Once Upon a Kiss

by Robin Palmer

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening. “The time travel thing.”

  “You found someone who knows about going backward?”

  The bell rang. “Yeah. My contact’s going to put me in touch with him tonight. It’s not a sure thing, but it might be something.”

  As I reached over to hug him, he jumped. “Sorry. I’m not used to people touching me. Especially girls.”

  “Got it,” I said as I moved back.

  “I’ll let you know tomorrow what the deal is,” he yelled over the noise as he started to walk away.

  “But you don’t have my number!” I yelled after him.

  He stopped. “Oh right.” He headed back and handed me his iPhone. “Put it in here.”

  As I started to punch in the numbers, he stopped me. “Can you hold on just a second?”

  “Okay. For what?”

  “I’d like to wait until Devon Patel walks by so he sees you giving me your number. If that’s okay.”

  “Sure. It’s fine.”

  “Great.”

  The thing was, Devon was rather chatty, which left us standing there awkwardly not saying anything.

  “He shouldn’t be that much longer.”

  “Not a problem,” I said. Yes, I was being used to impress some guy under complete bogus circumstances. But time travelers couldn’t be choosers.

  Devon finally started to make his way over. “Okay, now! Do it now!” Wayne hissed.

  As I began punching in my number, he moved closer to me. I looked up. “Are you looking down my shirt?” I asked.

  “No.”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “Maybe.” He moved away. “Sorry.” His timing was perfect. “Hey, Devon,” he said as Devon got closer.

  Devon looked over and didn’t even try to hide his amazement. “What are you doing so close to Zoe Brenner?”

  “Oh, nothing. Just, you know, getting her number,” he said as nonchalantly as possible as I tried not to roll my eyes.

  Devon’s buggy eyes got even buggier. “Dude, that’s . . . epic.” He looked at me. “Are you going to ask him for help with chemistry? Because if so, I’m really your guy. I placed out of the AP class in eighth grade.”

  “Nope. Not asking anyone for any help with my classes,” I replied. “We’re just friends, and I find him super funny and smart and want to get to know him better.”

  His eyes bugged out even more as I turned to Nerdy Wayne. “Okay, so text me tomorrow and we’ll figure out when to get together.”

  “Totes,” he replied. Whatever that meant.

  I nodded and walked toward the door.

  I really hoped that whatever he came back with worked, because staying here in 2016 wasn’t feeling like it would be all that much fun anymore.

  I was on my way to the parking lot when in the distance I saw Jonah making his way there from the other direction. This time, instead of shouting his name, or running toward him, I hung back for a second. It was freaking me out that every time I saw him nowadays, my mouth got dry and my palms got sweaty. I had no idea what that was about.

  Maybe I could just stand there and continue my examination of the stain I had just found on my sleeve for as long as it took him to get in his car and drive away. That seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do. And I would have, except a few seconds later, there he was, waving at me.

  I waved back. I had to. There was no one else in the parking lot.

  And he didn’t just wave. He passed his car and walked toward me.

  “Hey,” he said when we were face-to-face.

  “Hey,” I mumbled. When did his eyes get so blue?

  We stood there awkwardly for a moment. Finally I cleared my throat. “Thanks for helping me today during the assembly,” I finally said.

  “It’s cool. You already thanked me. In the cafeteria.”

  “Oh right.” And had he been working out? Because I totally didn’t remember him having such well-defined arms. The way his Arcade Fire T-shirt hugged his biceps was not how his New Order T-shirt had looked back in 1986. And why was the idea of that making me blush? “Glad you verified that. Okay, then—I should get going. Have a good weekend.” And why couldn’t I look him in the eye?

  “You too,” he said as I started to walk toward my car. Was that disappointment I heard in his voice? It couldn’t be. Why would he be disappointed? As far as he knew, I was the most popular girl in school, dating the most popular boy, and I had way better things to do than chat with him in a parking lot.

  But still, I swore it sounded that way.

  IF MY DATE WITH BRAD SHOWED ME ONE thing, it was that I was just as guilty as everyone else in terms of putting people in boxes and thinking I knew who they were. Not only did Brad not show up late like I was sure he would, but he turned up early, dressed in a fresh pair of chinos (you could still see the marks from where they had been pressed) and a yellow Izod, holding a bouquet of peonies.

  “These are for me?” I asked as he handed them to me in the foyer.

  “Well, yeah. They’re your favorite, right?” he asked anxiously. “Or is it pansies that are your favorite?”

  Were pansies actually someone’s favorite flower? “They are my favorite,” I replied. “They’re also really hard to find.”

  “Tell me about it.” He laughed. “I went to four different florists before finally tracking them down at Trader Joe’s. I even stopped at a gas station.”

  I smiled as I leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “That was really sweet of you,” I said. “Let me just go put them in some water.” When I came back, I found Brad mid–breath spray.

  “Whoops,” he said, embarrassed. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”

  Not that I wanted to make out with him, but I had to hand it to him—the guy was a sweetheart. Too bad he wasn’t my sweetheart. I mean, he was. Technically. But as much as it would have been great to will myself to like him in a potential you know-ing kind of way, I just couldn’t.

