“What are you doing right now? Don’t you have homework to do?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. You’re annoying me.” Mom said. “Shoo.”
I tossed the cleaning sponge at the sink, picked up my milk and headed toward my bedroom, glancing behind me in bewilderment as she started pulling things out of the freezer. Presumably to cook. God help us all.
“I’m not covering for you if Dad notices half his chocolate milk is gone!” she called up the stairs.
I jumped on YouTube to check my stats before leaving. Whoa. I was getting some serious hits. A couple of other YouTubers were linking to it. This was unreal. People seemed to be loving them some angry girl rock at the moment. I hummed The Kiss Off, spinning slowly in the swivel chair. I was proud of myself, and had to wonder if anyone I knew had seen it. If a certain two people had seen it.
My cell rang and it was Van.
“Okay,” she said. “I was on YouTube earlier and The Kiss Off was on the front page.”
“Shut up.”
“It was, just in the ‘someone is currently viewing this video’ section but when I clicked over there had been a massive jump in hits.”
“Yeah, FreezeRay promoted it on their page too,” I said.
“Who’s FreezeRay?”
“You don’t know FreezeRay? Oh he’s this singer in Canada, he writes songs and plays them on YouTube too. He’s pretty cool and he has, like, fifty thousand subscribers.”
“Wow. There’s also this Japanese pop star called Yuri Maki who saw your song and linked to it on her site.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And then some French actor Claude Dasten must have seen that and he mentioned how catchy it was on his Facebook and this whole thing is going viral.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I set up a Google Alert on you. On PoppyLongStocking.”
“A what?”
“I get emails when PoppyLongStocking is mentioned online.”
“You can do that?”
“Yes, Poppy,” she said. “Did you listen to anything in Computer Lab last semester? Anything at all?”
“All I need is YouTube, baby,” I said. She frowned at me. I could hear it in her silence. I was trying her patience and it was kinda funny.
“Anyway, I had to switch it from immediate alerts to once daily because so many people are linking to it. It took me an hour to delete all the alerts there were so many.”
“So cool,” I said.
“You’re an Internet celebrity.”
“Ha! I wouldn’t go that far.” I may not have been a celebrity, but I was definitely viral. Never thought I’d be happy to say that.
***
Chapter Four
Mads was being thoroughly annoying on the way home from school the next day. There I was, hands stuck under my armpits, nose stinging from the winter-like chill while she stood there, staring off into space with a big goofy grin as she put her fingers to her lips, took a drag and puffed out the white icy air like she was having a smoke. She was finding the cold funny. She also thought her two pimples were totally invisible under the mounds of concealer – both green (for the redness, she told me) and skin tone as well as a full face of makeup that made her nose kind of shiny. She was kidding herself.
“Don’t you just love being in love?” she asked with a contented sigh.
“Please,” I sneered. “You’re not in love.”
“Well, like then,” she said. “Don’t you just love being in like?” Truth was, I hadn’t been in like very often. At least not with boys that there was even the remotest chance I was going to do anything about it with. Definitely wasn’t going to ask a guy out, like Mads. She’d been all dreamy-eyed and giggly about Dev for weeks and all of a sudden she gets up the guts to ask him out? Where did that even come from?
Cam’s really the only boy I’d been in like with, like…seriously. Seriously in like with. One hundred and ten per cent in like with. And then poof, it was over. Though there was this one guy early last year, we were both at Tahni Mossman’s birthday party and everyone was outside screaming and laughing and lighting sparklers and waving them around as it started to get dark. They were jumping fully clothed off the pier into the lake out the back of Tahni’s house, and this guy friend of hers, I don’t actually know where she knew him from, started smiling at me and I smiled back. He walked over to me and we talked a little bit and we sat down over on the stone fence in the shadows away from everyone and next thing I knew we were making out. And it was really nice. And I was kind of in like with him, but then his friend called him away and that was the last time I saw him. I don’t even remember his name.
“Yeah,” I said to Mads as the bus arrived and we piled on, squeezing through the Mounties and the business suits to a spare pocket of space near a pole to hold onto. “I like being in like.”
“Are you in like with someone right now?” Mads asked. She wriggled around on the spot, looking like she had to pee her pants. It was actually excitement, but the business suit behind her didn’t know that, so he eyed her warily and shuffled a little further away.
“No,” I said, averting my gaze as images of Cam kissing Nikki flashed into my mind. “There’s no one.”
“Wow,” Mads said. “You are the worst liar. I never noticed it before. Who is it, who is it? I can tell you like someone, and I know it isn’t Cam the way you’re all with the death stares and stuff,” she said. “Clearly you’re over that drama.” She paused and looked at me. “I mean, you’re not over it, but you’re over him. Oh you know what I mean. What an ass hat,” she said. “The both of them.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. There was nothing else to say.
