by Robin Mellom
“Eat this.”
There’s a tap on my shoulder. Gilda drops a Snickers on my lap.
She reaches out and gives me a hand, helping me to my feet. “Here.” It’s a scratchy paper towel from the bathroom—
she motions to the tears flowing freely down my face, and I wish she had brought more scratchy towels.
I try to explain, not real y sure what to say, and the words come out as a blubbering mess. “Why did you . . . Are you—”
“You look like you could use a snack. That’s al .” She leads me back to the store. “Come inside. We’l figure out what to do with you.”
I knew there was kindness in the world. Sometimes I guess you have to turn into the Colorado Snot River before someone shows it, but I’m just relieved to know it’s there.
Gilda pul s a stool up to the end of the counter and lets me sit while I scarf down my candy bar. She takes a plastic to-go bag and fil s it with ice from the soda machine, then spins the bag to close it and hands it to me. “What happened to you, anyway?”
I hold the ice to the knot on my head. Ouch!
She waits a moment. “So?”
14
I look down at my dress. “You mean the stains?” She nods. “And the scratches and the bruises and the bump on the head and the new tattoo.”
I shake my head. “I know. So cliché to go to prom and end up with a tattoo, right?”
“That’s your prom dress?”
“It looked better without the filth.”
Her face is blank. “It’s just al so . . . matching. I thought maybe you’d been in a play. Or a pride parade.” I almost laugh—like she even knows what a pride parade is, but I don’t feel a need to educate her on this matter. “Nope.
Mom’s idea.”
“You didn’t get a friend’s opinion?”
I shake my head. “Didn’t even read a magazine. I just wanted to impress him—”
“With your matching skil s?”
“Color. But Mom dressed me exactly the way she did at her own prom . . . secondhand dress, dyed shoes, matching purse.” I lower my head. “It’s not like I’m proud of this.” Of course I would much rather be wearing my regular clothes: al -black everything, as Ian cal s them. True, I only wear black: black shirt, black jeans, black boots, every day, without fail. Because no one asks questions. They just assume I’ve gone to the dark side—and lately that would not be too far from the truth.
But I get wild sometimes—with my nail polish. Black Cherry.
15
Gilda gives me a look like she’s in pain—physical pain.
“You mean you let your mother dress you the same way she dressed for prom?”
She must not have a daughter. Otherwise she’d understand how hard it is for a mother to let her daughter just “be.” At least for my mother. I consider explaining this to her, but I figure I should zip it and be thankful for the Snickers. Plus, the rush of chocolate is calming me down, and the balance of blood sugar suddenly makes me a much more reasonable person. Unlike most of last night.
I shrug. “Mom’s eager face—there’s no escaping it.” Gilda scratches her hair, digging in delicately with her long red fingernails, being careful not to mess up a braid. I can tel she wants to let loose with some sort of hand-flailing lecture on being myself and not letting my mother’s eager face control my life, but al she says is, “Huh.”
“Look, if I had known my dress was going to cause this much pain, I would’ve worn a sleeping bag. No . . . I wouldn’t have gone at al .” I take another bite of my Snickers and swal ow hard.
“So why did you go?”
Of course that’s when his face pops into my mind.
And al the amazing things he said to convince me to go to prom.
“Ian Clark,” I say, as if that explains everything. But she doesn’t know him. How could she understand his powers of persuasion?
16
Gilda looks around the store. “But Ian Clark isn’t here now. Did he do something bad?”
“Yeah. Very bad.”
“Did he—”
“Hurt me?” I ask, because, looking at me, I’d wonder too.
She wrinkles her nose. I can tel she doesn’t want to ask, but she knows she should. “Did he?”
“No, no. He ditched me.” I adjust the ice pack on my forehead. The pain is lessening. I’m starting to think more clearly. “I was ditched. Figuratively and literal y.”
“He sounds like a real jerk.”
I twitch. That word: jerk. It confuses my nervous system because my body wants to react with my first instinct . . .
defend him.
