I handed him another white flower. Our fingertips brushed when he took it from me, and for a second neither of us let go.
“Here,” I said, needing an excuse to take my hand away. On impulse, I grabbed a red one, too. “Violet will appreciate symmetry. The red’s on me.”
We smiled at each other, the first real smile in ages.
Later that day, when the hallways were littered with rose petals and message tags from cookie-grams, I made my way over to my locker feeling exhausted but happy.
I gave a start as my locker door swung open and I caught sight of a stem poking out of the cubby. Ryan had alrea
dy left me seven red roses, one before each period, the way he’d done the year before. He must have been trying to outdo himself this year because I’d caught him during one drop-off.
I’d placed the rest of my bouquet on the floor next to me until I could gather my books, and I pulled the rose out, intending to add it to the pile. I froze when the flower that emerged from the shadow of the cubby was not red but white.
The first thing to flash through my mind was the extra white rose David had asked for. But why would he . . . ?
I looked down the hall, hoping Ryan would be at his locker wearing a huge grin that would tell me this was all his doing. He was nowhere to be found. When I looked in the other direction, my heart stuttered. David stood at his locker, watching me through the corner of his eye. When he saw me looking at him, a dumbfounded expression on my face and a white rose clutched between my fingers, the corner of his mouth pulled up ever so slightly. He held my gaze for only a second before shutting his locker and walking away.
“Hey.”
I jumped as a voice sounded next to me and turned to find Violet at my side.
“Hey.” My eyes dropped to her hands. “Where are your flowers?”
Violet looked confused. “In Candy’s car, why?”
“How many did David give you?”
“Six.” She tittered. “He’s so sweet.”
“Six? Not eight?”
“I do know how to count, Kelsey. Three red plus three white equals six. Why?”
“Oh. No reason.”
Violet held out two heart-shaped cookies wrapped in plastic. “Anyway, Candy told me to give you her cookie-grams. She says she’s watching her figure. Gotta run, I’m late for practice.”
I bent down and put the cookies in my bag, gingerly placing the lone white rose in my pile of red ones.
So David had bought eight roses but given only six of them to Violet. No—scratch that. He’d bought seven roses and given one to me.
Technically, I’d given the eighth rose to him.
Twenty
Connecticut
Winter, Sophomore Year
“Kelsey, please eat something.”
David held a spoonful of chicken soup over the bowl my mother had brought to my room on a snack tray. The tray stretched across my legs, which were buried beneath the blue and green flowers of my comforter.
“I’m not hungry. I’m . . .”
“You’re what?”
My chest constricted. “Humiliated.”
That morning my mother had gotten out of bed and gone to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. She’d heard my cell phone ringing in the study and, seeing it was David, picked it up. As she walked by the bathroom, she saw the door ajar and the medicine cabinet mirror wide open. That was when she found me, dead asleep on the bathroom floor with a bloody towel in my lap and a pair of scissors at my feet.
If she hadn’t been holding the phone, and if she hadn’t started screaming, everything would’ve been fine.
David put the spoon back in the bowl and put his hand on my arm. “Listen. Isabel isn’t going to tell anyone. She could hear your mom through the phone, and I had to explain why I couldn’t stay.”
“You could’ve stayed,” I said flatly. He’d slept at her house after the dance. Granted, so had a bunch of other people, but the knowledge still sat like a brick in my stomach.
“I felt bad enough that I missed your messages because my piece of crap phone didn’t have service at the dance. So, no, I couldn’t have stayed. I needed to make sure you were okay.”
“You didn’t have to tell her I tried to hurt myself, David!” Hot tears spilled over my cheeks and I turned away from him. “The whole school is going be talking about me now!”
He squeezed my arm. “All I said was that I thought you’d tried to hurt yourself. I’m sorry I even said that much. I swear I’ll make sure she knows what really happened.”
I shook my head. “Don’t say a word to Isabel or anyone else. Except that I’m fine.”
My mother crept into the room then. “You will be fine, no matter what. Understand?”
I grabbed the soupspoon and swirled it through the broth and noodles, not wanting to look at either one of them. I didn’t have to look to know they exchanged a glance.
“Are you going to eat that or play with it all afternoon?” my mother asked.
“Don’t worry, Mrs. Crawford; I’m not leaving until she eats it,” David promised. “I’ll pour it down her throat if I have to.”
Mom smiled. “You’re a good friend, David. Let me know if you need me to hold her head.” With that, she left the room.
