Abbi perks up. “Who are you planning on kissing? Derek?”
“No!” I practically shout, then lower my voice. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Too bad.” She sighs. “He is much better-looking than he was when he used to ask me if I liked seafood and then open his mouth and say, ‘See? Food!’”
“Yeah, he rarely does that anymore,” I say, eager to change the subject. “So. Kissing. Locking lips. What’s it like?”
“First,” Abbi says, “tell me about this kindergarten kiss. How have we never talked about this?”
I sigh. “No.”
Abbi crosses her arms over her protruding belly. “Well then, sorry, I’m not spilling any of my kissing secrets.”
“Fine.” I scowl. “But you can’t tell anyone.”
“My lips are sealed. And so are hers,” Abbi says, pointing to her belly.
“It was … Derek.”
She squeals. “I knew it! I knew you had the hots for him!”
“This was in kindergarten!” I whisper-shout. “We were getting married under that big oak tree on the playground and we had one chaste, playground-appropriate peck on the lips. I don’t think that really counts.”
“Still, though.” Abbi looks vindicated. “Don’t you want to return to the scene of the crime?”
“No, I do not,” I say forcefully. “Derek is my best friend, and he always will be, the end. What I want is to kiss Noah Reed, and I want to be prepared. Teach me your ways.”
Abbi sighs. “I can’t just tell you what kissing is like.”
“Why not?” I ask, throwing my arms up in exasperation. “Google told me plenty, but things started getting pornographic, and I was afraid Mom and Dad would look at my search history, so I had to stop.”
“Please tell me you didn’t google ‘what does kissing feel like.’”
I stare at the framed photo on Abbi’s desk of her being crowned Miss Brentley and let my silence speak for itself.
“Ugh, okay, but only because you’re so ‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Jolie’ and it’s bumming me out.”
“Fine. I’ll take your pity.”
Abbi scrunches up her face and looks at the ceiling, as if the right words are written there. “It’s hard to explain in words. It’s more of a feeling. Like … like the finale of the Brentley Fourth of July fireworks show. Or like the bubbles in a fountain Coke. Or like riding a bike down a hill, when your hair lifts up off your back and you’re half-exhilarated, half-terrified. I mean, that’s what it feels like when you’re kissing the right person.”
She sighs and leans back on the bed and I sit there, shocked. Who knew Abbi was sort of a poet? I guess all I had to do was get her to talk about making out.
“And you feel it,” Abbi says.
I nod. “See, that’s what I’m worried about, because there’s a chance I could end up with some numbness in my lips and I’m worried I won’t be able to feel…”
“No,” Abbi says meaningfully, raising her eyebrows. “You feel it everywhere.”
“Oh,” I say, and then I feel myself blush. “Oh.”
“Which brings me to the biggest point: You have to take your birth control every day if you want it to work.” She points to her belly again. “Because otherwise this happens.”
“I may not know much about kissing, but I do know that it doesn’t result in pregnancy. Mom told me that in one of her extensive ‘your body is your property’ sex-positivity talks.”
“All I’m saying is that one thing leads to another.” Abbi shrugs.
I shake my head. If I’m freaking out this much over a kiss, I won’t be ready for sex until I’m, like, forty-five.
I pull out my notebook and write down what Abbi just told me. Fireworks. Soda bubbles. Bike riding. Everywhere.
“Um, what are you doing?” Abbi leans over to look. “Are you taking notes?”
I look up at her. “Yeah?”
“Okay,” Abbi says. “I guess that’s the most important thing for you to learn, besides the birth-control thing. You can’t study for this one. It’s not about facts, or preparation, or doing everything right.”
I slowly lower my notebook.
“It’s sort of like childbirth, or what I think childbirth is going to be like,” Abbi says, pointing to What to Expect When You’re Expecting. “You can read all the books and take all the notes you want, but at some point you just have to do it to find out what it’s like.”
I absentmindedly chew on my lip as I mull this over. “But I like reading books and taking notes.”
