Confessions of a Serial Kisser

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  When was the last time I'd thought about sand?

  I got up and trudged over to the swings, where Adrienne and I used to try to loop over the top. Way, way high we'd swing, catching air, thumping hard as gravity reclaimed us, trying again, thumping again, twisting and crashing and squealing.

  I sat on one of the hard rubber seats and pushed off. The seat felt snug against my hips, the chain warm in my hands. I leaned back and held my legs out. I pumped and pulled and drove myself higher. Higher. Higher. I pumped until I thought the swing might break, until the chain might pull apart from the frame. Then I scooped through the air a few more times, coasting back and forth, panting, my stomach becoming queasy, the earth starting to spin.

  I ground to a halt and staggered away, my insides completely topsy-turvy.

  72

  Ditch Day

  "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" my mother demanded when I finally dragged myself home around eight o'clock.

  "Swinging," I answered glumly.

  "Swinging?"

  She was looking at me skeptically, so I unlaced a shoe and shook sand into the trash.

  "But why?" she asked.

  I shrugged. "Felt like it, I guess."

  She studied me a minute, then stroked my shoulder and said, "Honey? Is there something you want to talk about?"

  I shrugged again. "I'm fine. I'm just tired. I think I'll take a shower and go to bed."

  She didn't pry, which I really appreciated. But in the morning I still felt...quiet. I looked through the clothes I'd slowly been collecting from my mother's boxes and realized that I didn't want to wear any of them.

  I wanted my own jeans. My own tops. My own face.

  When I left the house, I had every intention of going to school. But then I took a detour to Starbucks for a wake-up frappuccino, which led to me taking a seat in a comfy corner chair, which led to me ditching school.

  I just didn't have the energy to face anything about school.

  Not the incomplete homework.

  Not Robbie or Justin or Andrew or Eddie or Stu or Paxton or Trevor.

  And especially not Adrienne.

  I just didn't know what to say to Adrienne.

  Besides, if Brody was suspended for saving me from urinal ill repute, shouldn't I be suspended, too? It didn't seem fair that he was kicked out for something I'd put into motion.

  I thought about going over to the Willows' to talk to Brody, but bottom line, I chickened out. Instead, I whiled away the morning sipping a grande mocha frappuccino and rereading A Crimson Kiss.

  The disturbing thing was, I couldn't get into it. I tried to escape into its pages, tried to get swept away by the story, but it just felt so...flat. And the harder I tried, the more empty I felt. Betrayed, almost. Like when I needed it most, it just didn't deliver. The words were just words. They no longer spoke to me.

  I knew I couldn't blame the book.

  It was me.

  What was wrong with me?

  73

  Escape

  I FINALLY LEFT STARBUCKS and started walking to the only place I could think to go.

  "Bubbles?" Izzy said as I pushed through the Groove Records door. He was obviously not completely awake, as it was only eleven (still early by musician standards) and the store had just opened.

  "I'm ditching," I grumbled. "And you'd better not rat me out."

  He chuckled, "Me? You gotta be kidding." He leaned his forearms on the counter and said, "But what's got you so bent?"

  I put up a hand. "Izzy, please. I'm in crisis mode. I'm here to escape. Can you just put on some music?"

  "Crisis mode? Hey..." He came from around the counter. "What's going on, Evangeline?"

  I raised my eyebrows. Evangeline? He'd never called me Evangeline.

  He'd also never looked this serious.

  No, concerned.

  I looked at him and suddenly realized that Izzy wasn't just my dad's old mentor. He wasn't just the guy who ran Groove Records. He was somebody who'd been in my life...forever.

  He was actually my friend.

  It flashed through my mind that it would be easy to do the ol' my-parents-are-making-me-miserable routine, but I didn't want to. Except for Adrienne, I hadn't really talked to anyone about school, and now I was even having problems with her. And although there was no way I was going to tell Izzy about my kamikaze kissing, I suddenly did want to tell him something. So I shrugged and said, "Things have been kinda rough at school lately."