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said as I grabbed my purse. “Ready?”

  “Sure.”

  He looked around. “Is anyone here?”

  “No. They’re at temple.” My parents had dragged Ethan because his bar mitzvah was coming up and they thought their attendance at Friday-night services would help make up for the fact that he was horrible at reading Hebrew.

  His face lit up. “You want to make out for a while before we go eat?”

  He may have been a sweetheart, but he was still a guy. “I’m actually kind of hungry.”

  He nodded. “Got it. Let’s go, then.”

  As we walked out to his car—something called an Escalade, which resembled a small truck—he ran ahead so he could open my door for me, but it wouldn’t budge. “I know this is a dumb question, but is it unlocked?” I finally asked after watching him try a few more times.

  He pointed his keys at the truck and clicked on the little clicker thing. The sound of the lock opening could be heard. “It is now,” he said with a smile.

  Oh, Brad. Once we were settled in the car, he moved his head toward me and closed his eyes and puckered up.

  I moved back. “What are you doing?”

  He opened his eyes. “Waiting for our Last Kiss.”

  “Our what?”

  “You know, our Last Kiss. In case we die in a fiery car crash as we’re driving.”

  I moved backed even farther. “Are you planning for us to die in a fiery car crash?”

  “No! But you always make us do this.”

  I did? Wow. I was kind of a drama queen. “Right. Of course I do,” I vamped. “Because it’s a really good idea.” But what if Rhiannon was right, and kissing him would take me back to 1986? Was I ready to go? I didn’t see why not. At the rate I was going, any sort of change of the new world social order was going
to take forever. Like a few more decades.

  I leaned in. “Okay. I’m ready.” I screwed my eyes shut and puckered up. But what if something went wrong, and there was a screwup and I ended up as Andrea Manson?

  I leaned back again. “You know? I just realized that I’m really really hungry,” I said quickly. “Can we skip the kiss and go to dinner? That way I’ll be more energized for the kissing portion of the evening later on.”

  He put the car in drive and pulled out. “Sure.”

  I leaned back and exhaled. This was going to be a long evening. “So where are we going?” I asked once my heart rate had returned to normal.

  “You’ll see. I made reservations at somewhere super special.”

  Soon enough we were pulling up in front of a Mexican place called El Gato Negro. I went to open the door but he stopped me. “Hold on.” He jumped out of the truck and ran around to the side to open it for me. Except he couldn’t. I let him try a bunch of times before I opened it myself and got out.

  “I always forget that I lock it when I start to drive,” he said sheepishly.

  I looked at the peeling paint on the building and tried not to cringe. “This place looks . . . interesting.”

  “Their guac is off the charts,” he said. “But that’s not why I brought you here.”

  He brought me here because he wanted me to get food poisoning? “Oh yeah?”

  He grabbed my hand and dragged me toward the entrance. “You’ll see why in a second.”

  After we were seated, I didn’t just see why he had brought me there. I also heard it. Over and over and over and over.

  “A real live mariachi band,” I yelled over the music. I had lost count, but I was pretty sure they were on their fifth or sixth rendition of “Cielito lindo.” And it wasn’t like that came in between other songs—it was the only song they played. “What a great touch.”

  He smiled. “I thought you’d like it,” he yelled back.

  By the time we left, my cheeks hurt from smiling so much at the musicians, and my skirt was stained from when the guitar player knocked over a bowl of salsa onto my lap.

  “You ready for what’s next?” Brad asked as we got back into the car.

  “I guess so?” I said. I only hoped it didn’t include noise and was near a drugstore so I could get some aspirin.

  “Awesome.”

  A few minutes later we were driving down Ocean Avenue. After he parked, we walked across the street toward the water. I stopped. “Are we taking a walk on the beach?” I asked. If we were, I wasn’t sure how I would get out of kissing him, then.

  “No. You said you didn’t like that stuff,” he replied. “Plus, it’s past sunset.” He pulled me toward the Santa Monica Pier. “We’re doing something else.”

  “Are we going up in the Ferris wheel?” I asked nervously. If you didn’t get kissed in a Ferris wheel, I didn’t know where you got kissed. “Because I’m feeling a little full from dinner.”

  “Nope,” he said as we moved toward the arcade games. When we got to the one where you shoot water into the clown’s mouth and wait for the balloon to fill up and pop, he stopped. “I’m going to win you a prize. So you have a whatsitmacallit— Nintendo—of the night.”

  “Do you mean memento?”

  He cocked his head and thought about it. “Yeah. I think that’s it.”

  Oh, Brad. I really hoped he wasn’t spending his Sundays trying to do crossword puzzles.

  He slammed a ten-dollar bill down on the counter. “Hit me, dude!” he said to the bored pimply-faced kid slouched on a stool, playing some game on his iPhone. He turned to me. “I’m not going to use all of this money. I just don’t have any ones.”

  I nodded as I made myself comfortable. I didn’t mind if it took a while. It would give me time to come up with an excuse as to why all kissing was off-limits that night. Like, say, I was afraid that I had suddenly come down with mono.

