A Kiss in the Dark

by Gina Ciocca

  Ben runs to retrieve it and comes back to my side. “Okay. This time on three. One . . . two . . . THREE!”

  Moving fast, I make a Rosie the Riveter–style muscle, and Ben flashes a huge grin as the ball is once again steadied on his fingertip like an orange-and-black leather globe. But then, as the camera clicks, another arm wraps around me. A third person pops into the frame, and before we know what’s going on, Joel’s face is right between Ben’s and mine.

  When Jadie hands back my phone with the picture on the screen, I giggle. Joel and I are grinning, and the basketball hovers in space next to Ben, where Joel’s photobomb knocked it from its orbit. Ben is looking at him as if to say, What the hell happened?

  It’s a question I’ll ask myself many, many times in the months that follow.

  Three

  SENIOR YEAR

  After the blackout, Principal Fielding reclaims the podium to apologize for the glitch, apparently caused by the power company doing some work down the road. Then the game goes on like nothing happened. But the more I think about it, the more I’m wigging out. Jadie’s reaction when I tell her what happened doesn’t help either.

  “Someone kissed you?” Her face contorts like she caught a whiff of something foul. “That’s assault! How gross.”

  She, of course, has a point. Who bumps into a girl in pitch-blackness, kisses her, and then walks away without another word? But I didn’t have to kiss back. I chose to. Because it was so far from gross.

  And honestly, the first thing that struck me was how familiar it seemed. Like a reminder of something I’d lost. Or someone.

  Maybe someone who’d dredge up an old photo from the depths of obscurity and put it where he knew I’d see it.

  Even though Joel’s name was the first word to leave my mouth following the kiss, I backpedaled on my hasty conclusion almost immediately. But there were only three people in that picture—Ben, Joel, and me. If my theory is that the picture and the kiss are somehow connected, then Ben is an automatic no, because he’s not here. Jadie and the other girls will see him later, at Buck’s Diner, where the football players will walk in yelling “COLLINSSS,” and he’ll reply “Suuuup!” before dishing up fries and floats for the post-game feeding frenzy we’ve dubbed Friday Night Eats.

  And obviously I didn’t kiss myself. Which leaves Joel. I have no idea where he’s disappeared to, but he was onstage when the power went out. Which means he would’ve had to find his way off the platform and over to me in pitch-blackness. It doesn’t seem likely, but it’s not impossible.

  It’s very possible, though, that the picture and the kiss have nothing to do with each other. People share throwback pictures on the site all the time. And no one could’ve planned for a freak blackout, so it makes zero sense that someone posted the picture and then waited for their opportunity to sneak up on me.

  It’s strange, but every time I remember the likelihood of the kiss-and-the-photo-being-unrelated phenomena, I find myself alternately tracking Noah Granger’s every move and avoiding his gaze like the plague. It’s not like I’m wishing for it to be him. I’ve spent the past few weeks making it crystal clear that We Are Not a Thing. And yet if I superimpose his face onto the memory of that kiss, it’s kind of difficult to remember why I’ve been fighting so hard to stay in the friend zone.

  Maybe the world doesn’t implode if a Mortonville Pirate kisses a Ridgedale Raven. Even if there are some serious sparks.

  I shake off the thought, opting to study every boy on the field instead. I snap picture after picture in the hope that my lens will see something I don’t—a wink, a secretive look, a flare of someone’s freaking nostrils—any indication that those stolen seconds in the dark were our little secret and not just mine.

  When the cheers die down after the final buzzer finds Ridgedale victorious over its visitor, Noah trots over to me. I can’t help but hold my breath.

  “Hey,” he says. “Fielding’s offering hot dogs on the school if we go to Fuddruckers instead of Buck’s tonight. You’re in, right?”

  Oh.

  Call me crazy, but if I wanted to craft the perfect follow-up to a secret, electric kiss, I probably wouldn’t lead with hot dogs. Something deflates inside me. But before I can answer, Joel reappears and jogs up to Noah’s side.

  “Hey, Mace,” he says like we’re old pals and not ex-friends. Like he has no grasp on the depth of my contempt for him. “My dad convinced Fielding to spring for hot dogs. You need a ride?”