  He looked at me thoughtfully. "How so?"

  "I don't know." I started shuffling through a bargain bin of pre-owned CDs, just to avoid looking at him. "I just feel kind of lost. Like my friends don't really know who I am anymore." I laughed, but there wasn't much humor in it. "Actually, it's more like I don't know who I am anymore." I looked at him. "I feel like I don't know what I'm doing, or even what I want."

  He nodded, and for some reason he seemed so wise. So centered and sure and steady. "Well, what do you care about? That's where you've got to start. What do you really care about?"

  What did I care about? I paused and gave it some thought. A crimson kiss? That used to be what I wanted, but now I wasn't so sure. Especially after this morning, when the book had just left me flat. Maybe it was more the passion of it. Maybe that's what I wanted more than the kiss.

  The passion.

  To really, really care.

  He saw my hesitation. "May I make a suggestion?"

  I shrugged.

  "Sometime the things we really want are right there in front of us. We just don't see them." It was his turn to shuffle through the CDs. "I've actually been thinking about you and your dad since the last time you were here."

  "Aw, Izzy, please."

  I turned to go, but he stopped me. "No, no! I'm not talkin' about your family problems. I'm talkin' about the music your old man's turned you on to. Stevie Ray, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix--"

  "Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, yeah, yeah, he's definitely covered rock and the blues," I said, feeling completely exasperated. Izzy obviously had no idea what I was going through--why had I even opened my mouth?

  But then he said something that completely threw me. "What about the chicks?" he asked. "The, uh, women of rock?"

  I blinked at him.

  "You didn't know about Grace Slick. That really shocked me. What about Janis Joplin? Aretha Franklin? How about Bonnie Raitt?"

  This seemed so out of left field. I didn't know why we were having this conversation. "I've heard of them, of course."

  "But didn't your old man ever play them for you?"

  I shrugged. "I've heard cuts on the radio...."

  "But you haven't studied them like you have the guys." He was suddenly very...agitated. He was starting to twitch all over. His shoulder, his neck, his other shoulder..."So to you the blues, hell, rock, it's a man's world."

  Before I could fully process this statement, he leaned in and said, "Evangeline, you've been coming here since you were knee high to a grasshopper. You know more about music than most musicians. You care about it more than most musicians. I keep expecting you to take up guitar, but you haven't. You never even stick your nose inside the guitar room. Why not?"

  I just stared.

  I didn't know why not.

  He pulled me along through the store, saying, "You want to escape? You want to know who you are? This is how you do it."

  74

  Rock School

  IZZY PULLED a worn blond wood guitar off the wall. "Fender Strat--classic Clapton guitar." He plugged it into a large, tattered black amplifier. "Marshall amp--classic Hendrix, Clapton, hell, anybody amp."

  He strapped the guitar over my head and helped me get comfortable. It was heavier than I'd expected.

  He flicked down some switches on the amp, and a short while later it was letting off a buzz, which for some reason made my heart start pounding.

  Just touching the strings made a sound.

  A cool, powerful sound.

  "Forget sc
ales, forget theory, forget songs," Izzywas saying as he positioned my fingers on two strings. "Say hello to the power chord."

  "Hello, power chord?" I joked, afraid to move.

  He laughed and handed over a guitar pick. "Play!"

  "Play?"

  "Play!"

  So I took the pick and I hit the strings.

  It sounded thuddy.

  He repositioned my fingers a little and said, "Try again."

  I hit again, and this time the strings rang.

  He twisted the knobs on the amplifier. "Again!"

  So I hit again, and suddenly the room, my arms, my whole body was filled with an awesome sense of power.

  "Again!" he said when he saw my wide eyes.

  So I struck again.

  And again!

  "Wow!"

  "That's my girl! That," he said, moving in, "is an E power chord." He repositioned my fingers. "This is an A..."

  Switching between E and A was a thrill. A rush. A...

  "Isn't that a gas?" Izzy asked.

  "Yes!" I laughed.

