Soul Kiss

by Neil S. Plakcy

  After an hour, I realized he was heading back to his apartment building. It was early evening, dusk just beginning to fall. He pulled up in front of his building and shut the car off, then turned to look at me.

  Without even thinking about it, I was kissing Daniel again. But it was so awkward there, with the seat belts and the big hump in the way. “We could move into the backseat,” I said as I pulled away from him.

  “Are you sure?” Daniel asked.

  I must have looked at him like he was crazy, because suddenly he was scrambling out of the car and into the backseat. I followed him, and we began hugging and kissing and running our hands over each other. I was getting sweaty and short of breath, and then Daniel fastened his lips on mine, and our mouths opened to each other.

  I inhaled his breath and felt the pressure of our lips, my nose against his cheek, his hand around the back of my head. I’d never experienced anything like it before. It was like electric flashes going off in my brain, sparkling lights in front of my eyes, every synapse inside my head buzzing.

  I felt like I could see inside Daniel’s soul. All the pain of being the outsider, of being different, longing to connect with someone else. And it felt like I was sharing everything in my head with him—my desperate desire to break away from my parents and my brother and everything I found suffocating about small-town life in Stewart’s Crossing.

  We kissed like that for a while, Daniel running his hands over me, but he was too much of a gentleman, or too shy at first, to try and feel me up under my clothes. I touched him, but not anywhere that mattered—his arms, his shoulders, his hair. By the time we were both panting he pulled back and said, “I really like you, Melissa.”

  “I like you too, Daniel.”

  “I should go inside.”

  “Yeah, I should get home.”

  But who were we kidding? We started kissing again. Finally, though, he said, “Thank you for a really great night,” and he backed away. He opened the back door and slid out. “Drive home safely.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” I sat back against the side door and watched as he walked up to his apartment building. Then I got back in the front, trying to fix my hair and the way my shirt had bunched up.

  I got back onto the highway and headed for home. My brain was still buzzing from the connection with Daniel. One of these big display trucks passed me, with a moving electronic sign on it, advertising a club in Levittown. Without thinking about it, I read the whole message and got a picture in my mind of where it was.

  That was weird. My brain had never worked that way before. But I shook the strange feeling off and got off the highway at the Stewart’s Crossing exit, navigating my way back through streets I knew by heart.

  I got home just in time for dinner, and spent an extra minute in the car, making sure my hair and my clothes were the way they should be. No one said anything to me about Daniel’s lessons, but I had the feeling that it would be the last time I could take him driving, maybe even the last time my parents would let me go out with him.

  My head was too full of what had happened between me and Daniel to think clearly, so I was glad for the dinner time silence. I helped my mom clear the table and wash the dishes without even being asked. I thought maybe being nice would convince her that it was okay for me to keep dating Daniel.

  That was what we were doing, wasn’t it? Dating? If it was, it was a weird kind. But the subtext was still there, and that’s what my parents had seen, even before I had.

  The question was how I felt about the whole thing. Did I want to be dating Daniel Florez? What if my parents said no, grounded me? Would I stand up to them? Did I love Daniel? Was this what love felt like, this sense of total confusion and yet longing to be around him?

  I watched TV in the living room with the Big Mistake for a while, not paying much attention to what was on the screen but somehow following it all. Around ten, I washed up, slipped into my nightgown and got into bed, but I was too buzzy to sleep. I picked up the book we were reading for English class, The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. I figured if anything would put me to sleep that would be it. I think they only assign these English books because high school kids don’t sleep enough, and it’s safer than dosing us all with pills.

  I got into the story, though. I sat up in bed, turning pages, following the characters and the story. I had just finished the book when my mother knocked on my door. “It’s eleven o’clock, Melissa,” she said. “Time to go to sleep.”

  Really? I had read nearly three hundred pages. It had to be way later than eleven. But I looked at the clock. I’d only been reading for an hour, and I’d read the whole book. What the hell was happening? Was I turning into Daniel Florez?

  I thought I’d be up for hours, worrying about what was happening to me, but I fell asleep almost immediately and in the morning I tried to pretend that it had all been some weird dream.

  We’ve never been much of a church-going family, so we like to sleep in on what my Grandpa Joe calls “The Lord’s Day.” My dad gets up, reads the paper, then starts scrambling eggs and frying bacon, and the rest of us gradually stumble out to the kitchen.

  The Big Mistake was already there when I got there, setting the table, so I slid into my place and picked up the first section of the newspaper. There was a big article on the front page about advances in prenatal testing for all kinds of diseases and syndromes, and I flipped through it.

  For years I had heard my parents talk about Robbie’s condition. He was allergic to all kinds of things, from goose down to wheat, and my parents still didn’t know why. Was it some flaw in one or both of their DNA? Something my mother had eaten or drank or been exposed to while she was pregnant with him?

  This scientist interviewed in the article had studied a receptor on one particular chromosome in DNA and thought it might be the location for allergic sensitivity to a lot of substances. I read through the article while I ate my eggs, flipping from the front page to where the story continued. When I finished I asked my father if he had read it.

