Becky's Kiss

by Fisher, Nicholas

  Becky’s Kiss

  Nicholas Fisher

  Vinspire Publishing

  www.vinspirepublishing.com

  Copyright ©2015 Nicholas Fisher

  Cover illustration copyright © 2015 Elaina Lee/For the Muse Designs

  Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system-except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Web-without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, please contact Vinspire Publishing, LLC, P.O. Box 1165, Ladson, SC 29456-1165.

  All characters in this work are purely fictional and have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  ISBN: 978-0-9964423-6-7

  PUBLISHED BY VINSPIRE PUBLISHING, LLC

  For Dad.

  Chapter One

  Becky Michigan was excused from swimming by complaining of cramps like everyone else, but the other girls made it quite clear they had no intention of sitting in the bleachers with “the new girl from upstate New York.” She had forced herself not to cry on her first day of high school, acting like she didn’t care and huffing away to park herself at the edge of the long bench all the way down by the shallow end. But then she confused the shower bell with the one that would ring ten minutes later to end the period, and exited into an empty hallway. She was totally disoriented, of course, and after walking the maze and circling back to her original position, she pushed through the wrong door and got locked out in a courtyard with the dumpsters where they put their cardboard recycling.

  Biting back panic, she cautiously made her way up the back stairs to one of the trailer doors, and breathed a sigh of relief when she found it to be open. The hall was deserted, and she got out her schedule. Yes, she was right, her last period health class was right here in Trailer Classroom C. Sweet. Her lips worked into a careful smile, and this was incredibly lucky considering her wacked-out inner radar and tendency to stumble into bad luck. She padded down to the room and peeked around the corner. Empty. She was still early, even better. The desks were all set in squares facing each other, and Becky made for a chair with a close view of the television, thinking that things were actually starting to look up, that the girls in Scutters Falls, Pennsylvania couldn’t all be so mean…that it was highly unlikely that everyone in the entire school would think she was some awkward country bumpkin who lived in a trailer, ate cheese curd all the time, watched Nascar, and had a singing fish on the wall.

  Something was wrong. Something was wet.

  She’d sat in something.

  “No,” she moaned, standing, arching back, straining her glance, rubbing with both hands and bringing them up before her all greasy and red.

  It was beet juice, she could smell it…those awful disgusting beets she had seen at lunch in the steamtable pan second to the end, floating in a greasy puddle of scarlet broth. Clearly, someone had snuck some out in an eyedropper or a monkey dish and doused the chair, ha ha, and to make matters worse she wearing white pants!

  What was she going to do? The clock on the wall read 1:15 p.m., and in less than a minute the halls would be packed with students, jostling, joking, pushing, and laughing. Could she make it to the office before the bell? Doubtful. And she wasn’t sure of the way. She didn’t even know if the trailers were connected to the second or third floor, and she couldn’t remember whether it was the auditorium or the shop that you had to detour around and on which side either one sat. Oh, this was a mess!

  Becky looked for something to wipe her hands on, and of course, there was nothing. She was going to die. Period.

  “Oh, funny,” she said aloud. Period. Yeah, ok. Her English teacher, Mr. Marcus, had given them notes on ‘irony’ to start the semester off today and, of course, she’d gotten out of swimming by complaining of cramps. Now it looked, for all intents and purposes, like she’d had the most catastrophic feminine accident imaginable.

  Becky was holding her hands away from her body now, looking all around, seeing everything all at once and registering little, trying not to scream.

  There was a clicking noise. Shoes. Out in the hall and closing.

  Becky froze. She would move the chair to the back corner and sit! Yes! She would park herself right back in that puddle of beet juice all through health class. She wouldn’t budge until everyone had gone to their busses. If the teacher told her to get up she’d refuse, stay ‘til midnight if she had to, outlast everyone.

  She didn’t sit back down, however. Somehow, she just couldn’t move.

  The clicking had made its way right up to the doorway now, and in a scattered kind of a way, Becky tried to determine what type of person walked that way. Someone in heels, someone haughty. One of the popular girls. One of the older popular girls. Or maybe an administrator. She hoped it was the third choice, but didn’t look forward to any of the encounters.

  He came around the corner, a kid wearing a back-turned cap, gray baseball pants, and a long, untucked yellow t-shirt, green lettering going across in a cursive slant spelling out ‘Newtown Edgemont’ then fading off after the letters ‘Bic..’ Whatever that meant. The sound had been his cleats, and he had probably gotten out of his last class to help set up for the first fall ball practices or something.

  Becky stood there stunned, for he was the most beautiful boy she had ever seen in her life. Dirty-blonde hair, drawn cheeks, and eyebrows that arched in a way most girls would kill for. And his crystal blue, almond-shaped eyes had a softness to them, a kindness, a familiarity like the tree in your back yard and the tire swing hanging from it.

  “Are you all right?” he said. He was looking at her hands. She shook her head slightly. No, you’re warm, keep guessing. He put his knuckles up, pointed down a finger, and twirled it slowly, like ‘turn around.’ She did it and then turned back. If he was laughing, she would simply shrivel up and curl like a cinder.

