Soul Kiss

by Neil S. Plakcy

  “They’ve put you to work now?” my mother asked. “That’s not right. You’re only seventeen.”

  “Mom. This is so exciting. It’s like we’re helping out with national security or something.”

  “I just want you to come home, sweetheart. I won’t feel right until I see you back here.”

  “Honestly, Mom. When I’m home you ignore me. Go fix Robbie some weird food or something. Go online and research his condition. Call his doctor or that parents support group. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

  “Melissa! How can you say that?”

  “Because it’s true, Mom.”

  “It most certainly is not. What about all those piano lessons I took you to? Every parent-teacher night, every time you were in a school play. All those hours I spent reading to you, going over your homework with you? How can you be so ungrateful!”

  In the background I heard my father say, “That’s enough, Caroline. Give me the phone.”

  Was that true? Had my parents really spent all that time paying attention to me? Was I just a jealous, ungrateful little bitch?

  “Your mother is upset, Melissa,” my father said. “Both of us just want you home, safe. We love you.”

  “I know, Dad. I’m sorry I made Mom go crazy. I love you both, and I’ll be home soon.”

  I hung up the phone and stared at the wall in front of me. For years I’d been nurturing this grudge, feeling that my parents never loved me or paid attention to me because the Big Mistake was so much trouble, because he seemed to suck all the oxygen from the room.

  But what if my mom and dad had been taking care of me too, all that time? It couldn’t have been easy for them, both of them working, dealing with all Robbie’s problems and still trying to keep the house going. I did remember my mom taking me to buy new shoes, running me to the doctor and the dentist, making dinner every night for us. That had to have been hard. And even once they got Robbie on the right diet, there were still so many things to do—laundry and taking care of the yard, and looking after my mom’s parents when they got sick. And I had been so mean and ungrateful the whole time.

  “Melissa?” Daniel asked. “What’s the matter? Why are you crying?”

  I didn’t even realize I had been. I wiped a tear out of my eye and said, “I want to go home. I don’t want to leave you alone, but I want to see my mom and dad. Even the Big Mistake.”

  Angus came in with pizza then. “Don’t worry, Melissa. Things are breaking fast. We may be able to send you guys home tomorrow.”

  For the first time, food in Miami was totally familiar. The pizza tasted just like the ones that Brie’s family got, with a crispy thin crust, spicy sausage and sliced mushrooms. I was totally in heaven.

  By the time we finished dinner, I was feeling tired. We had been concentrating all day, and I just wanted to relax and watch something stupid on TV. I asked Angus if they still needed us, or if we could go back to the motel.

  He said, “Let me see what I can do,” and walked out of the room.

  “How are you feeling, Daniel?” I asked.

  “Tired. We didn’t really do anything all day but read, but I can barely keep my eyes open.”

  “Me too.” I snuggled up next to him and rested my head on his shoulder. “This has been amazing, but I’m ready to go home.”

  “Me, too. But I want my mother to be there.”

  Daniel and I both closed our eyes, and Angus startled us when he came back in the room. “They can do without me. Come on, I’ll take you over to the motel.”

  “Are those men we found the information on the ones who hurt Daniel’s mom?” I asked, as we walked to his little car.

  “I don’t know, Melissa,” Angus said.

  “And you wouldn’t tell us if you did.”

  “Some things are classified,” he said, getting behind the wheel. “But I really don’t know that, and I don’t think we’ll know until we pick those guys up and question them. And honestly, maybe not even then.”

  I was happy to be helping the FBI, don’t get me wrong. But I was tired, I wanted to go home, and I didn’t know when that was going to happen. That was not a good feeling.

  Another Kiss

  As we drove back to the motel, I realized that neither Daniel nor I had any clean clothes for the next day. “Is there a washing machine anywhere?” I asked Angus.

  “Beats me. Let me see.”

  He called someone, probably Roly, who told him to take us to a mall down the street and buy us some clean clothes. We went into a big discount store, and I made a beeline for some new stuff. Daniel and Angus trailed along behind me.

  All my tiredness was gone and I felt giddy. “Do we have a budget?” I asked, picking out a shirt with a label I recognized and holding it against me.

  “Don’t go overboard,” Angus said. “Just get what you need.”

  I made a noise through my lips and went back to looking. “Come on, Daniel, you want to look at stuff for you?” Angus asked.

  “No, wait,” I said. “I want to shop for Daniel.”

  The two of them looked at each other. “I’d do what the lady says, if I were you,” Angus said.

  “Good answer.” I picked out a nice gauzy pink dress with spaghetti straps, and a black T-shirt to go underneath it. A new pair of jeans with studs embroidered up the legs, and a flowered tank top. I sent the guys over to the men’s’ department while I picked out my undies, then met up with them as Angus was holding up shirts.