  He introduced me to a few more chords, showed me a basic riff, then left me alone to practice. And did I practice! When I finally left Izzy's, my fingers were aching and blistered, and I was in the best mood of my life.

  I knew how to do the riff to AC/DC's "Highway to Hell"!

  (It was pretty crude, but still!)

  Brody and kissing and school (which had already been out for over an hour) were the farthest things from my mind. I cruised home, singing, "I'm on the highway to hell! On the highway to hell!"

  Which, unfortunately, is exactly where I wound up.

  75

  Roadblocked

  AS IT TURNS OUT, my mother had also ditched. Seeing her in the kitchen startled me, but I tried to act nonchalant as I said, "Oh, hi."

  "Oh, hi," she said evenly, then immediately called my dad. "She's here." She kept the conversation brief, then looked at me and said, "I got an automated call from the school this morning, informing me that you were absent."

  They did that? They had no system for stopping mass murderers or drug dealers from traipsing around campus, but they had automated attendance security?

  What kind of insane priorities did our school have?

  "Oh, God," I said with an exasperated sigh as I hurled down my book bag. "Does everything always have to be such a downer?"

  She ignored my question and instead crossed her arms and said, "Adrienne also called, looking for you. She thought you might be sick."

  I rolled my eyes and plopped into a chair.

  "I asked her what was going on with you, and I finally got it out of her."

  "Oh?" I gave a little squint. "So tell me--what is going on with me?"

  "Apparently you've become a serial kisser."

  "A what?"

  "Those are her words, not mine."

  "She called me a serial kisser?" I flipped my hands up and rolled my eyes. "That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard! So I've kissed a few guys, so what?"

  "Well, apparently your name is winding up on urinals, and boys are getting suspended on your behalf, and people are confused by your kisses."

  "Oh, God. Why couldn't she just keep her mouth shut?"

  "Because she cares about you, that's why!"

  "She's mad at me, that's why! She's trying to get back at me, that's why!"

  My mother took a deep breath and said, "Tell me where you've been all day. Have you been out kissing people?"

  I laughed because it was such a bizarre question. And really, would I say yes if I had been? "I was at Groove Records," I said. "Didn't kiss a soul."

  "You were at Izzy's? All day?" She said it like she both didn't believe it and was afraid it might be true.

  "All day," I said. "Izzy taught me how to play guitar."

  She blinked at me, her mouth suddenly pinched into a little knot.

  "See?" I said, sticking out my swollen and very pink fingertips.

  The doorbell rang.

  "Oh, great," I grumbled. "I can't believe you called Dad. There's no way I'm talking to him." I sat up a little as she headed for the door. "I'm actually extra mad at him--why didn't he ever teach me how to play guitar?"

  But it wasn't my dad. It was Adrienne. In tears. Flushed and hyperventilating. "You," she said, pointing a shaky finger at me, "are no longer my friend! I want nothing more to do with you or your psycho lips! You stay away from me, you stay away from my brother, and you stay away from Paxton!"

  "Paxton?" my mother asked. "Who's Paxton?"

  "The guy I'm in love with!" She turned to me and screamed, "You knew I was crazy about him and you kissed him!"

  "I didn't know!" I cried. "Adrienne! I--"

  She left, slamming the door, so I charged after her.

  Unfortunately, I found myself roadblocked by my dad.

  76

  The Clash

  IT TOOK TEN MINUTES of struggling and screaming and trying to get out the door before I finally gave up. Adrienne was long gone, and something about my parents fighting together against me completely wore me out.

  And while I was panting in a chair, trying to recover, my mother told my dad everything Adrienne had told her.

  "A serial kisser?" he said, looking at me in disbelief. "Good God."

  I glowered at him. "Quite the puritanical reaction from someone who's cheated on his wife."

  "Stop that, Evangeline!" my mother commanded. "His behavior doesn't justify yours! His behavior doesn't have anything to do with yours!"

