Who I Kissed

by Janet Gurtler

  “Then how?”

  The three of us look at each other and then down at the necklace.

  “Sometimes things happen,” Aunt Allie says.

  “Don’t start with that stuff,” Dad says, but his voice is low and gravelly. He wipes his finger under his eye. “Really, Allie. You never put it there. Sam? You’re sure you found it in the pocket?”

  I nod. “Take it, Dad. Take the necklace.”

  Dad looks at me. “Oh, butterfly,” he says, and he steps forward and takes me in his arms. And then he opens the clasp on it and secures it around my neck.

  He pushes me gently back, studies the necklace, and glances at Aunt Allie. “Your mom must have meant for you to find it. She wants you to have it.”

  “But how?” I ask.

  “Not everything can be explained,” Aunt Allie says. “Sometimes we just have to go with it.”

  Dad doesn’t try to come up with a logical explanation.

  Maybe there is one. But maybe none of us wants to find it.

  chapter fifteen

  I make it through classes with an invisible bubble around me that keeps me safe from onlookers. I suspect it has something to do with the locket.

  Taylor texts me, but we miss each other in the halls. I wonder if it’s possible to get through the whole day without speaking to anyone other than teachers. But I have English after lunch, and I’ll see Casper, so probably not. I’m surprised I haven’t gotten any texts from him, which I’d both expected and dreaded.

  At lunch I take my brown bag outside to eat alone. I try not to remember earlier days of sitting in the cafeteria with the swimmers, close to Zee while he made jokes about my three sandwiches and Taylor threw crusts at him.

  The air outside is chilly, so there aren’t many kids around. I stand in the entranceway and lean against a railing, not wanting to sit on the damp grass. I watch the usual groups hang around the outskirts of the school like they do at school grounds all over America. Dad always says teenagers think they’re original, but other than having a lot more technology, they’re not so different from their parents. I can’t imagine that he’s right. It has to be harder now than when he was a kid.

  I chomp on my sandwich, down to one from three. I’ve cut back on the huge portions, afraid of eating too much. Without swimming, I’m afraid of ballooning up. For the millionth time, my fingers go to the necklace, and I rub the locket and stare at cars passing the school, making up stories in my head about the people inside.

  “I hope that’s not peanut butter.” My mouth stops chewing, and chunks of bread and ham stick to the roof of my mouth.

  A girl is staring at me. She walks close, her long legs perfect for the black skinny jeans she’s wearing. Her arms are crossed over a thin black sweater with no jacket to keep out the chills. She’s either freezing or has lava running through her veins. She snaps her gum, and even though she’s pretty, with her short whitish blond hair and big hoop earrings, she reminds me of someone from a TV commercial about troubled youth. She’s the girl from English class. The one Casper dropped as a partner for me.

  She uncrosses her arms and squints as if she wants to give me a beat-down. I force myself to swallow the food in my mouth and stare back at her, trying to look tough and not terrified.

  “It’s not peanut butter,” I tell her. “I don’t eat it anymore.” My cheeks turn red, realizing how stupid that must sound.

  “Yeah? Too bad you didn’t put that into practice a few months ago.”

  I want to say something snarky back, but don’t have the energy or will. I drop my eyes and look at her scuffed-up ankle boots.

  “You know who I am?” Her voice challenges me to something I’m not sure of.

  I push off the railing, drop my hands to my side so I’m standing taller, and look straight into her eyes. We’re about the same height, but I’ve got more muscle and bulk. I can’t believe I’m sizing her up and noticing all this. I’ve never had to fight to protect myself in my life.

  I swallow and think Xanax-y thoughts.

  I am not afraid. I am not afraid.

  The anxiety in my belly tells a different story.

  “Callie Zibler,” she says. “I’m Callie.”

  “You used to partner with Casper in English.” I twist my braid around my fingers.