Because even though jerk is the only word I can imagine to describe him now, it’s not a word that ever entered my mind as being synonymous with Ian Clark. Ever.
I have always known of him—Huntington High isn’t huge and it’s the type of place where everyone’s business is just known. It’s almost as if we’re all distant relatives—
people you’ve heard of and you know their basic story—or the Lifetime movie version of their story—but you don’t really know them, and sometimes don’t want to.
Ian became more than a person I knew basic facts about back in sophomore year, spring quarter, P.E.: softbal . I remember my first words to him. “Have you seen that silver bat around?”
17
He turned and walked off on me. Sorta rude. But then he popped back into my vision a moment later, the bat in hand. “Silver bat’s my favorite too.” He gave it to me, but not in just some ordinary handing-over-of-a-bat type of way.
He flipped it around in a highly coordinated maneuver and presented it to me, handle first. Just to make it that much easier for me. “Whack it good,” he said with a little smile.
I struck out.
But I stuffed that little moment away in my mind—
the importance of it seeming like something that needed to be noted, filed, remembered. I now knew Ian Clark was a handle-first kind of guy. Why did this matter to me?
But time passed and the silver bat always seemed to be around and I couldn’t think of any other questions to ask him.
So I didn’t. And that memory started to fade. Ian remained merely an unexamined file in my brain.
Until last summer. The pool party.
Gilda opens up a bag of gummy bears and chews the head off of one, then hands a piece to me, an indication she’s ready for the story. “Why’d you go with this guy?” I twirl the gummy bear in my fingers. “Operation Lips Locked.”
“What type of operation is that?”
Breathe in. Breathe out. Here we go.
“It’s the type where you get ridiculed at Jimmy DeFranco’s pool party for hooking up with two different guys even though it was accidental because one of them was a dare 18
and one of them was due to drinking too many Jägermeister shots—him, not me—and get publicly humiliated when those two guys claim it was much more than kissing—which is al you remember happening—but the glares from people you hardly know pierce your skin and jab your heart, so you declare to your best friend you are never ever going to kiss another boy again until you know deep in your bones, in your marrow, in your cel structure—one hundred percent—that he is boyfriend material.”
“Okay,” Gilda says. “I mean . . . what?” I shrug. “No kissing al owed until the guy proved he had the material. Until then, lips locked.” I press my lips together, reminding myself what they feel like. “It’s been eight months and twelve days since I kissed a boy. I was going to final y unlock my lips for Ian. At prom.” The bel at the sliding door rings. The man who was pumping gas in the old Mercedes strol s around the store.
Gilda holds her hand up to me and whispers, “Hold on a sec.”
She helps him find some individual packets of Tylenol, then rings him up. He’s older with a pudgy middle and a rumpled shirt.
While he fishes through his leather wal et for money, he glances my way. And as he hands Gilda a twenty, he’s still lo
oking my way.
I shift on my stool. What’s this guy’s problem?
“You need a lift?” He asks.
19
I laugh. A nervous laugh. Not real y a laugh. “Me? No.”
“Her ride’s coming,” Gilda lies.
He puts his wal et away and gives me a smirk. “Looks like you worked a rough shift last night. Hope you made enough to buy yourself a new dress.”
Oh my god, this ass thinks I’m a hooker!
He scoops up his bag of Tylenol—hangover medicine, I’m sure—and saunters out before I can tel him he’s so rude for assuming I’m a hooker because I’m only sixteen and this is my prom dress and my boyfriend who is not my boyfriend ditched me, and no, I do not have a ride home!
But I’ve gotten good at not confronting people. I let out a deep sigh instead.
When he’s gone, Gilda turns to me with big eyes. “He doesn’t know you haven’t even kissed a boy in eight months.
He’s a jerk.”
I shake my head. Given the reputation I managed to create for myself, money may be the only thing that keeps me from being a hooker. A kissing hooker. “He’s probably not total y off base. I’ve kissed a lot of guys in my past.” She waves me off. “Oh, who hasn’t.”