  The room fell deadly quiet, which my dad fixed by saying, "Does it? Is this your way of acting out against your mother and me for getting back together? Because if it is, it's not going to change anything. Your mother and I are working things out, and--"

  "And that's something most kids would be thrilled about," my mom said, her eyes pleading. "Honey, most kids whose parents split up want them to get back together; to be a family again. If I can forgive him, that should be the end of it!"

  The whole earth seemed to spin for a moment as I finally figured out what was wrong with her logic. I blinked at them both, then slowly rose to my feet. "This is not about just the two of you! It quit being about the two of you when you had me. It's about the three of us." I turned to my dad and said, "It's about the trust I had in you. About the faith I had in you. About the belief I had that I was your 'angel' and that you would always be there for me!" My chin was quivering and my eyes were brimming. "You told me, you promised me, that you would be and I believed you. Idiot that I was, I believed you!"

  I bolted into my room and wedged my chair up against the knob. Then I threw myself onto my bed and sobbed my heart out.

  77

  Puffy Eyes

  THE NEXT MORNING I woke up wiped out, with horribly puffy eyes. "Oh, great," I moaned into the bathroom mirror, then staggered into the kitchen to retrieve the herbal compress.

  My mother and father were at the kitchen table, drinking coffee.

  "Oh, great," I moaned again, yanking open the refrigerator.

  "Ready to talk?" my mom asked calmly, her coffee mug poised at chin level.

  I grabbed the compress and staggered back to my room. "I'm not going to school," I said flatly.

  "Then we're not going to work," my mother said. "We'll be right here when you decide you'd like to try to talk this out."

  I staggered back to my room and fell asleep for about an hour, but when I peeked out my bedroom door, they were still there.

  Once again I felt trapped. And I considered escaping through the window, but where would I go? My eyes made me a one-woman freak show. Once upon a time I would have run straight to the Willows', but that fairy tale had come to an abrupt (and unexpectedly tragic) end.

  So I stayed put. And I didn't actually spend much time brooding about my parents. What was the use? They were going to do what they wanted to do.

  Adrienne was the one I couldn't stop thinking about. I had to find some way to explain things to her
. I hadn't set out to kiss her true love first. I wasn't a back stabber with psycho lips! I was her best friend!

  But in the pit of my stomach I didn't feel like a best friend.

  And as I sat trapped in my room, it occurred to me that all this heartache might be for something that didn't even exist. What if there was no such thing as a perfect kiss? What if it was some unattainable ideal that only existed in movies and between the covers of a book?

  But Adrienne was real. Her friendship had been real. She'd been there for me through everything! I couldn't imagine my life without her.

  No, I had to find some way to explain.

  I had to apologize.

  I had to fix things!

  But she was at school, and I wasn't about to go there with my insanely puffy eyes. So I sat down at my desk and wrote her a note. A letter, actually. I explained everything and told her how sorry I was, and how much I appreciated what a great friend she'd been and how I'd do anything to get her to forgive me.

  After reading it over, I realized that it was disjointed and rambling, and that I'd forgotten to say a few things.

  I'd just begun rewriting it when my father came into my room. "What do you say we all take a walk?"

  I looked over at him. "What do you say you walk yourself right out of my room?"

  My mother was next. "Please, honey, you need to come out here and talk."

  "No, I don't," I told her.

  Around eleven-thirty my father tried again, this time bringing with him a sandwich flanked with apple slices.

  I gave him a searing look. "What makes you think you can just come in here?"

  He sat down anyway and tried to talk, but I ignored him and his pathetic peace offering. Finally he went away.

  I rewrote Adrienne's letter four times. I kept adding things, changing things. And when I'd completed the fourth rewrite, I discovered that I'd absentmindedly eaten most of the sandwich and apple slices. "Moron," I grumbled. And because I was obsessing to the point where I had eaten the enemy's food, I declared the letter to be good enough. I folded it, origami-style, into the shape of an envelope, wrote Adrienne's name on the outside, and put it in my pocket. Then very quietly I wedged my desk chair up against my doorknob, and for the first time in my life I escaped my parents through a window.