  But an hour later, after Brad had blown through not just all ten dollars, but twenty more, I was ready to go. “It’s really nice of you to do this,” I yelled over the heavy metal that was blasting from the kid’s speaker attached to his iPhone, “but it’s okay. I don’t need a stuffed animal. Believe me—I won’t be forgetting this night any time soon.”

  Brad was concentrating so hard on trying to shoot the water into the clown’s mouth that not only did he not hear me, but he was drooling. After he lost (again) he turned to me. “Did you say something?”

  “Yeah. Let’s go. You don’t have to keep doing this.”

  “But I want to get you a—what’d you call it?”

  “Memento.”

  “Yeah. That.”

  I shook my head. “It’s okay.” I broke out a fake yawn. “Plus I’m getting kind of tired.”

  “Are you sure it’s okay?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “Oh good. Because I’m a little dizzy from only having one eye open for so long,” he said as we started to make our way back to the parking lot. As we got back to the car, he turned to me. “You sure you don’t want to stop at Toys ‘R’ Us or something and I can just buy you one?”

  I shook my head. “Thanks, but I’m good.”

  As we drove toward his house, I started fiddling with the radio. It said Sirius and had a bunch of stations. When I got to something called Totally ’80s I smiled. “I Melt with You” was on.

  “I love this song,” I said, relaxing a bit. It had to be a good omen, right? Like, say, an omen that I’d be able to get out of any sort of physical contact with Brad.

  We drove in silence for a bit. Brad turned to me. “So is this song about people who are in a fire together?”

  “What? No. Why would you say that?”

  He shrugged. “Because of the melting thing.”

  Brad. Brad. Brad.

  My phone dinged with a text. It was from Nerdy Wayne. Meet me at Insomnia Cafe tomorrow at 11. I have info on the thing we talked about. Please delete this text now.

  Brad glanced over. “Who’s that from? Andrea?”

  “Ah, no,” I said as I pushed Delete. “Wrong number. Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Was what Andrea said at lunch true? That you’re worried about the way I’m acting?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t say I’m worried,” he replied. “But it does seem kind of weird.”

  “How come?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just not like you.”

  “Yeah, but who says I have to be me all the time?” I asked.

  I watched his face as he tried to do the math on what that meant. It wasn’t happening.

  “You know how I play soccer?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “And I’m always a forward?”

  “Yeah,” I lied. I was assuming that was a position in soccer, but as someone who had attempted to get out of gym class most of her life, I wasn’t entirely sure.

  “That’s because I’m good at it.”

  I waited for him to go on, but he didn’t. “And the point of this story is . . . ?” I finally said.

  “The point is that people like things to stay the same,” he replied. “It makes them, I don’t know . . . feel safe.”

  Huh. That was an interesting way to look at things. Maybe Brad wasn’t so dumb after all.

  “Zoe, you’re good at being popular,” he went on. “If we were all the same, you wouldn’t be popular anymore. You’d just be . . . normal.”

  “What’s wrong with normal?”

  “Nothing. But you’re not normal.”

  He had no idea.

  “You’re popular. And even for the people who don’t like you because you are popular, they like you being popular because then they can keep not liking you because you’re popular, and everything will stay the same.” He stopped
. “That probably doesn’t make sense.”

  “Actually, it does,” I said, somewhat surprised.

  “Jeez, mister, give it a rest,” he said as the guy behind us gave up on honking politely and had moved on to just keeping his hand on the horn. “It’s not like I’m speeding.”

  “I think he’s doing it because you’re way under the speed limit,” I said as we inched forward. I took a look at the speedometer. He was doing thirty in a fifty-mile-an-hour zone.

  “Well, I can’t be too safe with you in the car,” he replied, patting me on the leg. “Especially tonight. The night we finally—”

  “Let’s see what else is on the radio!” I yelled as I punched some more buttons. A girl warbled about how “we are never ever getting back together.”

  “But we are never ever ever ever . . .” Brad sang along. He turned to me. “Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I love that I’m man enough to admit that I think Taylor Swift is one of the geniuses of our generation.” He took my hand. “I’m so glad you turned me on to her.”

  As he went on about how he totally related to her lyrics, and that when he listened to her albums, they allowed him to get in touch with that soft, sensitive part of himself—the part that never came out on the soccer and lacrosse fields—I started to feel guilty. He wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer (Who was I kidding? He wasn’t even a spoon), but he was cute—if you preferred the whole Ken doll look. (Which I didn’t.) And he cared a great deal about fashion—granted it was a sherbet-colored palette from thirty years earlier. (Yes, I was trying to bring back fashion from back then, but some things were meant to stay in the past.) And unlike a lot of guys, he liked to be in constant contact. (Even though he had nothing interesting to say.) He was the most popular guy at Castle Heights. Any girl would love to go out with him. Things could be worse.

  Like, say, if I never figured out to get back to 1986 and I was stuck here in this life. It wasn’t like it was a horrible existence. I was incredibly popular. I had a very large walk-in closet full of clothes and purses and shoes and accessories. These were things girls wanted. So what if I had horrible taste in music and wore tiaras? And, according to one of my Facebook posts, thought the reason gays should be allowed to marry was because their weddings would be sure to have great food and beautiful flower arrangements?