Confessions of a Serial Kisser

by Wendelin Van Draanen

  78

  Jagged Halves

  IT MADE NO SENSE to go to the Willows' house and wait. School was in session for another two hours, and afterward Adrienne would (most likely) have stories to cover or songs to sing. So despite my bedraggled state, I walked to school and waited for Adrienne outside her fifth-period class. I made no eye contact with anyone. I just stood by, my heart beating faster and faster as the end of class neared.

  When Adrienne appeared, she threw her nose in the air and marched past me. "Here," I said, falling in step beside her. "Please read this."

  She refused to take the letter.

  So I forced it on her, and her response was to rip it in half.

  "Nothing you can say will make this better," she said, and threw the halves at me.

  I watched in disbelief as she walked off. We'd been friends, sisters our whole lives. How could she not even read what I had to say? I'd spent the entire day agonizing over it, and in one measly second it was in jagged halves at my feet.

  I picked up the pieces, licked my wounds a moment, then left school.

  79

  Revelation

  I MIGHT HAVE LEFT THE LETTER on Brody's windshield, but Brody was suspended, so there was no windshield. And I might have gone to the Willows' to apologize to Brody and explain everything (as best I could, considering I didn't really understand it myself) and ask him to talk to Adrienne, but I wasn't that brave.

  So instead I went to the Willows' and left the two halves of my letter on their welcome mat. I splayed them slightly, the jagged edges touching at the bottom and separated at the top. To me it looked like a broken heart. To anyone else it probably looked like a pathetic, ripped-up note.

  When I returned to the condo, my father's Mustang was no longer parked out front.

  Hallelujah.

  My mother, however, was still parked inside.

  And she was fuming.

  "We've been worried sick about you! We finally broke into your room and discovered you'd snuck out the window. Where have you been? What have you been doing?"

  "Look. I've got bigger problems than you and the jerk!"

  "Stop that!" she snapped. "He's your father! Why are you so unforgiving?"

  "When I can forget," I snarled at her, "that's when I'll forgive."

  "It works the other way around!" she shouted as I locked myself back in my room.

  Around seven o'clock I snuck into the kitchen, got the phone, and called the Willows'. "Adrienne," I said when she answered. "Please don't hang up."

  She hung up.

  I tried again.

  She didn't even answer, and midway through the recording of their message machine, it clicked off. Like somebody had yanked it out of the wall.

  I tried again.

  The line beeped endlessly with a busy signal.

  I skulked back to my room and just lay on my bed looking up at the tacky cottage-cheese-textured ceiling. I thought about Adrienne and wondered how in the world I was going to make things right. Why wouldn't she at least listen? Didn't we have enough shared past to get us through this?

  Then somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard a sound. A distant, whooshing sound. Like someone whispering through the cracks around a bolted steel door.

  "Hyp-o-crite," the voice whispered. "Hyp-o-crite!"

  Slowly, eerily, my skin began to crawl.

  I sat up, wrestling madly to close the door, but the voice blasted it open.

  "Hyp-o-crite!"

  And there it was--a mind-blowing revelation.

  I'd been acting just like my dad.

  And Adrienne was acting just like me.

  80

  Ice Cream Therapy

  STANDING FACE TO FACE with my own hypocrisy was hard. And it was easy to rationalize. What I'd done didn't compare to what my dad had done. Impulsively kissing a guy was nothing like breaking your marriage vows! Anyone who thought they were comparable was insane!

  Still, the cold winds of my conscience wouldn't let me close the door. And in the end I had to face the heart of the issue: How could I expect Adrienne to forgive me if I wasn't willing to even try to forgive my dad?

  I had no idea how to answer that.

  And so I ate ice cream.

  My mom joined me at the kitchen table but said nothing. She simply scooped her own bowl of double fudge and sat down across from me.

  After my dish was empty, I pushed it away and went straight for the carton.

  My mother hates when I eat out of the carton, but she didn't raise an eyebrow, didn't say a word.

  As I scraped the bottom, I finally broke the silence. "How did you stop being angry?"