“No kidding,” Abbi says. “But that’s life, dude.”
I sigh and let my gaze drift around Abbi’s room. The trophies she still has from when she won pageants as a kid. Photos of her and her friends where she looks like a literal model. I walk across the room and pick up her prom queen sash, which has been looped over her closet doorknob ever since she won. Running my fingers over it, I think, Abbi has never had this problem. She’s never had to ask someone else to explain to her what kissing is like, and she’s definitely never googled it.
“Ugh,” Abbi says, groaning as she pushes herself off the bed. She shuffles over to me, then grabs the sash out of my hand and chucks it into the garbage can under her desk. “I can’t believe that thing was still there.”
“You’re throwing away your prom queen sash?” I ask, horrified. “But … you won it.”
She shrugs and, with difficulty, bends over to pick up her book. “Yeah, well, being prom queen isn’t my whole life. Thank God.”
I leave Abbi to her reading and head back to my room, where I pull my scrapbook out from under my bed and run my fingers over the pasted-in faces and straight, perfect smiles. Being beautiful didn’t solve all of Abbi’s problems, or make her life easy, I think as I stare at a picture of Cara Delevingne until her features start to blur. A sinking feeling hits my stomach as I begin to wonder, What if getting the surgery doesn’t fix everything? What if I wake up on June 3 alive, but still the same old me?
Chapter Nineteen
Despite talking a big game about how she was totally going to come to the Cliff with me, Evelyn backs out on Saturday because she’s working on costumes again.
“How many costumes can one musical have?” I whine. “I miss you!”
“Girl, you should see my list. Noah Reed alone has to wear overalls, a suit, a space suit, and multiple wigs. Plus I should probably actually, you know, do some homework.” She sighs forlornly. “Wow, I really hate saying that.”
Evelyn ended up passing her history quiz, proving yet again that actually doing the assigned reading and studying can lead to improvement. But she’s still afraid of facing her mom’s wrath if her grade slips again.
I don’t ask her if she’ll really just be hanging out with Marla because they’re now BFFs and she doesn’t need me anymore, but the point is, it ends up being just me and Derek going to the Cliff. Even though he initially didn’t want to go, I bugged him until he agreed to go as long as I would stop texting him about it.
It would be so much cooler if Brentley had some sort of agreed-upon name for the Cliff, like Dead Man’s Drop or Leap of Faith or something. But, because Brentley is the kind of place where we can’t even put on a real musical, we just call it the Cliff.
I pull the car into the makeshift parking area, my tires crunching along the gravel. The sun is out and beaming through the freshly green tree branches, but it’s not all that warm today.
Derek turns to look at me with his hand on the door handle. “You sure you don’t want to do this another day? When it’s not borderline cold?”
I shake my head. After talking to Abbi last night, I’ve been afraid of what will happen if I get my surgery and nothing changes. Maybe I’m going to have to change myself. “I just need to do something. Like, maybe if I can cross another thing off my list I won’t feel so hopeless.”
“You’re not hopeless. Peter Turturro trying to make berets happen at Brentley High? Th
at’s hopeless. You? You’re a hope machine.”
I barely contain my eye roll. “A hope machine?”
“A hope rocket! A hope cannon! A double hope rainbow painted across the sky!”
I open my car door. “Okay, you’re right, you’re not great at pep talks.”
“Ouch.”
We walk to the edge of the cliff. Although people are often swimming down below, today there’s no one—probably because of the aforementioned slight chill in the air. The water bubbles past us, and a breeze rattles the branches, sending a shiver through my whole body.
“Maybe let’s just warm up a bit,” I say, taking a few steps back and sitting down in a patch of sunlight. “You know, get our courage up.”
“Okay.” Derek plops down beside me. “So how’s surgery prep going?”
I shrug. “Fine. Do you know I could get a nose job?”
“Finally. I’ve always said your nose was holding you back.”
“That’s what I thought.” I look at him and give him a small smile. “It’s gonna be okay, right?”