  “Used to.” She shifts her weight, juts a scrawny hip out, and lifts her thumb to her mouth to gnaw on the nail. Her bottom lip quivers just a little, enough for me to notice. “He thinks you’re smarter, and that’s all he cares about. He’s desperate to be valedictorian. As if he needs scholarship money. He wants bragging rights.”

  She sighs and doesn’t look like she wants to beat me up anymore. “He’s an ass.”

  It’s such a relief that I put my hand over my mouth to stop a giggle. I crumple the rest of the sandwich I’m holding in my other hand and wait for her to say more.

  She pulls her thumb from her mouth. “Alex and I used to go out. We split up a few months ago, before he died. But we stayed friends.”

  I glance down. A ladybug crawls on the pavement by my shoe. It only has two spots and is more orange than red. She’s out late in the season, and cold weather is coming. Stupid ladybug facts live in my head. Useless information stored for no apparent reason. They hibernate in groups in the cold. I wonder where the bug’s friends are.

  “I’m sorry. I wish I could have known him better.” I stare at the ladybug, thinking about Alex’s friends. He had a lot of them. “That probably sounds horrible coming from me.”

  “No. He was a really good guy. You would have like him,” she says. “And actually, I kind of screwed him over,” Callie says.

  I look up, surprised. “Alex was good about it,” Callie continues. “Chloe’s my friend. From softball. She’s really good. Like Alex was. I think he and I kind of went out by default. Both of us ball players, you know?”

  I hide my surprise. She’s a jock? She doesn’t look the part. But what do I know? Until recently I was a fake lesbian. Now I kill boys with my spit and make out with my study partners.

  “I like Alex, but we were better as friends.” She pauses. “Liked.” She shivers, and her knees wobble together. “He was cute. Cool. We just weren’t each other’s type. He was so good about it. He was a great guy. Like I said, you would have liked him.”

  A boy in the school yard whoops as his friend tackles him. We both watch them goof around for a minute.

  “I’m sorry.” I manage again and let out a huge sigh.

  She reaches out and touches my arm. “I know,” she says. “It must be awful. I mean. I miss Alex so much. It’s hard to believe he’s gone. But for you.” She shakes her head. “It could have been me too. You know. I mean, I ate nuts and stuff when we dated. I wasn’t always a hundred percent safe.”

  I swallow again and again, but my throat feels like it’s growing and stretching out of my skin. The boys are play fighting; their friends are gathered around watching.

  Callie stares at me as if she’s waiting for me to say something, and I wonder what I could possibly say. “I wasn’t at the party,” she says. “The night it happened.”

  “Lucky you.”

  She half smiles, but it fades quickly. “Yeah. I heard it was pretty awful.”

  I nod and look toward the street. An old truck rumbles past. It’s white, but the body is covered with orange rust. A girl is squished up close to the driver, and she has her head tilted back and her mouth open, laughing. The boy driving is smiling. I wonder what he just said to make her laugh. I want to run after the truck. Hop in the back. Ask them to share and take me away from this conversation.

  “He talked about you. Said you’re a swimmer. I heard you’re awesome.”

  I glance at her, almost surprised. I shrug. I was a swimmer. I’m not sure what I am anymore. But it’s
nothing she needs to hear.

  “Anyhow.” She narrows her eyes. “Alex was a good guy, but sometimes he did stupid stuff.”

  I frown. It’s not nice to talk about a guy who’s no longer around to defend himself. It doesn’t matter so much anymore if he did stupid things.

  She shivers and rubs her hands up and down her arms, avoiding my eyes. “I’m only saying so because some people are being pretty ignorant, acting like everything is your fault.”

  I look across the school yard. The kids horsing around look tough, kind of like druggies. The boys’ pants hang halfway down their butts. The girls’ makeup looks like war paint, and they’re heavily pierced. I imagine them mocking me and my clean lifestyle the way the druggies in Orlie used to. I judged them too, and what they did to their bodies. We’re all judging each other and trying hard to find someone to fit in with.

  “That’s kind of to be expected,” I tell her. “Under the circumstances.”