  Her spoon tinkled against her bowl. "I guess I just became willing to let it go." She looked at me directly for the first time since she'd sat down. "Anger is a fuel that can only carry you so far." She shrugged. "I guess I started looking for an alternate energy."

  "But how do you do that?"

  She thought a minute. "It started with your father wanting to talk things out. Seeing what the other person is feeling is hard when you're feeling so much yourself, but that's what you've got to try to do. In our case, what happened had nothing to do with you." She reached across the table and took my hand. "But your dad and I were so wrapped up in our own feelings that we didn't see what we'd done to you." She squeezed my hand. "Evangeline, I'm so, so sorry."

  And in that moment of weakness I blurted, "Mom, I had this awful epiphany tonight," and told her everything I'd been going through to try to talk to Adrienne.

  Midway through my story, a knowing smile crept across my mother's face, and when I was done, she shook her head sympathetically and said, "Just like your father."

  I nodded. "Exactly."

  "So where does that leave us?" she asked.

  I looked into the empty carton and sighed. "Needing more ice cream."

  81

  Resident Shrink

  MY MOM DIDN'T TRY TO FORCE THE ISSUE with my dad. Instead, she helped me see that I needed to do something about the mess I'd made for myself at school. "I had some time to think about this while you were locked in your room, sweetheart, and I think it wasn't just the book that made you go after all those kisses. I think it was a way of acting out against your dad."

  "It was not!" I said.

  "Maybe he made you hate men?"

  "I don't hate men! And I'm not a lesbian!"

  She looked shocked. "Who ever said anything about you being a lesbian?" Then very quickly she added, "Not that there would be anything wrong with that."

  I rolled my eyes. "Look. I just wanted to change my life. To take charge of my life. And you know what? It helped a lot. You and Dad dragged me down so bad. You were mopey all the time, he made it so I couldn't go out for volleyball--"

  "You could have, and you should have."

  "Oh, right." I shook my head and took a deep breath. "Anyway, I was only trying to live a little."

  "Okay...," she said after some consideration. "But the real question is, what are you going to do about the mess all this 'living' has gotten you in?"

  "I don't know," I grumbled.

  "Well, there's Adrienne, and there's school. You do not want to be the kind of girl who gets her name scrawled on urinals."

  "I know."

  "So? Any ideas on how to undo the damage?"

  I scowled at her. "Obviously you have some."

  She cocked her head a little, as if she was very clever and about to give me the golden key to solving my problems. "I've heard that in situations like this, it helps to apologize to the people you've hurt." She took a deep breath. "Maybe you should start by apologizing to everyone you've kissed."

  "What? That's insane! Nobody apologizes for kissing. Kissing's like holding hands used to be when you were in high school. It's...it's like saying hi!" I leaned forward. "Besides, what would I say? 'I'm sorry I kissed you'? Like that wouldn't be more insulting than totally ignoring someone for the rest of his life?"

  She eyed me. "Kissin
g is not like holding hands. And it's certainly not like saying hi."

  I leaned back and shook my head. "You're living in a distant era, Mom."

  She gave me a little smile. "Refresh my memory, would you? Why is Adrienne so upset with you?"

  I stared at her, unable to come up with an even remotely logical retort. And long after our conversation was over, the things she'd said lingered.

  But apologize to everyone I'd kissed?

  That was insane!

  How dweeby did I want to be?

  Weren't things bad enough?

  82

  In Search of Lips

  SO YES, IT WAS INSANE, but I set out the next morning to find them, all of them, and apologize. (Well, except for our class joker, Pico Warwick, and the Starbucks guy.) I didn't know exactly what I was going to say, and thinking about it petrified me. So I just made a list of names on a three-by-five card, checked it twice, marched to school, and began scouring the campus.

  No lipstick victims in the quad area.

  None in line for breakfast at the Snack Shack.

  None between the 200 and 300 wings.

  Or between the 300 and 400 wings.

  Or between the 400 and 500 wings.

  Where were all the lips?