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re gonna be fine.”
I lean back and look up at the trees, at the tiny green buds on the branches. We sit in silence for a minute before he says, “You don’t actually like Noah, do you?”
I avoid looking at him. “I don’t know.”
“Come on.”
“No, I’m serious. I really don’t know. I think he’s really cute, and I think he’s really nice. But I don’t, like, feel some sort of love-at-first-sight spark with him, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“But you want to kiss him,” Derek says flatly.
“I’ve had a crush-from-afar on him for years,” I say defensively. “And maybe I don’t know yet if it’s true love forever, but I want to at least find out.”
Derek leans back beside me and doesn’t say anything.
“How did you know Melody was the one for you?” I ask.
I can hear him breathing and I realize I’m taking this conversation down a potentially dangerous path. His fingers tap out a rhythm on the dirt.
“I don’t actually know that she is the one,” he finally says.
“Trouble in paradise?” I ask lightly, but my voice shakes a little bit.
“Uh, for that to be true we’d have to be in paradise instead of where we are, which is literally about a thousand miles from each other.” He does an awkward little half laugh, half cough, then picks up a pebble and tosses it over the cliff.
If I were a puppy, my ears would be perking up right now. Derek hardly ever talks about Melody, let alone says anything negative about her. And I try to avoid asking because, well … I guess I don’t really want to know. If we don’t talk about Melody, then it’s like she doesn’t exist, and if she doesn’t exist, then it’s still Derek and me in our own little best-friend world.
“It’s just … we hardly ever really talk anymore. She texts me a lot, and you know how I feel about that…”
“Yeah, I’m aware, Grandpa.”
“And it’s like, we can’t make a relationship out of that weird little kissy-face emoji.”
“You send each other the kissy-face emoji?” I coo. “Aren’t you guys sweet!”
“It’s been a one-sided kissy-face emoji lately. And I don’t know if I really feel like putting so much effort into a thing with someone who I won’t even get to see until the next Academic Challenge meet.”
“But … you like her, right?” I ask.
“I mean, yeah, I like her. She’s smart, and she’s funny, and she’s nice, but…”
“Can you talk to her about your dad?” I ask, feeling bold.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Wait.” I sit up. “You haven’t told her?”
“It hasn’t come up,” Derek says.
“The most important thing that’s ever happened to you hasn’t come up? With your girlfriend?” I ask.
“She’s not like you, Jolie,” Derek says, rubbing his hands over his eyes. “I can’t just be like, ‘Hey, here’s a fact about lemurs. Hey, I’m deeply traumatized by my dad’s sudden death.’ She would think it was weird.”
I feel a strange sense of smugness that I know something about him that Melody doesn’t. And then I wonder if I’m breaking some sort of unwritten girl code by feeling the way I feel. I mean, I don’t even know Melody, and here I am feeling happy that I have a better relationship with her boyfriend than she does. Not that Derek actually talks to me about his dad, but still. I was there for him.
“Are you telling me that you and Noah talk about your deepest, darkest secrets?” Derek asks.
I think about it. Other than that embarrassing pee story, I don’t really know anything about Noah, and I’m not even all that curious. Not the way I am with Derek, where I want to know everything he’s thinking and talk about it with him for hours.
“No,” I admit. “But he’s not my boyfriend. I just think that when you’re in a relationship with someone, you should be able to tell them anything and not worry about them thinking you’re weird.”
“So you’re some kind of relationship expert now, huh?” Derek says, but he’s smiling as he says it.
“Just call me Steve Harvey,” I say. “But with more hair. And fewer suits.”
The silence that stretches between us suddenly feels unlike the normal comfortable quiet we usually exist in. It feels heavy, hot, and scary, like one of us is supposed to be doing something. The feelings I have right now are distinctly unfair to Melody, and that terrifies me.
“Jolie—” Derek says.
I stand up so fast that I almost fall down again. “I’m ready to jump.”