“Sooo, tell me who you like,” Mads said, bouncing up and down again.
“I don’t like anyone.”
“Come on, you like someone, I can tell.”
“I don’t, Mads.” I said. I glanced around at all of the teenage boys within hearing distance of this conversation. Public forum much?
The bus slowed and I gripped the handrail as we all jerked forward when it stopped.
Through the front door, Cam and Nikki stepped onto the bus, takeaway coffee cups in hand. What was she doing here, again? As they got on and Cam flashed his bus pass at the driver and inserted a dollar for Nikki, they seemed deep in conversation and neither of them even looked our way. Mads must have followed my gaze because she stopped pestering me about the whole liking thing.
“Fine,” I said, looking around at all the Mount Martha’s boys crowding us on the bus. I spotted one sitting near the back, a little taller than the rest with neat black hair that looked as though he’d actually brushed it.
“Since you must know,” I said with an exasperated sigh. I gave a subtle nod toward him and wiggled my eyebrows. She put on a bored expression and heaved a sigh. Scratching her head, her eyes flit from boy to boy. Her eyes motioned to a boy with pink and purple stripes in his hair and holes that looked a bit like burn marks in his school blazer. She raised her eyebrows at me. I gave my head a couple of millimetres of a shake to either side, mouthed the word ‘tall’ and nodded toward the guy once again. I should really have gotten a better look at him before choosing him as my potential soul mate, but cest la vie. It was going to get her off my back. Mads finally spotted him and gave me a smile. Seemed she approved.
“How long’s this been going on?” she asked with a playful nudge.
“It hasn’t,” I said. “I mean, it isn’t. I’ve never talked to him, I just…you know.”
She finished the sentence for me. “You’re in like.”
“Yeah.” I agreed. Sure.
I settled my gaze out the window at the world moving by, silently declaring the end of this topic.
I didn’t even notice Nikki squeezing her way down the crowded walkway toward the back door, toward me as the bus slowed and pulled in to the side of the road. The doors opened with a hiss and for a moment I thought she hadn’t even seen me until,
just before she stepped onto the road, she looked me in the eye and muttered with a faketastic smile “‘Nice song’,” Oh my God she’d seen it. I wasn’t sure why I was so surprised. She knew I recorded them. They both did. Did I care that she’d seen it? That they both probably had?
Yes.
No.
Yes.
No. Wasn’t that why I did it in the first place? So they’d see it?
Nikki shook her head at me from the sidewalk. Just as the doors swung closed she said “You really can be a bitch, can’t you Poppy?” And with that, she turned on her heel and the bus pulled away and any chance at a comeback was gone. Argh! The bus went quiet.
Awkward. Neither Mads nor I spoke until conversation had resumed to normal levels.
“Forget her,” Mads said at last. “You have to talk to him.”
“Who, Cam? Why?”
“Cam?” Mads said. “No – the guy.” She nodded toward the back of the bus and wriggled her eyebrows at me with a smile.
“Oh, no, it’s fine, really,” I said. “I don’t have to talk to him. Really, I don’t.”
“Uh – yeah you do,” Mads said. “What’s the point in being in like with someone if you don’t actually talk to them?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “The watching and sighing and boy stalking and…well you didn’t talk to Dev for ages. Leave me alone.”
“Oh come on. We need a plan. Some way to get your guy alone.”
“He’s not my guy.”
“And away from all the other skeevy Mounties.”
“Okay well…” I pressed the button and picked up my backpack as the bus pulled into my stop. “We’ll just have to figure this out tomorrow. Later.” I jumped down off the bus, and kissed my hand. Turning around I threw the kiss dramatically at Mads through the window, and froze as the tall boy with the brushed brown hair climbed down off the bus after me.
What were the chances.
Mads froze mid-catch of my imaginary kiss. As the doors hissed closed and the bus started to pull away she sprang to action, she looked like she had a bit of a spaz attack, her pointer finger jerking at the boy and then me, her lips pursed, rounding out the whole ‘I’m serious, bitch, talk to him’ face she was throwing at me. She held her cell phone to her ear and mouthed ‘call me’. I grimaced, turned away from the bus and started walking.
Oh jeez, I had to talk to him now because the second I got home I was going to be bombarded with text messages and phone calls wanting every single detail.
I cleared my throat and kept walking, listening for any sign – where was he? Could I look back and not look like I was expecting him to come talk to me? Would that be really lame? It would, wouldn’t it? Or would it look like I was worried I was being followed and was about to scream murder? Oh God, what could I do?