  Here I was, poised with apologies (of admittedly questionable content), and no one to deliver them to!

  I moved over to the south part of campus and started checking there. And I was rounding the corner of the 900 wing when I spotted my note-passing classmate from psychology.

  "Andrew!" I called (in an embarrassingly exuberant way). "Andrew, wait up!"

  He turned and looked at me like he wasn't quite awake, but he quickly realized that a frenzied girl was charging toward him.

  "Andrew!" I said, panting as I skidded to a stop. "I...I just..."

  He now looked wide-eyed. Alarmed.

  "Don't worry! I'm not going to kiss you!" I took a deep breath and said, "I just want to apologize for that incident outside of psych class. I was kind of a jerk and I know it and...and I'm sorry."

  Gee. Such eloquence.

  Which also didn't seem to be working.

  He was still looking at me in a very odd way.

  "Andrew?"

  He blinked. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks."

  But it didn't feel okay.

  It felt like he was actually hurt.

  "Look," I said, "I've had an emotional train wreck of a year, and I was...I don't know what I was doing. I'm just sorry, okay? I didn't mean to hurt anybody's feelings, certainly not yours."

  "It's cool," he said, then gave me a sweet smile. "Maybe someday we can even the score?"

  I laughed and said, "Oh, you don't want to kiss me. I'm a confused mess!" I stepped away from him, saying, "But thank you, Andrew. Thanks for understanding."

  Already I felt lighter. Happier. I checked Andrew's name off my list and hurried toward the quad in search of another pair of lips.

  Almost immediately, I spotted Stu, who was hanging out with Sunshine.

  As if Sunshine's presence wasn't enough to make me go AWOL on Stu's apology, I started wondering why he was even on my list. Stu was the one who'd approached me that day at lunch. He'd been the one who'd kissed me. I didn't owe him anything! I might, arguably, even be mad at him. After all, he'd wanted a rating.

  What did he take me for?

  A kiss-o-meter?

  But with a cringe I realized that even if I didn't owe Stu an apology, there was someone in the quad I probably did owe one to.

  I just wasn't sure I was brave enough to deliver it.

  83

  Continued Quest for Ill-Begotten Lips

  SUNSHINE HOLDEN WAS VERY SUSPICIOUS. "What do you mean you're sorry? I thought you hadn't done anything wrong!" Then she started mimicking me in a bitter, sing songy way. "It's not what you think, Sunshine. I have no intention of coming between you guys, Sunshine. He's all yours, Sunshine."

  "Look," I said, trying to focus on my purpose (which did not include getting into a catfight), "I didn't mean to cause any problems, or hurt anybody in any way."

  "Well, guess what? You did."

  I nodded once and said, "I understand that now, and I'm sorry."

  Somehow this emboldened her. She took a step toward me, saying, "Like that makes it any better?"

  There was only so much groveling I was going to do. She wasn't even on the original list! So I put up both hands and said, "I'll leave you two alone now," and took off.

  Between the 100 and 200 wings I pulled out my three-by-five card and crossed off Stu Dillard's name.

  Two down, six to go.

  But as I continued my before-school quest for ill-begotten lips, Stu suddenly came up from behind me. "Is this part of a twelve-step program?" he asked with a playful smirk on his face.

  "Stay away," I warned, looking behind him for Sunshine.

  Instead, he moved toward me, asking, "How's that work? First you admit you have a problem, then you apologize to everyone you've hurt, then you go through the other ten steps...?" His smirk grew bigger as I backed away. "I notice you didn't apologize to me."

  "Stay back!" I said. "I didn't kiss you! You kissed me!"

  "I know," he said, smiling broadly.

  "And I don't have a problem, I was just...confused!" Then I added, "And it obviously didn't hurt you in any way!"

  He was still smiling. "Why don't you let me straighten out some of that confusion?"

  I squared off with him. "This is not a game, Stu. And I don't care what you think, it's not a sport! So just go back to Sunshine and leave me alone!"

  "Ooooh," he said as I pushed past him. "You are sexy when you're mad."