  “I want to see Daniel in polo shirts.” I picked a bright green one and a dark blue one off the rack. “And you need new jeans, ones that fit you.” I flipped through them until I found his size and then sent him off to the dressing room. Angus and I stood by a display of belts and ties to wait for him.

  “He’s a good kid,” Angus said. “I hope everything works out for him.”

  “I did something I should tell him about, but I’m not sure how,” I said.

  Angus turned to me. “Really? What’s that?”

  “I applied to college for him.”

  He looked confused. “How did you do that?”

  I explained how I had hacked into his school account, written his essays, and used my mother’s credit card. “I know, it was all wrong. But he wasn’t even going to apply. And you see how smart he is.”

  “You can’t run Daniel’s life for him, Melissa.” He leaned back against the display. “That’s why I broke up with the last guy I dated. He didn’t like me being an agent. He wanted me to go back to accounting, get a real job. He said I was just playing around, that I needed to grow up.”

  “How rude! You’re a really good agent.”

  “You don’t know that,” he said, smiling. “But I like my job, and I didn’t appreciate anybody trying to tell me what to do.”

  “I know, I have to tell him,” I said. “When this is all over.”

  Angus shook his head as Daniel came out of the dressing room.

  Looking at him all the time, I sometimes forgot how gorgeous he was. And those awful thrift shop clothes didn’t help. But wearing the right color shirt, one that fit his body like a second skin, and jeans that flattered him, he was breathtaking. I even heard Angus make an appreciative little noise.

  “We’re taking all that.” I turned to Angus. “Can he wear it out?”

  “Let’s pay for it all and he can wear it tomorrow,” Angus said.

  We checked out, and Angus said, “There’s a Starbucks down the street. What do you say we get some coffee, and you guys can talk.”

  “Angus,” I said.

  “Melissa,” he said right back to me.

  We rode to the coffee shop in silence. We all ordered, and Angus paid, and then he took his coffee and stepped outside to make a phone call. That left me and Daniel.

  “I have to tell you something,” I said, as we sat down in a pair of big armchairs.

  “What’s that?” He raised his coffee to his lips.

  “I applied to college for you.”


  He nearly choked. “What?”

  I explained it just as I’d told Angus. “I told you I don’t want to go to college,” he said when I was finished.

  “How can you become the person you’re supposed to be if you don’t?” I asked. “See how things worked out today? You’re so smart. You can do so much. And now that the FBI is going after the people who’ve been chasing your mom, you won’t have anything holding you back.”

  He just sipped his coffee.

  “By the time school starts in the fall, your mom will be healthy again, so you won’t have to look after her. And I’m sure she’d want you to go to college. Wasn’t she a teacher back in Cuba?”

  He nodded.

  “And your father had a degree too, right? So you owe it to them to do the most with what you have.”

  “You still shouldn’t have done it. And you wrote my essays!”

  “I tried to write them the way you would.”

  “That doesn’t matter. Now I owe your mother for the application fees. Your parents are going to be mad that you used your mother’s credit card. And they’ll blame it on me.”

  Angus came back inside and looked at us. “You guys ready?”

  Daniel stood up. “Yeah. Let’s get moving.”

  He didn’t touch me in the backseat, and I didn’t know if he was angry or just thinking.

  Angus came up to my room to watch TV with me and Daniel, and he sat in the armchair while I sat on the bed. After thinking about it, Daniel sat next to me, though not close.

  “Is it hard being an FBI agent?” he asked Angus, while I fiddled with the remote.

  “It’s a very demanding job. You have to be in peak physical condition, and you have to be smart, and know a lot of stuff. But it’s also the coolest job ever. I have a degree in accounting, and if I didn’t work for the Bureau I’d be stuck behind a desk somewhere auditing financial statements. Doing the kind of tedious stuff you guys were doing today.”

  “But you were doing that stuff too,” Daniel said.

  “Yeah, but I get to carry a gun,” Angus said, showing us the one on his belt. “And I get out of the office too. Chasing bad guys and interviewing people and all kinds of stuff.” He looked over at Daniel. “You think you might want to be an agent?”

  “Maybe.”

  Angus nodded. “You have to finish college first. And then you’ll want to get a graduate degree in something—forensics or accounting or law. A lot of the guys have very specialized knowledge that comes in handy.” He looked over at me. “So what’s on TV?”

  We watched a couple of brainless shows for a while, which was just what Daniel and I both needed. We laughed at a comedy and groaned at the dumb antics of a reality show. Just before eleven o’clock, Angus’s phone rang.

  I muted the TV and he stepped over to the window to talk. When he finished, he turned back to us. “Good news. They pulled in the guys you found in your research.”

  “So we can go home?” I asked.