David shifted on the bed. “Speaking of friends. I know you and Maddie aren’t close anymore, but she doesn’t hate you, Kelse. She just wishes you’d try new things and not be so quick to judge, that’s all.”
“Is that all?” I rolled my eyes and folded my arms across my chest. I had zero interest in continuing this conversation.
“You are pretty stubborn, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Yep. So if you’re not leaving until I eat, then I guess you’re sleeping here.” It took me a second to realize what I’d said. “Isabel won’t like that.”
“C’mon, Kelse. What do I have to do to make you eat a few spoonfuls?” His eyes fell on Wilma, whose tail and hind legs were sticking out from my comforter. He grabbed her. “Do I have to make out with your cat?” He squished her plastic nose against his mouth and closed his eyes. “Mmm, Wilma.” Then he twisted her back and forth like they were having the world’s most frenzied make-out session. “Mmm, Wilma, you sexy beast!”
A laugh bubbled up inside my chest. When he pretended to slip her the tongue, I had no hope of containing it.
“All right, all right,” I said through a fit of giggles, snatching my poor, defiled cat away from him. “You’re ridiculous. I’ll eat!”
David let me slurp in peace for a minute, grinning like he’d accomplished something way more impressive than getting a few spoonfuls of soup into my stomach. Once I started eating, I realized I was starving. But I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
“Happy now?” I said as I swallowed some noodles.
David’s eyes grew darker and his mouth settled into a serious line. “No, I’m not happy. You scared the shit out of me, Kelse. And your family, too.”
I dropped my spoon and twisted my hands in my lap. “I know,” I said quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“What were you doing on the bathroom floor? What were you thinking?”
A lump formed in my throat again, and I wished I’d had more sleep so I could switch off this annoying weepy Kelsey and locate my backbone. “That I was scared. That I didn’t want my life controlled by some illness, and I didn’t want to be the Sick Girl. That I wanted that damn hospital bracelet off my wrist. That—” I was dangerously close to crying now, so I tried to divert the onslaught by taking a breath and making a joke. “That I didn’t want to die a virgin.”
David laughed, a nervous laugh/cough combination that told me I’d succeeded in lightening the moment, and also in making him slightly uncomfortable. “Wow. That’s, uh, that’s deep, Kelse.”
I shoveled more soup into my mouth for the sheer purpose of having something to do. Something told me he wanted to stay far away from this topic. So, naturally, I had to pursue it.
“Wouldn’t you think about it? If you thought you might be—” My breath caught in my throat, and I had to fight to push the rest of my sentence out. “Seriously ill? If you thought you might . . . never get to?”
He ran his hand back and forth over his hair and cleared his throat. “I guess.”
That’s when everything clicked into place. His fidgeting, his sudden change in demeanor, the guilty look on his face. David didn’t have to wonder what it would be like to die a virgin.
>
He wasn’t one.
Suddenly a huge chasm opened between us, like we’d been sucked into the postcard that hung beside my bed, staring at each other from opposite sides of a massive canyon filled to the brim with awkward.
I blinked. “Oh,” I said softly. It must have been the only word in my vocabulary at that moment, because I said it again. David’s ears turned bright red and he looked at the floor, the ceiling, anywhere but at me. I concentrated on breaking up a piece of chicken with my spoon, wondering if it had been Amy Heffernan who’d done the honors, or Isabel Rose, or some other girl I didn’t even know about. I wasn’t going to ask him. It was none of my business, and knowing wouldn’t have made me feel any less betrayed. I knew it was a stupid thing to feel, but it spread through my body like wildfire nonetheless.
My mind flashed back to the night before, when I’d thought about kissing him. I slouched over my soup bowl, afraid he’d somehow read my thoughts if I looked at him.
Don’t think about it, I told myself. You don’t feel that way about him. It was the crazy talking, that’s all. Now for God’s sake, say something!
Nothing came out.
The strained silence between us probably would have stretched on a lot longer if it hadn’t been for the sound of my parents’ voices approaching my door.
“Kevin, I think you should wait,” my mother pleaded.
My father appeared at my door then, pushing it open slightly before he turned back to my mother. “Amanda, she can handle it. I want her to have something to think about, something to look forward to.”
All three of them came into my room then: my father, my mother, and my sister. My father shook David’s hand before pulling my desk chair over to my bedside. My mother stood behind him, her hands on Miranda’s shoulders and a worried look on her face.
“How are you feeling today, baby girl?” my father asked, smoothing my hair.
“I’m fine, Daddy. I’m sorry.” I’d said it a million times already, but I couldn’t say it enough.