Derek raises his eyebrows. A few expressions flicker across his face until he settles on confusion. “Now?”
“Now or never!” I shout. I feel a burst of adrenaline, like if I exert enough energy for both of us, maybe I can forget about the tension in the conversation we just had.
Derek stands up and brushes off his pants. “All right. It’s go time, I guess.”
I stand at the edge of the cliff and peer down at the river below.
“That’s pretty far,” I say.
Derek stands beside me. “Yep.”
I meet his eyes. “You ready?”
His face breaks into a smile. “You know if you don’t want to do this you don’t have to, right? Like, I’ll just tell Evie you did it and no one will have to know.”
My whole body practically melts with relief. “Seriously?”
He barks out a laugh. “Yes, seriously, Jolie! Good God, you know this is incredibly dangerous, right? Brendan Cooper broke his leg doing this last year, and he was lucky that’s all that happened.”
I look at him in disbelief. “And you were just going to let me jump?”
“Have I ever been able to stop you from doing something?” Derek holds up his hands. “You tend not to listen to me.”
“That’s true.” I peek over the edge of the cliff once more, observing the water, the rocks, the tree branches. “Yeah, this was a terrible idea. Why does anyone do this?”
“Because they’re trying to prove to their friends that they’re cool. But you have nothing to prove. I already think you’re cool, okay?”
“Yeah, I’m the coolest girl with a deformed jaw in school.” I watch the current carry a stick down the river.
“Why do you say shit like that?” Derek says with a rare note of annoyance in his voice.
I whip my head around to face him. “Like what?”
“Like that you’re weird, or untalented, or ugly. You’re just fishing for compliments. You know none of that’s true.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You think I’m fishing for compliments?”
He gives me a no duh look. “Come on. You know you’re pretty.”
I can feel my cheeks getting red. I’m getting so tired of Derek saying stuff like this because it’s ridiculous at this point for him to tell me I’m pretty or perfect or whatever when we bo
th know I’m not. Because if he really thought all that about me, then why would he be dating Melody? It’s borderline condescending.
“I think it’s time to go home.” I turn and start to walk back to the car.
“Hey,” Derek calls from behind me. “Do you want to go swimming?”
I turn around so fast that my feet slip on the pebbles.
“Now?”
Derek shrugs. “Why not? We’re here. I’m wearing swim trunks. And if you show up at Evie’s house covered in muddy river water, she will definitely believe you jumped.”
I wrinkle my nose.
“Come on. Don’t make me tell you all the facts I know about river microbes.” Derek turns and starts making his way down the steep path that snakes down to the river.
I hesitate for a moment.
“I’m gonna start talking about heterotrophic protozoa!” he shouts.
Rolling my eyes, I hurry after him. I carefully step down the path, grabbing trees and rocks to avoid sliding all the way down. A few crushed beer cans remind me that this is one of the places where Brentley’s teenage population goes to get drunk and make out, two activities that I would think would be better done far away from a dangerous cliff. But then again, I have limited (read: nonexistent) make-out experience, so what would I know?
The trail ends at some big rocks that surround what is charmingly known as a “swimming hole,” which is deep enough that people are usually able to jump into it without injuring themselves (unless you’re Brendan Cooper). The sun glistens off the water, making it look deceptively warm.
“Isn’t it sort of cold for this?” I ask, sliding off a flip-flop and dipping one toe into the water.
And then Derek pulls his shirt off, and all of a sudden, every single word in my head evaporates.
He climbs up on a rock and, without giving himself a second to think about it, jumps in.
“Oh, geez,” I mutter as I scramble up onto the rock Derek just jumped off.
“Come on, Peterson!” Derek yells as he treads water.
“Is it warm?” I ask, my fingers toying with the bottom of my shirt.
“No way,” he says easily. “I think my toes are numb. Wait … yes. Definitely numb.”
“Well, maybe I…” I start backing up.
Things Jolie Needs to Do Before She Bites It Page 15