  “It’s not right,” she says.

  A gust of wind blows a cluster of leaves toward us, and I pull my hoodie closer. She wraps her arms tighter around herself; her thin sweater is for fashion, not warmth.

  “Frick. It’s cold. Listen, the reason I followed you into this freezing weather is to tell you something.”

  “What?” I finally ask when she doesn’t say more. “Can you enlighten me?” I try to sound patient.

  “They’re investigating his death. Like, a coroner is.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I know.”

  “You do?” Her brows furrow together, and she seems genuinely surprised.

  “Casper told me.”

  “He did?”

  “We’re—” I pause, but a sliver of shame creeps onto my face. “Working on that English project together.”

  She tilts her head as if she smells embarrassment and glances past me toward the group of kids who are now heading our way. She narrows her eyes, and the toughness I saw before is back. “I didn’t think you’d know. Alex’s friends are all pretty messed up by all this.”

  “I know,” I tell her.

  “Everybody deals differently, right? I’m glad Casper told you. We’re all kind of watching Chloe’s back. But you don’t deserve to be reviled.”

  I almost chuckle at her word choice. Why wouldn’t they revile me? But I have Chloe’s back too. She just doesn’t even know. I would do almost anything to protect her.

  She peers closer at me. “She doesn’t hate you.”

  “I would,” I say automatically. “Hate me.”

  “No,” she shakes her head, and her earrings bob around. They’re so big it looks painful. “I don’t think you would. Especially if you knew everything.”

  I frown.

  The kids are getting closer. One of the boys waves to her. She waves back and jumps up and down on the spot. “God. It’s cold out here. I gotta go back inside.”

  “If I knew everything?” I repeat.

  She jumps. Up, down, up, down, up, down. A human pogo stick. “Talk to Chloe,” she says, her eyes on the boy, and then she hurries to the front doors of the school and disappears inside.

  I weave my braid around my finger. What the hell was that supposed to be about? What don’t I know?

  My pocket starts to vibrate. I pull out my cell phone and frown at the caller ID.

  “It’s Dad. You got anything important next period?”

  “Not really.”

  “Then come right home.”

  chapter sixteen

  I hurry to the school parking lot and drive straight home. My nerves jump, trying to figure out what would make Dad ask me to ditch class.

  When I run in the house he’s sitting in the living room. He’s holding the framed picture of Mom that I put on his dresser.

  I pause at the threshold to the living room, where the tile from the kitchen and hallway meets the hardwood. The house smells like vanilla and fresh cookies, and it gives my head a mixed message. There’s no noise or sign of Aunt Allie or Fredrick.

  I stare at the frame in his hand, and my cheeks burn. My fingers immediately go to the locket on my neck. I asked for this, but now have an urge to turn around and run back out the door. Confrontation. Here it is now, in front of me.

  “You were snooping around in my room,” he says. His voice sounds odd. Devoid of emotion. “You could have asked me about your mom.”

  Heat flushes from my feet and rockets through me. “No,” I remind him. “I couldn’t. You never talk about her. You never let me ask about her.” I lift my head higher, reminding myself I wanted this. His anger. This confrontation. “We never talk about her.”

  He doesn’t say anything, and I can tell he’s carefully considering his words. His eyes go to my hand. The locket around my neck that I’m clutching. “Did that really just show up?” he asks.

  “I swear.” I take my hand off it and lift my head as he stares at the necklace.

  “I watched the video. The one from when I was a baby,” I tell him.

  He brings both hands up and rubs at his head, scratching his scalp furiously. “I know. You left the VCR out.” He points at the spot on the couch opposite him. “Sit.”

  I do as he asks. The fireplace light is on, and the blinds on the window are open. It’s bright and cheery in the room, but he isn’t.

  “The first time I met your mom was at a swim meet. We were both fifteen. We both lived in Seattle, but at opposite ends. She swam for a different club than me. Like you, her butterfly was famous. Poetic.” His head is down, as if he’s talking to the hardwood.