  “Let’s see what happens in the interrogations,” Angus said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a plane flight in your immediate future.”

  I was hoping that Angus would let Daniel stay in my room that night, but no such luck. He ushered him next door to share with Egidio again.

  For a while I just lay there in bed, staring out at the lights of a big hospital across the street. So much had happened in the last few days—running away with Daniel, meeting Egidio, Roly and Angus, discovering how we could use our brainpower to help the FBI. We knew now that there were other kids out there like Daniel. And maybe even other kids like me. What did that mean for the future? Would we just go back to our regular old high school lives, or would things change?

  I thought until my brain shut down I went to sleep. The next morning I washed my hair, dried it so that it was almost straight, and put on my new dress. We were still having our adventure, and I was determined to make the most of it, even if I did want to go home so much that it made my stomach hurt.

  When I got downstairs, Egidio, Daniel, and Angus were in the restaurant. Angus and Daniel had big plates of food in front of them, but all Egidio had was a couple of slices of pineapple and mango and another of those cafecitos. No wonder he was so scrawny.

  “You are very beautiful, Melissa,” he said, as I walked up. “That color suits you well.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smiling. I helped myself to the buffet again. I could get used to that, I thought, being able to choose whatever I wanted for breakfast, not just what my mom wanted to serve. But then I remembered my parents and I wanted to go home again.

  Daniel wasn’t talking to me much. I figured he was still pissed that I’d applied to Penn for him, but he’d get over it. I hoped.

  When we were all finished, Angus drove us over to the FBI office, and Roly met us in the conference room. “Good news all around. Mrs. Florez is well enough to be transferred back to a hospital in Levittown, and we’re sending you both home this afternoon. I already spoke to your mother, Melissa, and she agreed that Daniel can stay at your house until his mother comes home.”

  “I can stay at the apartment,” Daniel said. “Or I can stay here in Miami with Egidio.”

  My heart skipped a beat. Did that mean he was still upset with me over the college thing? That he wanted to break up with me?

  Roly shook his head. “No can do. You need to go back to school in Pennsylvania. And we’d like the two of you together, so we can do some more tests. We’ve notified the local police too. They’ll do some extra passes by Melissa’s house, just in case anything else happens.”

  I looked over at Daniel. He shrugged.

  We didn’t talk much for the rest of the morning. Roly had a bunch of things he wanted us to read, and then we had to say good-bye to Egidio. He hugged us both. “I am so glad to be able to see you again, Danielito,” he said. “Now that there is less to be afraid of, I hope I will see you and your mother again very soon.”

  “Adios, tio,” Daniel said. I knew enough Spanish to know that meant uncle. I guessed that meant Daniel had accepted that Egidio was his great-uncle. That was good. He needed some more family.

  Angus took us to the Miami airport in his little car, zooming through the traffic. “You have to take a driving test to be in the FBI?” I asked from the back seat, as he zipped around a pickup truck then across two lanes toward an exit.

  “Yeah, we take a defensive driving course,” he said. “I’m good, aren’t I?”

  “That isn’t what I’d call it,” I said. Even though the car was tiny I slid back and forth across the seat as Angus took turns.

  He parked in the short-term lot and walked us through picking up our tickets, then took us to the security gate. “You guys okay from here?” he asked.

  “Sure,” Daniel said.

  “Your mom will be at the hospital by this evening, and Melissa’s dad is going to drive you over there on the way home from the airport. So you know you need to catch this plane, right?”

  “I know,” Daniel said. Then he turned and hugged Angus.

  I could tell Angus wasn’t expecting that. But he put his arms around Daniel and hugged him back. “You were awesome.” Angus looked at me. “Both of you. I don’t know if I could have held it together as well as you guys did when I was your age.”

  Daniel let him go, and I hugged Angus too. I felt like he had become our friend. “Will you get a promotion or anything from this?” I asked.

  “Don’t need a promotion. I love my job just the way it is. But it won’t hurt me to have been in this, even though most of the credit goes to Roly, and to you guys.”

  He stayed on the other side of security as we went through, taking off our shoes and walking through the metal detector. When I turned around he was still there, and he waved good-bye.

  I felt like crying again. I was so happy to be going home, but I was sorry to say good-bye to Angus and Roly and Egidio and all the exciting stuff we had been through.

  Daniel and I sat n
ext to each other on the uncomfortable plastic chairs at the gate, waiting to board our flight to Philadelphia. He turned to me and said, “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “For everything. For coming with me. For being my girlfriend.” He smiled. “Even for making the application to Penn for me.”

  I leaned over and we kissed. I felt those same sparks going through my brain, the ones I’d felt the very first time Daniel and I kissed. Who knew what signals he was sending me? Only time would tell us both.