  “She can ride with me,” Noah says, his tone a dismissive block of ice.

  “Relax, dude.” Joel gives him a derisive once-over before turning his attention back to me. “Either way, you coming?”

  I’m not very hungry, though my answer would be the same regardless. “Thanks, but I’m gonna pass tonight.”

  Arms wind around me before I even realize Jadie has bounced over to us. “You pass every Friday night,” she says. “We’re going to keep asking until we wear you down. I’m not a cheerleader anymore either, and I still go.”

  “That’s different. Your boyfriend is on the team.” Not to mention there’s way more to it than that, and Jadie knows it.

  Noah raises a hand. “Uh, hi. Boy who’s your friend and also on the team, right over here.”

  I give him my best regretful smile. “No, thanks. My parents are here. I’ll head out with them.”

  “Do you want me to skip out and make you s’mores instead?” Jadie asks.

  Jadie is the only person I know who can microwave chocolate and marshmallows into stew. So I tell her I have a bag of S’mores Oreos to keep me company, which leads to her usual fake retching and staunch declaration that Double Stuf Oreos are the only Oreos worth eating. Normally I’d go to bat for my equal-opportunity Oreo eating, but in all honesty, the solitude of my bedroom is the only company I want right now. Nothing is making sense to me, and I need time to sit and process all the questions in my head. So I concede, say my good-byes, and start toward the stands.

  “Mace?” Noah calls after me, and I turn around. “See you Monday?” He fixes those smoldering eyes on me as one side of his mouth quirks up into a smile, and my heart stops.

  That’s the kind of look I’ve been waiting for.

  I’m tempted to backtrack, to stick around after all. But as I hesitate, I spot Joel watching me a few feet away. The way he’s looking at me, like he wants to say something but isn’t sure he should, sets off a flutter of warning in my belly. He turns and walks off as if he’s thought better of whatever he almost said.

  In a sudden burst of bravery, I open a text message and type: DID YOU WANT TO TELL ME SOMETHING?

  It’s not until I’m dropping into the backseat of my parents’ car that Joel’s response vibrates in my hand:

  LOTS OF THINGS.

  LIKE? I type back.

  I wait for an answer that never comes, my temple pressed against the window and my wrist throbbing dully beneath my brace. Joel’s face is still flashing through my mind long after we get home. Meredith’s, too.

  I keep thinking about the way she would look at me only through the lens of Jadie’s camera. Last year we talked about being roommates if we got accepted to UNC, and scheduling all our classes together. Now I think I’ve become invisible to her. I’ve thought the same thing about Joel, about Ben. I’ve asked myself a thousand times how we went from being friends to floating around one another like ghosts, acting like we no longer exist on the same plane. The picture on the Ridgedale’s Finest page is proof that at one time our friendship was real. As I stare at it again on the screen of my phone, I have to wonder—hope?—if maybe that’s the point someone was trying to make in posting it.

  Four

  JUNIOR YEAR

  As a cheerleader, I’m used to being at the center of crowds. But when Jadie and I get back from our impromptu shoot-off with Joel and Ben, I’m more aware of the eyes on me in Meredith’s living room than I’ve ever been in an entire stadium full of spectators.

  The girls ha
ve gathered around the TV and are watching a video of last year’s regional competition, analyzing what to emulate and what to improve. The second Jadie and I enter the room, sweaty and flushed, the routine is forgotten.

  “Details,” Anna Chen says. “Now.”

  “Relax, weirdos,” Jadie says with a dismissive wave. “We were playing basketball. There’s no law against it.” She squeezes herself into the space between Anna and the arm of one of the two sofas in the room. “Where’s Meredith?”

  “I think she went up to her room.”

  Mrs. Kopala pokes her head in from the attached sunporch. “Why did Meredith go upstairs? Was she not feeling well?”

  “I’ll go check on her,” I say, turning on my heel. I have a feeling that Meredith’s escape has nothing to do with her health and everything to do with the vantage point that her bedroom offers: a perfect view of Ben’s driveway.