“A lot.” I clear my throat and hope she doesn’t ask—
“How many?”
Of course she asks. I clench my fists and look away. “A little more than a dozen.” Silence, no response. “Or so,” I add quietly.
“Or so?!” Her eyes are satel ite disks.
20
“It’s not like it’s triple digits or anything. And it’s not something I’m super proud of, except at first . . . I kind of . . .
was.”
Which is true. When I first started my excessive lip landings, I was a freshman and I was so excited about my success rate I wanted to put it on my résumé—in bold, italics, everything. I was proud.
“But nothing ever materialized. No boyfriend,” I explain to her. “I just real y, real y like kissing. It’s my drug of choice, I guess. It’s like I have a kissing disorder—I’ve overdosed on it and now I can’t even get one simple smooch from my prom date. I mean, it’s prom. Everyone gets kissed on prom night! What is wrong with me?” I look down at my muddy feet.
I feel like a non-human at this point. Realizing that it’s come to this. Me without any dignity—completely alone and jonesing only for the feel of his lips—and he’s probably off with Al yson Moore doing whatever he’s doing. I take a breath and look up at Gilda. “I’m always The Girl At That Party, never The Girl.”
“Sounds like you’ve kissed one too many toads.”
“And toads never turn into boyfriends. Not in my case.”
“But Ian proved he was boyfriend material?”
“Yeah. Except it took a long time for me to realize it.
We were . . . friends. For a long time. Like, almost nine months. I mean, that’s how long it takes to incubate a baby, or whatever.” I take a bite of the gummy bear, feeling more 21
settled. “Ian drove me to school every day. And he’d remind me which color uniform I needed for a track meet. I trusted him.” I stare at the half-eaten gummy bear, getting lost in the memories of him. “It’s strange how you can be friends with someone for so long and then one day he brings you licorice and Motrin because you’re whacked out from heinous painful cramps straight from the Devil, but you notice he’s wearing a new shirt that’s a certain shade of green and . . .
whammo! Your insides turn to pudding and all you can do is think about making out with him. He’s the same guy, doesn’t change a bit from one day to the next”—I start to think about his eyes, his mouth—“but because a color brings out his eyes, you suddenly realize . . .”
Gilda finishes my sentence. “Boyfriend material.” I sigh. “Total y.”
That damn green shirt. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for that stupid color.
It’s like some nightmare Sesame Street episode: This month’s gut-wrenching, painful heartache brought to you by the color green!
But I quickly snap back to reality and remind myself that I am tel ing this story to the cashier at the 7-Eleven due to the fact that Ian Clark left me on prom night and I ended up in a ditch on Hol ister Road.
Screw the color green.
I sit up and clear my throat. “He total y was boyfriend material. At least I never kissed the guy.” 22
“That’s good. I guess.”
Maybe Gilda is right. It is good we never kissed. That way we don’t have to worry about any “weirdness.” Except that our friendship has come to a complete halt, and I’ll have to find a new ride to school. Which is a total pain. So I should’ve just kissed him and gotten something out of this ridiculous mess. Plus, I stil can’t help but wonder what it would’ve been like. Curse you, wonder.
“Or maybe I should’ve kissed him. Just once? Like maybe I should’ve done it a long time ago, not sat around waiting for the perfect moment. I could’ve gotten it out of the way.”
“Like a chore?”
I laugh at that. I’ve never thought of kissing as a chore.
More of a sport. “I just don’t want to have to wonder anymore.”
“Wonder what?”
“If he’s the perfect kisser. Some guys are—they know exactly how much tongue to give, when to be gentle, and when to put on the deep pressure.”
She quickly pops another gummy bear in her mouth and fake coughs.
“Sorry. Too much?” I wince.
She gazes off in the distance toward the hot-dog cooker.
