The Art of French Kissing

by Brianna Shrum

  Also by Brianna R. Shrum

  Never Never

  How to Make Out

  Copyright © 2018 by Brianna R. Shrum

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.

  Sky Pony Press books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Sky Pony Press, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or info@skyhorsepublishing.com.

  Sky Pony® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.skyponypress.com.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Kate Gartner

  Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3205-6

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3206-3

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Harry,

  Kicking my butt at grilled cheese since junior year <3

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Acknowledgments

  CHAPTER ONE

  There is a very particular art to the making of grilled cheese. To making the perfect grilled cheese, at least. It’s so much more than just slapping a slice of Velveeta between some white bread and letting the thing languish in a skillet. A grilled cheese, when done right, with melty strings of provolone and buttered French bread crisped to golden brown, is a culinary wonder.

  My essay written to perfection on grilled cheese is going to get me into the Savannah Institute of Culinary Arts. Or at least, into their scholarship competition.

  I reread it before I touch the envelope staring up at me on my bed. It’s good. It’s simple, so no one will have thought to write about it twelve weeks ago, and I can just about taste the butter and cheese wafting out of my computer screen. Or I could when I wrote it. Right now, the only flavor I detect is the very distinct old acetone on my fingernails and who knows what under them. Possibly some sweat drifting down from my upper lip. Anxiety is about to eat me alive.

  Open it. Open the thing. It is a prewritten piece of paper; it cannot hurt you.

  Sticks and stones, man. But words of rejection from the only school in the world that matters can ALWAYS hurt me.

  I slam my hands down onto my ratty mattress and the envelope doesn’t move. Because it is heavy—heavy with secrets.

  I read the address typed in a neat sans serif in the top left-hand corner again and again, and then my own name in the middle. I have to look. If I’m in, I have to be ready to jet off to Savannah, Georgia, in three weeks.

  I have to look because I need to know if it’s time to drain half a semester’s worth of after-school shifts waiting tables at Ryan’s BBQ on a plane ticket. Plus, it’ll take me the full three weeks to re-memorize every cookbook in the pantry and binge the last few seasons of Top Chef and do laundry. Clothes are important.

  I grab my phone.

  Carter: HELPPPPPPPPP MEEEEEEEEE

  Em: what do you need

  Carter: MAKE ME DO THE THING.

  Em: do the damn thing

  Carter: I CAN’T DO THE THING

  Em: good lord. do it. i am too tired for this.

  I raise my eyes to the sky and grab the envelope with shaking fingers. This is it. In or out.

  And I rip.

  It takes me a good thirty seconds to pull the paper out of the envelope, and another thirty to unfold it, but I do. And I force myself to look.

  Dear Ms. Lane,

  We are pleased to extend to you an invitation to attend—

  My happy scream shakes the house.

  “Are you dead?”

  “Yes,” I say. “And it’s exactly how I would have chosen to die.”

  Em raises her bright red eyebrows and leans back against my wall. “Thought you always said your ideal was being kissed to death by Tom Hiddleston in a Loki outfit.”

  The corner of my mouth turns up. “Okay. This is the second way I would have chosen to die.”

  Em laughs. She has kind of a smoker’s laugh. Em is particularly small, and her strawberry blonde hair is particularly large, and she looks like a little thing you would find flitting from flower to flower in Thumbelina’s army, but when she speaks, her voice is throaty, raspy, almost as low as a boy’s. And she holds herself in a way that makes people leap out of her path. We’ve been friends since the third grade, and she’s always been that way. I am the purple-haired Marcie to her Peppermint Patty, I think.

  Em says, “So you’re abandoning me for the coast all summer then.”

  I groan and she smiles.

  “I’m messing with you,” she says. “You should go, of course, and I’ll just waste away by the city pool all break.”

  “Please,” I say. “If by ‘waste away,’ you mean ‘finally get into Sophie Travers’s Baywatch-red swimsuit while on-duty’ then yes. You will waste away at the city pool.”

  “Excuse you; lifeguarding is about saving lives.”

  “Yeah,” I say, eyes narrow.

  Em flips me off but smirks, whorls of hair spreading out all over my wall. “I would die to get into Sophie Travers’s swimsuit. Ugh. You perv. Get into her swimsuit.”

  “You like it.”

  “I do.”

  I can’t let go of the acceptance letter so it’s just sitting there, crinkling in my hand. I’m probably sweating all over it in excited anxiety, words so blurry Mom and Dad won’t even be able to read it when they get home. Man. I don’t even know why this is such a massive deal; it’s a competition. Not a guarantee. In fact, it’s way less than a guarantee—it’s a cutthroat war between like a billion of the top high school culinary students in the country. All competing for one scholarship. One scholarship to the school. The top three runners up get a little but it’s jack compared to full ride. Room and board, everything.