  "On a scale of one to ten?" I tossed over my shoulder. "That line doesn't even rate."

  84

  Crossing a Threshold

  AS I ESCAPED STU, I couldn't help thinking about what he'd said about my being in a twelve-step program.

  How insane was that?

  I wasn't addicted to kissing!

  I hadn't kissed anyone in...days.

  But (despite Sunshine's reaction) the apologizing was making me feel better. So when the warning bell rang, I went directly to math and waited outside the classroom for Robbie Marshall.

  He looked at me warily as he approached.

  "Hey," I said, suddenly tongue-tied. We hadn't really spoken since the hibiscus flower incident.

  He could have just ignored me and walked by, but he stopped. "Hey," he said back.

  Then we just stood there.

  The hustling throngs of students on their way to class began thinning out.

  Still, we just stood there.

  "I'm sorry," I finally blurted. "I just want to say I'm sorry." And when it came out, I realized that I really, truly, was sorry. "You were so nice with the chocolates and the flower and looking up Stevie Ray.... I'm sorry about everything."

  He, also, looked hurt. "Why'd you come on to me if you didn't want me?"

  "I was an idiot, okay? I was confused." That sounded like a complete cop-out, so I heaved a big sigh and said, "I've been a basket case all year. My parents were getting divorced, I had to move, I...I started obsessing over this book about the perfect kiss...I don't know. I'm kind of a mess."

  He pursed his lips slightly and nodded. "My mom and dad split up three years ago. It was the pits." He snorted, then gave a little shrug. "It's why I started lifting."

  It was like seeing a single snapshot of the past three years of his life--his transformation from smart boy to dumb jock suddenly made complete sense. And I was so grateful that he understood that tears stung my eyes. "Healthier than kissing," I joked, blinking the tears back.

  He smiled. "Hey, it's okay. I'm not mad at you or anything. Actually, it's made me think about some things."

  "Oh, yeah?"

  Our student sixth sense told us that the bell was about to ring, and as we headed into the classroom, he said, "I'd really like to get to know you, Evangeline."

  I stopped and bli
nked at him.

  He laughed at my reaction. "And you know what? I could use some tutoring in this class. I am so lost."

  I smiled at him as the bell rang. "That I can do."

  85

  Behind the Bleachers

  I DON'T USUALLY RUN INTO JUSTIN RODRIGUEZ. He hangs out in different parts of campus than I do. (Like in Mr. Webber's stinky biology room with his buddies Blaine and Travis, or the boys' bathrooms with his pet Magic Marker.)

  This was probably a good thing, because when I was making my apology list, I'd put Justin at the bottom.

  In pencil.

  Inside parentheses.

  Did I really need to apologize to someone who'd written my name on urinals?

  But at break he unexpectedly appeared in front of me, flanked by Travis and Blaine.

  It was like an omen: There he is, just do it.

  They did a bumbling U-turn when they saw me, but I caught up to them and said, "Justin, wait up."

  Justin did not want to wait up.

  Justin wanted to escape.

  I circled around him and planted myself. "I'm sorry I asked you to meet me at the gazebo. It was a mistake, I shouldn't have done it, and I'm sorry."

  He stared at me, not moving a muscle. His cheek had a nasty bruise, and his lower lip was swollen and split near the corner.

  Luscious lips they were not.

  Finally he said, "Is this a joke?"

  I shook my head. "It's an apology."

  He pulled a face. "I don't get you."

  "Look, I started it. Brody ended it. The stuff in the middle? That was all you." He didn't offer up an apology of his own, so I shrugged and moved on.

  Four down, four to go.

  Concentrating in Spanish and American lit was (for once) not a problem. I'd sniff down the others at lunch. (Or, in Brody's case, after school.) Then I'd be ready to move on to the grand finale:

  Adrienne.

  Apologizing to Trevor Dansa was easy because Trevor Dansa didn't care. "You already explained," he said. "Eddie was hassling you."

  Oh, right, I thought. And knowing Trevor and his academic tunnel vision, he probably had no clue about bathroom brawls or serial kissing.