“No. Actual y, I know exactly what you mean.” I snag another handful of bears from the bag and start gnawing. It real y seems to calm the nerves. “Okay then, so you know that there are also guys who are sucky kissers. Too wet. Too toothy. Too much tongue. Too much breathing.
23
Too much coloring outside the lines, you know what I mean?
I want to know which category he fal s in.”
“You stil want to know?”
Immediately I picture him talking to Al yson Moore next to that pool and then overhearing that phone conversation in the In-N-Out Burger bathroom. “No. Not anymore. Al Ian Clark got me was a ruined dress. And the worst night of my life.” I straighten out my stained dress.
Al yson Moore.
Just thinking about her almost makes me throw up in my mouth. I mean, what was it exactly that he couldn’t resist?
Her strappy, silver Jimmy Choo pumps? Or her pale pink lip gloss with a hint of glitter? Surely it wasn’t her remarkable intel igence—the girl thinks monogamy is a type of dark wood. Maybe he found her lack of common vocabulary terms adorable?
None of this makes sense. Why am I the one who ended up in the ditch, not Al yson? I know . . . girly parts. That’s why. He’s always had a thing for the female form—boobs, to be exact. Which is something I do not natural y possess, despite my support from Victoria’s Secret.
But Ian is not the kind of guy who would leave me alone in a ditch. And somewhere deep in me, maybe in some file buried in my brain, I know this is true.
At least, I hope it’s true.
This picture is so fuzzy . . . no crisp black and whites . . .
just grays . . . and unanswered questions.
24
Gilda leans toward me to get a better look at my stained outfit. “What are al these?”
Looking them over, I realize each one tel s a little piece of the story of what happened to me last night. Like a quilt—a stain quilt. A disastrous, heartbreaking, nasty-ass stain quilt.
“You real y want to know?”
Gilda looks around at the empty store, another sad country song blaring in the background. She shrugs. “It’s real busy, but I guess I could spare some time.” She tosses a gummy bear at me, then gives me a sneaky smile. “I gotta hear about this Ian Clark guy.”
I point to the very first stain of the night—the one near the hem of my dress. It�
��s the greenish-yel ow one.
The one I got from him.
25
2
Yellow Curry, Extra Coriander
IT WAS YESTERDAY. 5:30 p.m. I had just gotten back from a jog over to the CVS to pick up the perfect color of nail polish: Barbados Blue. The same color as my dress, true, but at least it wasn’t Black Cherry. Tonight, I would be daring.
I had carefully instructed my mother not to answer the door with a spoon full of lentil stew or barley goop or whatever vegetable concoction she had created and force it into Ian’s mouth. He might not like it. Or he might not be hungry. Or he might be nervous and not want to make small talk with my mother about how tasty the lentils were.
I happened to like lentils, but—let’s face it—most people think they taste like clods of dirt.
27
Of course Mom didn’t pay attention to my request. She was making a big pot of curry. And I could sense it was going to end up in Ian’s mouth.
“Why are you making me dinner?” I was stil in my running clothes, crunching on a Honeycrisp apple, talking with my mouth ful . “We’re eating dinner at the hotel.” Mom could make a mean lentil stew, and her curry was even more amazing. She never forced me into being a vegetarian, but when I was nine I watched a science show on how things are made. Once I found out how they real y make hot dogs, I joined her and never looked back. Meat and I formal y divorced. But even though she was a fantastic vegetarian cook, it didn’t mean she should force it on Ian.
She blew on the stew to cool it down, and took a bite.
“It’s not for you. Fundraiser tonight. Remember?” Uh, no. I didn’t remember because Mom’s schedule is full of fundraisers. And committee meetings. And action planning groups. And committee meetings about the planning groups for the fundraisers, or something. It’s exhausting. For me, anyway.
“Wanna taste?” Mom wasn’t asking me. She was asking Sol, our chocolate Labrador retriever. She always treated him like he was royalty—like he was just as important as the President’s dog, or Oprah’s dog.
Sol licked the spoon, as wel as al the drops on the floor.