  It’s a freaking dream, and I don’t know how to manage my feelings.

  “Carter,” Em says sharply, whacking me on the forehead.

  “Yeah? Yeah, sorry. I was . . . can you say that again?”

  Em narrows her eyes and says, very slowly, “Sophie is coming over to my place next weekend. Sophie. Of the Baywatch-red swimsuit. To my place. To like, study, but I’m hoping also to not. I don’t know. But she’s gonna be there until whenever. While Mom is working late.” />
  “For real?” I say.

  “Thank you; that is the reaction I was looking for.”

  “Sorry,” I say, and I hold out the invitation. “I’m just—I can’t even process this. This is what I’ve wanted since I was fourteen. This school. This program. If I get that scholarship, it’s like, like I could actually go . . .” I let my head drop into my hands, because sometimes excitement feels like terror.

  This cocktail is all of that plus the awesome bonus of: if I lose, I will have lost half-to-a-whole summer I could have been working, plus all that airfare, and then how will I pay for school books? And more college apps? And all these things I could have cobbled together on tuition that my parents sure as hell can’t pay for.

  It’s fine.

  Everything is fine.

  “You’re gonna get it,” she says, resting her hand on mine. “I know it.” I hear the laugh in her voice when she adds, “With grilled cheeses like yours, how could you fail?”

  I say into my hands, “It sounded like you said, ‘Grilled Jesus.’”

  “Don’t get cocky. Your food is good but not worthy of a world religion.”

  I snort and stand. “Come downstairs. I’ll make you some food to worship.”

  Em grabs my hand, and whenever she does this, I am struck by the sheer number of freckles on her skin. She has so many, I sometimes wonder how they can all fit on her tiny body.

  When we walk into the kitchen, my older sister, Jillian, is there eating a bowl of cereal, and Mom and Dad come bustling in.

  “Did you find out yet?” is the first thing my mom says, and I take a deep breath, running my hand through my hair. I’ll have to re-dye before I go; the purple is fading out of the ends.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  My dad walks up behind her, hands on her shoulders, as if this is a big event in Mom’s life or something. And their faces are so wild-eyed, so hopeful, that I start laughing, and then they know. They know I made it.

  “Yeahhhhh, Carter!” Jillian says, milk sloshing over the edge of her bowl and onto me, and she throws the spoon-holding arm around my neck. My parents join and that’s kind of embarrassing, honestly—the 1950s family overcuteness in front of Em. But Em has been in and out of here for a million years, and she is used to it, I’m certain. It’s the opposite of her house—hers is quiet all the time, just her and her neurosurgeon mom, whereas here, it’s basically constant activity and balloons and shouting every time someone comes home with an A on an exam.

  “Please try not to cry when you realize you will be deprived of my presence for the duration of the summer,” I say. “Or do cry. But do it when I have to spy on you to witness.”

  “Scout’s honor,” says Dad.

  I push past everyone to sweep an entire loaf of sliced French bread into a pan. Cooking usually falls to me. Which is the way I like it.

  Everyone just naturally settles at the table, which has one leg shorter than the others, its stain rubbing off it more and more every year. I pull out this old, crooked sauté pan and heat it.

  I wonder if all the equipment there will be state-of-the-art. If all the other kids will have learned to cook from real classes in amazing kitchens, if they’ll all know what they’re doing.

  I wonder, now that it’s here in my reach, if I have any real business going there or if I’m just good at writing poetry about grilled cheese.

  Because wanting something like this? Dreaming about it? When all these other contestants are probably legit and I’m. Well. Someone like me. Is terrifying.

  I shut my eyes and smell the butter. Shut out all this anxiety that wants to drown me. Focus on the scent and the sizzle and let myself fall into the food and the movement of this old-as-hell pan.

  I breathe.

  “Thank you,” I whisper to the bread in one of my hands and the provolone in the other. “You got this for me. Now we just have to win it.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  The first thing I learn when I set foot on SICU’s campus is that I am woefully unprepared for this. The second is that I hate Reid Yamada. Both of these things reveal themselves in a single incident.

  I drag my suitcase (which is a rolling BB-8; I make no apologies) up the little sidewalk that twists and turns its way up to the school, bumping over every square of pavement. I feel like I’m swimming just walking through the air here, like I am suspended in one giant raindrop, and by the time I finally reach the massive double doors of the school, I am drenched. It’s not raining, so I don’t even really want to think about the implications of that beyond the fact that I am vaguely disgusting, and this college looks like something out of The Hunchback of Notre Dame: bright green everywhere on the grounds, and brick and spires that jut up from the earth to make me extremely, positively certain that I am not worthy.