  When I get to the top of the stairs, her bedroom door is cracked open, so I knock and push it wider. Meredith is sitting at her desk in the far-left corner of the room, staring disinterestedly at the computer screen.

  “Hey. Sorry. I didn’t think we’d be gone that long. Are you mad?” I ask.

  Meredith looks away from the screen long enough to shake her head. “Watching that video too many times gives me ADD. I’m trying to get some new ideas for the Halloween fund-raiser.” Unsurprising. Not only is Meredith the co-captain of the squad, she’s also the student council vice president. She has her hands in everything, and makes it look like child’s play. The mouse clicks as she asks, “Did you have fun?”

  Anyone else would think it an innocent enough question. But the gold M that hangs from her necklace is pressed between her thumb and forefinger as she drags it back and forth along the chain, the way she always does when she’s worried or nervous, right before she pulls the necklace up over her bottom lip. And . . . yep, there it goes.

  “Uh-huh. Proved once again that Pirates are no match for Ravens.” I settle at the foot of her bed, where Ben and Joel are visible through the window next to her head. There’s a red-haired little boy with them now, and they clap when he shoots the ball, even though he misses. When Meredith sees me staring, she leans back in her chair.

  “Isn’t he cute?”

  “Ben’s brother?” I say, raising an eyebrow. “Or Ben?”

  She rocks forward again, closing out the page she had up. “Whatever do you mean, Macy Jean?”

  “I put in a good word for you.”

  Meredith’s lips tighten. I can almost see the tug-of-war inside her head, that split-second decision of whether to keep denying once you’ve been caught red-handed. She goes for the cop-out, coyly twisting the chain of her necklace around her finger.

  “He’s not my type.”

  I raise an eyebrow. “We both know that your ‘type’ could use a makeover.”

  She snorts. “Speaking of which, Ken asked me to homecoming.”

  “Tell me you didn’t say yes.”

  Ken Davenport might’ve done a great job of playing the victim after Joel broke his collarbone, but it doesn’t change the fact that he is a royal douche, something we both learned firsthand during his and Meredith’s short-lived relationship last year.

  “I told him to roll naked in dog shit infested with fire ants.” We both crack up, and I relax into one of her cushy down pillows.

  “So Ken gets an ass crack full of poisonous ants, but Ben gets to help with the homecoming float. What does that say?”

  Meredith shrugs. “It doesn’t say anything. Yeah, Ben is nice. And funny, and sweet, and he has beautiful eyes—”

  “Sounds to me like he is your type.”

  She grabs a package of lip glosses off her desk and chucks it at my head. I block it with my hand, giggling as the transparent pouch of shimmery reds, pinks, and peaches bounces onto the bed next to me.

  “He’s also a goofball, and he’s too short—” She cuts off when she sees me making a face. Meredith is five feet, seven-and-a-half inches tall. My guess is that Ben is somewhere in the ballpark of five nine. Being five feet, three inches myself, “short” would not be a word I’d use to describe him. “Short for me, I mean,” she amends. Her fingers find the M on her necklace again. “Plus I’m a jerk magnet, so he’s automatically disqualified.”

  “Meredith, come on! You’re assuming the worst without even giving it a chance.” I sit up, taking the package of lip glosses into my lap. “He thinks you’re out of his league, you know.”

  “Of course he does.” She mock tosses her hair. “I am.”

  I roll my eyes and pull a gloss from the pouch, tipping the tube as I spread the strawberry color over my bottom lip. “Love Spell,” I read aloud. Then I notice the label on the front of the package. “The Seduction Collection?” When I turn it upside down, I have to stifle a snicker at the name stickered on the bottom of each tube. “Heartbreaker, Crush . . . Pillow Talk? Wow.” I fix suspicious eyes on Meredith. “Didn’t you buy these right after we gave Ben a ride to Smoothie King on our way to the mall?”

  Meredith groans and throws her hands up. “You are so reaching, Macy Jean. Ben and I are friends, and that’s how it’s staying. Got it?”

  She seems dead serious, almost annoyed, and I’m ready to drop it. Until she turns to grab a pile of papers off her printer, and I catch the way her eyes wander toward the window as Ben sinks a basket and lifts his brother over his head in victory.