  “Yes, but I can’t say I understood all of it. I’m no dummy, but remember, I’m not a scientist. I’m just a businessman.”

  “But it’s not that hard. It just says that if they can identify the right gene that causes problems like Robbie’s then they can just alter that particular gene in a way that removes the sensitivity.” I couldn’t seem to stop talking—I went on about genes and receptors and therapies until I realized that my parents and the Big Mistake were all staring at me like I had turned into some kind of alien.

  “That’s remarkable, Melissa,” my mother said. “I always knew you were smart, but you just never applied yourself. Spending time with Daniel seems to be helping you.”

  “Yeah, you’re turning into a brainiac freak just like him,” the Big Mistake said.

  “You could do with more application of your own brainpower, young man,” my mother said.

  I was surprised. Nobody ever expected much of Robbie other than just staying healthy and not behaving like a child raised by apes. As long as he wasn’t breaking things or breaking you, they were happy.

  “Huh?” Robbie asked.

  “What I mean is that your sister is setting a good example for you. You should be studying a lot more.”

  “Mom,” he said, stretching the word out to at least three syllables. “You know it makes my eyes go funny if I study too hard.”

  She snorted, but then she turned back to me. “Does that article say they have any therapies that could work for Robbie?”

  It was weird. In like one second, I reviewed everything the article said in my head and picked out the point my mother was asking about. “They think that wheat sensitivity is part of a collection of problems that are centered on this one chromosome.”

  And then I was off. I tried to simplify what I had read so that my parents would understand it, though I could see a lot of deeper applications. All that stuff I had memorized in chemistry about DNA and chemical interactions came back t
o me, and started to fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. I understood stuff that I had never been able to grasp before.

  It was so totally strange, but exhilarating at the same time. Was this what it was like to be inside Daniel’s head? How had this happened? All I’d done was kiss him. And I wasn’t going to tell my parents that.

  After breakfast was over my father retreated to his study, the Big Mistake went out to play touch football with his friends, and my mom disappeared on some errands.

  I decided to try an experiment. I opened up my netbook and connected to the Internet, finding an encyclopedia site. I deliberately chose a section on astronomy, because I knew nothing more than the names of a couple of stars and constellations. I started reading through a lot of stuff about how stars were formed, and the ways that scientists could determine the presence of planets from the gravitational effect that they had on stars.

  Ordinarily I couldn’t have read more than a page or two of that stuff before I would have been dozing off . But I just kept flipping through screens, reading, and it was cool the way it all seemed to fit together. I didn’t stop for nearly an hour.

  Then I closed the netbook and pushed back. My brain was so full of information that it felt like it was going to burst. Was this what it felt like to be some kind of genius? Was that what I had become?

  I remembered a book we’d read in English class a few years before, Flowers for Algernon, and I dug through the crap in my closet to find it. There it was, stuck behind a shoe box filled with broken flip-flops. Why was I saving those, anyway? I tossed them in the trash and retreated to my bed with the paperback.

  It was sad, the way people didn’t like Charly as he got smarter, and then when Algernon died and Charly figured out he wasn’t going to stay smart forever, it just wiped me out and I started crying.

  I was a basket case. And that was after only one really good kiss from Daniel Florez. What would happen if he kissed me again?

  Understanding

  Monday was Columbus Day and we had no school, and I spent most of the day reading. I was curious to see how many books I could get through in a day, so I started with a thriller of my dad’s, then a weepy novel about a girl growing up with her grandparents that my mom was reading.

  I was done with them by lunch, and I wanted something more substantial, so I went through the big bookcase in my dad’s study, looking for a non-fiction book I could sink my teeth into. I read one about the building of a house, and another about the connection between mathematics, music, and art. I liked that one a lot, and put it aside to share with Daniel.

  Late in the afternoon I picked up a cookbook and decided to make dinner. I didn’t follow a recipe, just read the stuff about how foods interacted and tasted, and started experimenting. My mother was astonished to find dinner in the oven. “It smells wonderful,” she said. “What is it?”

  “Chicken scaloppini,” I said proudly. “With mushrooms and quinoa pilaf with kale, brown rice and garbanzo beans. And don’t worry, everything’s okay for Robbie to eat.”

  She looked at me like I had just announced my new best friend was an alien called ET, and I liked to ride around with him in the basket of my bicycle. She even reached out and touched my forehead, like she was taking my temperature.

  “You’re a real comedian, you know that, Mom,” I said.

  Everyone raved over dinner. “I never knew you could cook, Melissa,” my father said. “This is better than anything your mother makes.”

  Wrong move, Dad, I thought. “Mom has to work all day, Dad,” I said, bailing him out. “I just read a cookbook and came up with this recipe because I had the time.”

  “You mean you made the recipe up?” my mother asked. “How did you know it would work?”

  “I read the book, and then I put together some stuff you had in the cabinet and the fridge. Isn’t that how you’re supposed to cook?”

  Both my parents gave me that alien look again. “Can you make dinner for us from now on?” Robbie asked.