  I push through the doors, half wondering if I’ll discover that the staircases move and I’m late for the Sorting Ceremony when I step inside. I am only slightly disappointed when I find neither of those things, instead ending up somewhere I think I want to stay forever. The foyer is small from side to side but feels gigantic because of the ceiling. Golds and browns and reds everywhere, ornate rugs. . . . This looks like a place a ghost from the 1800s would haunt just to feel at home.

  “Drop your things here,” says someone to my left—brisk voice, sharp. I drop BB-8 immediately, then have to snatch him back up. She didn’t literally mean “here” unless she wanted a giant pile of bags blocking the entry.

  “Sorry,” I say, managing to maneuver my rolly bag so deftly that it rolls right over the woman’s foot not once, but twice. By the time I wrangle it into the side room, she has a perma-scowl on her face and she is peering into mine like she is going to systematically memorize and then destroy it.

  “The students are gathering in the common room,” she says, then she turns and slightly limps away.

  I head forward past the stairs I presume leads to the dorms and follow the murmurs and shuffling, which get louder the farther I go. And then there they are—my competition. There are twenty-four of us, and it looks like I’m one of the last to arrive. Everyone is just kind of sitting on these little couches, talking or fidgeting, and it feels so big. We’re in this small annex, and I know there are only a few dorms in here—it’s the original building, the one they used when the school was tiny, before they had any idea what it would turn into, but it still . . . well . . . it feels like something major.

  And maybe it is. This school has one of the highest job placements of any culinary school in the country after graduation. If I win, I could do this thing. I make my way forward and find an old, flowery-patterned couch with an empty cushion and sit.

  “Hi,” says the guy next to me, and I turn.

  “Hi,” I say, blinking stupidly for a second. Boys with smirking mouths and dark brown eyes are my kryptonite. And his black undercut is exceptionally, exquisitely floppy.

  “Reid Yamada,” he says, and he sticks out his hand. His fingers are long and slim—a pianist’s hands.

  I shake it, and say, “Carter.”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Carter . . .?”

  “Sorry. Lane. Carter Lane.” I am so stupid.

  Reid nods and throws his arm over the back of the couch opposite of where I’m sitting. He leans back and smiles at me like this is nothing. Like he’s just so relaxed. I, on the other hand, am wound so tight that I can do nothing but scrunch. My skin is scrunched, my muscles are scrunched, my bones are scrunched; I am an ode to the nineties hair accessory. And my thoughts are just scrambling over one another, each one terrorizing the next to get to the forefront of my brain. The only things that are even close to winning are “Hogwarts” and Reid’s dark brown eyes, and so apparently I just say, “Harry Potter.”

  Reid raises an eyebrow. “I’m sorry?”

  I am blushing. In addition to scrunching, now my skin and muscles and bones are all blushing. Furiously. “It just looks like it in here. I thought we’d walk in and get sorted first thing.” I laugh, bec
ause I talk and laugh when I’m nervous. I’m a damn hyena. “Ten points to Ravenclaw,” I say weakly in a horrific fake British accent.

  Reid cocks his head, corner of his mouth turned up, and points to his chest. “Slytherin,” he says.

  “Of course.” I wiggle my butt backward, trying to find a comfortable place on this couch, knocking into him a little, but he doesn’t say anything. And the quiet is almost more unnerving than the talking. We’re all just waiting here and I cannot stand it.

  “So where are you from?” I say.

  Reid’s mouth draws in a bit, and he says, “Denver,” then waits in what feels like a slightly defensive silence for a second before he says, “You?”

  I furrow my brow but choose to ignore it. “Montana. Small town.”

  His face relaxes again. “Ah, then you have an advantage over me. Little towns like Savannah aren’t gonna make you claustrophobic.”

  “Yeah,” I say, smiling. “I’m your biggest competition.”

  That eyebrow quirks one more time, little smile on his lips. “You think?” he says, and something about the way he looks at me makes me flush all over. Again.

  I open my mouth to respond but clap it closed like a trout because someone in very fancy slacks begins to speak in the front of the room.

  “Welcome, SICU Scholarship Competitors!” she says. Her hair is pulled back into a severe-looking bun, drawing her pale skin back with it. But her eyes are bright and kind.

  A few claps, and someone whoops in the background.

  “As you know, the weeks—or days—you will spend here will be grueling. Brutal, cutthroat competition, though murder of your competitors is strictly forbidden.”

  I let out a little laugh, along with a few of the others, but Reid doesn’t even crack a smile. He’s completely zoned in, focused. I look back to the woman at the front.

  “I am Dr. Lavell, head of this program. Tonight, you will meet several of my assistants, all professors on campus of one culinary specialty or another. They will be your judges for the remainder of the program. You will face a great number of challenges here, both individual and team-based—two per week, to be precise—and at the end of this week, three of you will be going home.”