  He glances up. A soft smiles turns up the corners of his mouth. “Inside the water she was fierce, unstoppable. But outside the water…she was kind of fragile.” He places the picture frame he’s holding on the sofa table beside him. He turns it so it faces me.

  I listen to the words he’s unwrapping like gifts and hear the emotions in his voice. Love. Hurt. Sadness. I try to relate them to the person who was my mother. Not the woman frozen in time in a picture.

  “She was pretty. Blond hair, with eyes so much like yours. Her eyes made people stop and stare. Like Elizabeth Taylor’s. Almost purple. And of course, the perfect swimmer’s build.” He chuckles and stares off into space, and my cheeks redden as he remembers her in a way that is sweet but kind of embarrassing.

  “But what was she like?” I whisper, afraid to stop the flow of memories, but afraid he won’t go on if I don’t prompt him. I stare at the vase of flowers that Aunt Allie placed on the fireplace mantel. The leaves are browning, but the flowers are struggling to hang in.

  “Quiet. Your aunt told me to watch out for quiet ones, but I didn’t listen to her. I couldn’t. I fell in love with your mom almost the first time I saw her.”

  There’s a noise from the basement, a rustling and then a burp-growl, and I realize Aunt Allie and Fredrick are home but hiding out downstairs. Giving us privacy.

  “Your mother was beautiful.”

  I twist my braid and put the end of it in my mouth, bite down on it. “I saw that. But what was she like? Why was she unhappy?”

  He leans back, sticks his feet out, puts his hand behind his head, and sighs, and the force of it goes right through him. “She lived in her own skin. In her own head. Aunt Allie called her an old soul.”

  I frown. “Like reincarnated?”

  He laughs, but it’s dry. “Allie might say so, but no, I meant she was deep. A thinker. She analyzed everything but kept most things inside. She was quiet and soft except when she got into the pool. And then she was fiercely competitive. She didn’t like to admit how driven she was. But she loved to win.” His mouth turns up into a smile again.

  I wish I could see inside his head, see the person he is remembering. “She was introspective, but she did have a good sense of humor. I don’t know.
” He blinks, and his eyelashes glisten. “I loved her so much, but I always wondered if I wasn’t enough.”

  My heart opens to him. “Oh, Daddy. Of course you were enough.” I wish I were little again and could sit on his lap and comfort both of us. I wait for him to go on. When he says nothing more, I have to ask. “Why did you think that?”

  He stares at me. Through me. Blinking. I can see he’s trying to figure out what to tell me. How much.

  “It’s okay, Dad. I can handle this. I can.”

  He presses his lips tight and sighs, takes his hands away from behind his head and sits up straight. “I suppose you can. She was ill. A little while after we got married, she got pretty sick.” He shakes his head. “They put her on meds to try to help, but it made her lose speed in the water. By then she was only swimming for herself, but she hated it. So she quit swimming.”

  My stomach drops as I feel how wrong it was for her to do that. And it’s very familiar.

  “What was wrong with her?”

  “Her doctor said she was bipolar, only back then they called it manic depression. Her highs weren’t crazy or out of control, but her lows flattened her. It affected her energy level and self-esteem. The medication was brutal. They didn’t have the kind they have now. It was strong, with side effects, and she hated taking them. But after a while, she did feel better. And then she wanted to get pregnant. So.” He smiles at me but sighs. “She went off them. Her doctor wanted her to stay on, but she didn’t want to risk your health. There were so many unknowns, taking the meds while pregnant. And she seemed so much better.”

  I close my eyes. “Why are you only telling me this now?” I ask in a soft voice.

  He stands and looks as if he’s about to leave the room, but then, just as abruptly, he sits back down. “Your mom didn’t tell people about her disease. She didn’t want anyone to know. I guess I got used to covering up for her.”

  “But I’m her daughter.”

  “Yes. And for a long time you were too young to understand. The way you worry about things. I never wanted you to blame yourself. I thought it would be worse for you to know.”