  A wistful smile tugs at her lips. A smug smirk pulls at mine. If I can help it, Meredith will be eating her words by homecoming.

  Five

  SENIOR YEAR

  I usually wait until Sunday morning to go for a run. But by the time eight a.m. rolls around on Saturday, fifteen different tricks for lulling myself back to sleep have already failed, including counting the pink and white flowers on my bedroom curtains. So I roll over and face the parallel wall, the one that proudly displays uniform rows of framed eight-by-tens of my best sunset photos.

  The first time I picked up my mother’s camera and aimed it at daylight’s swan song, I never imagined it would be the thing to eventually fill a huge gap in my life. I’d never slowed down long enough to appreciate that the same sun in the same sky could take on so many unique, spectacular appearances. Once I did, it boggled my mind that people weren’t trampling me for a front-row seat at the lake each night. I wondered if they even noticed.

  And then I think about last night at the football game, and remember that my own days of not seeing things that are right in front of me aren’t over. Although, some pretty amazing things can happen in the dark.

  I shudder and throw the covers off me, deciding to exhaust my racing mind into submission.

  “Hey,” Mom says from her spot in the laundry room when she spies me coming down the stairs. “Up before nine on a Saturday? Are you feeling okay?”

  “Couldn’t sleep. I’m going for a run.”

  “That was a nice welcome back for Joel’s father last night.” The fact that she totally ignored me and swooped in with a comment about Joel makes me wonder: Did she somehow see the picture on the Ridgedale’s Finest page? I’m still trying to craft the perfect nonchalant answer when she adds, “Maybe now that he’s back, he can teach his son how to act like a man.”

  The tension whooshes out of my body. No suspicion here, just good old-fashioned bitterness toward the boy who ditched her daughter the night of the junior homecoming dance. Sometimes I think she’s more hung up on what he did than I am.

  “Low blow, Mom.”

  “Maybe, but not uncalled for.” She gives the shirt in her hand a quick, rough fluff. “Did he ever give you an explanation? Or an apology, for that matter?”

  “Not exactly, but I think maybe it’s been eating at him. He’s been weirdly nice to me lately.”

  She stops mid-fold to give me a look. One that says Watch your back as clearly as if she spoke the words out loud. I grab my phone, earbuds, and key lanyard off the dining room table and reach for the front
door before she can say more.

  * * *

  It’s hard not to feel a little more peaceful in the early quiet of my neighborhood. The breeze is cool and the sun is mellow and warm, nothing like the unrelenting brute it’ll be in a few hours. Neighbors are taking advantage of the reprieve by washing their cars in their driveways or walking dogs on leashes and babies in strollers.

  I pick up my pace and adjust my earbuds, turning the volume up on my phone. Still, no matter how loud I blast my music, my thoughts are louder. I can’t go more than sixty seconds without being ambushed by the memory of that kiss, and the flush of heat it sends rushing through my body every time it replays.

  Like right now.

  It isn’t long before I find myself jogging down the wide wooden steps that lead to the lake at the center of our subdivision. According to the community website, it’s actually two lakes, but to me it looks like one big lake, bisected by a damlike path lined with willowy shrubs and staggered wrought-iron benches.

  Whatever it is, it’s one of my favorite places to be alone with my thoughts. I love that the water is the sky’s mirror, the only place where the clouds ever take the same formation twice. I love that I can come out here with my camera to capture the sunset, and every night it’s new and different and breathtaking. And still, every time I watch the bright gold-and-pink light fade from the clouds, I wish it didn’t have to be over so soon. As I plop down on one of benches, the events of last night replay in my mind, and I think about some of the other things I wish I could’ve held on to a little longer.

  I shoot to my feet, shaking yet another rehash of that kiss out of my head. If I’m going to outrun my thoughts, I have a lot farther to go.

  * * *

  I’m not heading toward the school. I’m not going back to the football field to look for clues. I’m really not. To prove it to myself, I veer off the sidewalk and make a pit stop at Mugsy’s Coffee Shop. There are a few dollar bills crammed into the license holder attached to my lanyard, and I dig them out as I order my usual, a salted caramel latte.