  “Gosh,” he said evenly. “They got you with a diaper rash something good.” He took the towel that had been slung around his neck and tossed it to her. “Go ahead. Pat it and blot it out best you can.” He looked at the clock. “And I think you’d better hurry.”

  Becky widened her eyes and tilted her head expectantly. Now her hand was up, knuckles high and index finger twirling so he’d turn and give her a second. She couldn’t believe that she’d suddenly gained the confidence to be cutesy, especially with the hour glass nearly depleted so to speak, but she had and he politely looked off behind him.

  She blotted. Wiped her hands off. Threw the towel in the trash.

  “What now?” she said. He looked back, and if there was even the hint of a smile in his eyes, Becky knew that this weird, delicate moment would shatter.

  He certainly didn’t smile.

  He took off his shirt and gave it to her.

  “I get them extra big and long whenever we win a tournament,” he said. “Go ahead, put it on. It’ll get you to the nurse at least, and if you soaked up the extra back there real good it shouldn’t cauliflower through.”

  Becky Michigan didn’t waste any more time wondering if this boy was going to smirk at her. She slipped her head through the collar, thinking about the way the inside of his shirt smelled faintly of Old Spice, same as her Dad used, and she was thinking about the way the fragrance brought up images of porch swings and prayers and sunsets and goodness, all of it welling up inside her like some sweet longing that made worries like pants-st
ains drift to the edges like corner shadows. She pushed through her elbows and pulled through her chin, eyes closed, daring herself to next let her gaze drift down from his glance a bit so she could really take a look at that muscular little ‘V’ he had going on.

  “Well, how do I…?”

  Her voice died on the air, and her mouth closed. Slowly, she straightened and smoothed down her new tournament shirt, then gathered her hair, pulled it through, and let it fall down across her shoulders.

  Her problems were solved. Now she could go to the nurse without anyone bothering to glance at her.

  Her real issues had only just begun. Gone were the images of sunsets and porches. And the boy of her dreams had vanished.

  Chapter Two

  Mom spazzed in the car, and even though she was pretty much always a spaz, it was clear that the woman was a bit more nervous than usual. Becky was wearing the Rutledge High sweatshirt and sweat pants the front office person had brought into the nurse’s office for her—go Tigers!—and her stained clothes were in a brown paper bag. Mom was holding the yellow tournament shirt in one hand, driving with the other, and looking at both it and Becky between peeps at the road in front of her.

  “Ma, you just went down the wrong street.” Her mother pursed her lips, put the shirt between them, and focused on her driving as if it was an extra favor or something.

  “What’s his name?”

  Becky shrugged.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, I want to call and thank his mother.”

  “No!”

  They stared at each other, startled. She focused back on the road then, and took a sharp right.

  “He’s probably the one who did this, you know.”

  Becky looked off, out the window. No way. This was a random act of cruelty, and she hadn’t been anyone’s target, at least not specifically.

  “Blossom, did you hear me?”

  “Please don’t call me that anymore, Ma.”

  “Since when?”

  Becky turned.

  “Since around here they don’t have hick nicknames for each other like ‘Blossom,’ or ‘Sugar’ or ‘Boomp.’ Since I’m trying not to have people notice me!”

  “Like today?”

  “That wasn’t my fault! Are you saying this was my fault?”

  Mom went through a yellow light just turned red. In a different mood, she would have joked that it was pink.

  “Fault?” she said. “Who said anything about fault? I have to go in to work, and I don’t know where I put my name tag. I can’t remember if I gave the key over to Reggie last night or put it in the manager’s office, and there are twelve pallets of non-foods items that have to be sorted out. I got word that there was a call-out in seafood, and I’m short two cashiers. Then, my daughter misses a class on her first day of high school, and I have to worry about whether or not she’s being sexually harassed!”

  “No one’s being harassed, Mom, gosh!”

  “Then, on top of it, we have regional coming in tonight, and I’m behind on code-checks in pancake batter and baby food. The snack aisle is always a disaster, and—“

  “Mom.”

  “—the salad display is always sloppy and loopy, because whoever designed those plastic display holders was on drugs, and…”

  “Ma.”

  “What?”

  “It’s not like the A & P back home, is it?”

  “No. No, it’s not. It’s faster and five aisles bigger, with twice the dairy stock and half the back room storage space. I mean, you should just see the dead product we’ve got back there stacked up on U-frames…”

  Letting her drone on, Becky slid over, rested her elbow on the back of the seat and smoothed her mother’s hair from her forehead to the back of the crown. She’d been pretty once, at least in the old pictures. Now, she came off rather severe, with lots of eye-liner, penciled help with the brows, deeply grooved parenthesis marks around her thin lips, and eyes always darting everywhere. It wasn’t that she was mean or anything, at least not purposely, but she was constantly losing things—her keys, the Mobil credit card, her reading glasses. Everything was an emergency with her—such a drama queen, and it was getting harder and harder to make her relax. But she liked having her hair smoothed.

  “I miss home,” her mother said. Then she pulled away a bit, rubbed her nose, and kept her eyes on the road. There. It was out, better for her now, like a recovery phase.