  I kicked him under the table. “Mom is a great cook.” I wasn’t going to saddle myself with domestic duties. “This was just a one-time thing.”

  My mom got this crafty look in her eyes, like the time I expressed a mild interest in flowers in eighth grade and she conned me into weeding the beds in the front yard all summer. But I’m way smarter than that now. I just went on eating and didn’t say anything about the gluten-free red velvet cupcakes I had baked for dessert.

  I figured the only person who could understand this weird thing happening with my brain was Daniel, but I felt awkward about talking to him. He didn’t have a cell phone so I couldn’t text him or anything, and I wasn’t going to call his house. He was probably at work at ComputerCo or something anyway.

  Tuesday morning in school we were both very shy with each other, just mumbling hi and then sitting down. But when Mrs. Ash asked a question about The Catcher in the Rye, I surprised myself by raising my hand to answer.

  I think she was as surprised as I was. I had never been the wave your hand kind of kid who always had something to say. I thought of myself as the deeper soul, the one who had to dredge answers up from the very bowels of my being, suffused with all the agony and angst of being seventeen.

  That Melissa Torani was gone. In her place was a perky girl who had lots of interesting things to say. What the fuck?

  “I’m so pleased you read the whole book, when it isn’t even due for another week,” Mrs. Ash said, when I finished. “You must have liked it.”

  She was beaming so much you’d think I’d offered up a cure for cancer, instead of an analysis of Holden Caulfield’s search for truth in a world of phonies.

  After class Daniel fell in next to me as we were walking to math class. “That was a really good point you made,” he said.

  “You read the whole book too, didn’t you?”

  He nodded. “Once I pick up a book I mostly finish it, except for text books. It’s just easier that way.”

  Easier. Shit. Homework had never been particularly easy for me. Not hard, either, just something you had to slog through. But if I could read a whole novel in an hour at home, not even noticing the time passing, what else could I do?

  I wanted to ask Daniel about it, but we were already at Iccanello’s classroom. Then we went off in different directions, and then there was lunch and AP history. I hadn’t tried anything with the history textbook, so I kept quiet during class, afraid Mrs. Berger would call on me.

  As we were walking out of history, Daniel said, “I told my mother about you.”

  I looked at him. “And?”

  “And she wants to meet you. She wants to know if you can come to dinner with us on Saturday night. She says your family have given me so many dinners it’s time for me to pay you back.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I had a feeling that if I asked my parents they would say no, but I couldn’t say that to Daniel. “I’ll have to ask. I think maybe we were supposed to go to my aunt’s or something on Saturday.”

  He looked disappointed. “Well, if not this Saturday, maybe another?”

  “Like I said, I’ll ask.” Brie came up then, and I split off to head toward the bus with her.

  “You’re really getting serious with him, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.” I felt like there was some kind of wailing in my voice, something very unfamiliar to me. “My parents like him but they’re worried about me getting involved with him. Maybe Chelsea’s right and I shouldn’t see him anymore.”

  “You’re taking relationship advice from Chelsea now?”

  I looked at her, and we both burst out laughing. Chelsea couldn’t hold a boyfriend if he was super-glued to her hands. Every boy who liked her was chased away by her attitude within a couple of dates.

  When the Big Mistake and I got home, he went up to his room, and I sat down in the living room, where my mom was reading a textbook for renewing her real estate license.

  She put down her
reading glasses and looked at me. “How was school?”

  “Okay. We’re reading The Catcher in the Rye for English class.”

  “I loved that book when I was your age,” she said, leaning back against the sofa. “How far have you read?”

  “I finished it. It was good, I guess.”

  “You finished it? When? I haven’t seen you reading.”

  “I read it in bed, all right? Is this the Spanish Inquisition or something?”

  She held up her hand. “Hey, I’m glad you liked it. I was in an interpretive reading contest in high school, and I was up against this boy from one of the Catholic high schools. He chose a passage from Catcher in the Rye, but his coach made him cut out all the bad words. It was silly.”

  “Were you a geek in high school, Mom?”

  She ran her hand through her hair. She had taken the French braid out and it hung to her shoulders in a sleek, straight drop. I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t inherited her hair.

  “My friends and I were all smart,” she said. “But we had other interests too.”

  “Dating?”

  She picked up her glasses and played with the earpiece. “In a way. Mostly we went out as groups, boys and girls. Wayne Greer’s mom had a big Ford station wagon, and so he usually drove. We would go out to the movies and then maybe for ice cream or something afterward.”

  “Did you have boyfriends before Dad?”

  “I wasn’t a nun, Melissa. And your father and I don’t expect you to be one either.” She took a deep breath. “Daniel isn’t asking you to…do anything, is he?”

  “He is.”

  She put the glasses down and looked at me.

  “He asked me to come to dinner with him and his mom on Saturday night.” I smiled sweetly. “Can I go?”

  “Why did I ever want to have children? You just love to torment me, don’t you?”

  “I have to have some fun.” I toyed with the strap of my backpack. “Do you think I shouldn’t go out with Daniel because he’s poor and he lives in Levittown and he doesn’t have a father?”