  Somewhere deep inside, Becky wanted to cry out that she was lonely too, that she missed Nicky and Lauren and Butch and the rest of the gang, hanging out at the Skatium and the lake, and sneaking up on the cars parked there with the older teens watching the ‘submarine races,’ and jumping out of the bushes in Halloween masks, shouting, then running off like idiots.

  She missed stopping for white hots (white hot dogs to you) and trying cigarettes and not liking them and texting each other all night. Becky had been Facebooking, Tweeting, video-chatting, and calling for two weeks now, trying to do more than keep pace, but it was fading.

  When you left home so Dad could keep his job in another branch in another town, another state, you were gone, for all intents and purposes. Messages went stale, because you weren’t there for the moment to moment stuff: I’m worried about not making field hockey this year, I hope high school lockers actually work, I wonder if I’ll be popular for once, I just know tenth grade girls are going to hate me, I hope I’m not the shortest one again. It was a slow death, but one she had already started to accept.

  She really wanted a hug, like now, but it wasn’t as good when you had to ask for it. And it would have been totally weird having Ma pull over for it. Knowing their luck, they’d run over something and get a flat in the breakdown lane, or they’d scrape into some overgrowth and scratch the paint, or get rear-ended by someone coming over the rise texting.

  By the time they pulled into the driveway, the urge for her mother to hold her was gone, and Becky just felt listless and tired. Mom didn’t get out with her. She was going to be late, and she had to run. In one of her rare sane moments, she stopped stressing and paused to really look at her daughter.

  “I won’t call his mother about the shirt. But you should.”

  Becky looked down. Nodded. Exited awkwardly. She hadn’t asked for pre-boyfriend advice and it was embarrassing. And she wasn’t about to call some strange woman just so she could spin some yarn about shirt lending. How about when his story didn’t quite match? Telling the truth wasn’t even a consideration—oh, please, kill me now—and plus, who was she to go calling boys she didn’t know? She was trying her best to blend.

  But she did want to call him.

  She could just hear him taking the phone, and saying, “Hey, what’s up,” as if they’d known each other for years. She would talk about her feelings, because she was feeling them of course, and baseball, since she’d been the scorekeeper for the boy’s middle school team back at Lincoln and she knew more trivia than most guys, at least about the American league.

  Oh yes, she’d draw him in with a casual mention of Miguel Cabrera’s Triple Crown a few years back to see who on earth he rooted for around here. The Phillies? Where were they lately? At least Derrick Jeter bowed out last year in style, getting his Louisville Slugger bat, “P72” retired. In his final game on September 25th, he had a walk-off single against Orioles pitcher Evan Meek to win 6 – 5. What did the guys in red pinstripes have? Rebuilding? Ryan Howard hitting .233 and all this crazy hope in rookies like Maikel Franco breaking his wrist and busts like Domonic Brown doing face-plants and giving up inside-the-park homers? Don’t get me going!

  Becky pictured this boy standing in his kitchen with the phone to his ear, interested in the fact that she knew about baseball and smiling wryly since she had zinged him. And even though he liked a bit of sass here and there, he’d answer back shyly if she posed a question about the feelings part, because he was sweet as apple pie, and he’d be right on the mark, since he’d really, really been listening.<
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  She got to her room, changed out of the sweat suit, and put on her favorite jeans with the hearts on the knees. They were ‘inside the house’ jeans at this point, a bit too small, showing her ankles like a sailor avoiding deep puddles, but they were snug and secure and reminded her of home, not this new place where some of her stuff was still in boxes and there was no one around the corner to call anymore.

  She gathered some clothes out of her hamper and made a pile. Tomorrow, she’d find this boy and give him back a clean shirt. She really wanted to offer him a small Tupperware container of pasta, because it fit the moment somehow, but carrying it to school would be awkward. She brought his shirt to her face and breathed in. Old Spice and porch swings and weeping willow trees, definitely.

  Becky made her way to the utility room and put in the wash, careful in her mind to pronounce it “waaash,” like they did around here instead of “wersh,” even though it sounded horribly incomplete and snobby. She even set her cell timer and put the load in the dryer forty five minutes later, thinking herself ultimately responsible. It wasn’t until the clothes had about ten minutes left that she smelled something burning…gasoline, pungent and slick.

  She came up out of the synopsis she had downloaded about Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser, as Mr. Marcus had said that, by the end of the semester, everyone had to read a modern American classic off this sheet and find “three symbolic threads.” Eight page minimum!

  She liked to get ahead on the first day of school, so she had scoured the titles, looking for something, anything for girls, and come up with boring Hemingway, confusing Ellison, awful Fitzgerald—that one on The Great Gatsby had posted the first introductory pages that no one in their right mind could possibly understand—and Cather, she who made Becky think of dust, creaky floorboards, and old ladies with their noses in the air, talking about sewing. And here, the Sister Carrie page wasn’t a synopsis, but rather some professor talking about the story in terms of “dichotomous merging of modernistic exploration and Victorian expectation,” and Becky Michigan had never felt so confused in her entire life.