I straightened my back and walked tall, making sure not to shuffle my feet and look at the ground like I usually do. There were footsteps. There were definitely footsteps behind me. He was walking in the same direction as me. So he must live near me. Well that’s something we could strike up a conversation about. I tossed my hair off my shoulder…and then remembered it was back in a ponytail. As my face went red – which thankfully he couldn’t see, since he was behind me – I covered the faux pas by flapping at the air, and acting kind of annoyed, like there was a teeny weeny bug that he couldn’t see but it was totally buzzing around near my shoulder where my hair would be if it was out and perfect for tossing. Okay, so I had to talk to him. What to say, what to say…what do you say to a random stranger? Especially a cute random stranger. And it’s not like they’re a complete random stranger because you’ve seen him on the bus a bunch of times. Well. At least once.
What do I know about him? Well, he goes to Mount Martha’s. And he caught my bus. And unlike lots of boys he brushes his hair. Well, that’s something. Good. Yeah, I could probably use that. Not the hair brushing bit but the other stuff. Judging by the slightly more distant footsteps, he’d slowed down a little. Or maybe I’d sped up. This was a bloody nightmare…we’d been walking in silence ignoring each other for the past couple of blocks. How was I supposed to just turn around and start talking to him? I kicked a pebble and watched it bounce along the pavement ahead of me. In perfect position so that in a few more steps I could kick it again. No. No more distractions, my window of opportunity was closing. I could see my corner two blocks away, where scary Mr. Martinez’s rose bushes lined his wrought iron fence. Mom and Dad have assured me plenty of times that he really is a nice old man, but every encounter I’ve had with him has involved him yelling obscenities or attempting to whack me over the head with his walking stick because I lingered too near his precious flowers.
Well, it was now or never, and since I had to report back on my progress, never really didn’t seem like an option. Suddenly I had this brain wave. This fantastical idea. I glanced down the road behind me, caught his eye and gave him a friendly smile, then glanced the other direction, stepping toward the road like I was going to cross.
I’m a total genius.
I looked back at him and stopped walking. Like I’d thought of something and maybe I wasn’t going to cross after all.
“Hey, you go to Mount Martha’s, don’t you?” I said. Instantly I cringed. Okay so on second thought it wasn’t the best opener. He was wearing the school uniform, complete with school crest on his blazer and navy and white striped tie. Duh, he goes to Mount Martha’s. I’m such a loser!
Right before I started thinking ‘what does it matter? It’s not like I like the guy’, he raised one eyebrow at me and pulled an earphone from his ear.
I didn’t know what to say. He hadn’t heard a word I’d said. I’d resigned myself to the fact that I’d made a tool of myself as my first impression but it hadn’t been long enough for me to obsess about what I should have said instead to sound cooler. And I didn’t have any better ideas yet. So I stood there, blinking at him with surprise and said “Uh…uh…I…”
Surprisingly, he seemed shocked by that. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open and, weirdly, his arms shot out toward me which is when I heard a dog bark and something heavy landed between my shoulder blades and I screamed as I sprawled face first into the grass, the wind knocked out of me.
“Urgh,” I wrinkled my nose as a god-awful stench invaded my nostrils, it was sharp and tangy and bitter and seriously as if something had died. Had someone thrown road kill at me? Who would even do that? Trying to lift myself up I discovered the thing that was stinking me out was still lying on top of me and would not be moved. A wet tongue licked the side of my face and I tried to push it off me again but it wouldn’t budge, and then I felt some movement around my legs. I craned my neck up to see the guy from the bus staring in shock at me and the thing that was on top of me. Immobilized by the monstrosity of my situation. But then I felt…
“What is it doing?!” I screamed. “Oh my God, get it off get it off!”
The boy was laughing. He was bent over at the waist, laughing his stupid head off. But then I caught his eye and locked my stare with his and we could have held a funeral because his laughter died right there.
He sprang into action. Must have been my desperation that got him to move, to do something. Hovering over me somewhere, I could hear him shooing the dog and telling it to “get the hell off her!” but with no success. The heavy weight on my back shifted as the guy tried to push it off me, but then the dog righted itself and continued doing…its thing. I saw the guy’s feet near my face and he grabbed his school bag with the special crest on it, rummaging inside for something. He pulled out some red twine, made a loop and dashed back to me. Within seconds I felt him heaving the dog off me. I jumped to my feet and brushed down the back of my legs, checking for any traces of…something I didn’t want to think about. When I was positive I didn’t have any marks on me, I looked at the guy and the dog. He had the twine tied around its neck like a lead and the dog sat by his feet, panting happily as if this was like any other day.
This was not like any other day. He was tan and grey with dirty, wiry hair, a long shaggy face and long limbs. The dog, I mean.
“Are you alright?”
“What?” My eyes shot to the boy. He was looking at me with a smirk which he tried to hide. He failed.
“Are you okay? You hurt or anything? Did he bite you?”
“No,” I said.
“Jeez, he really came out of nowhere, didn’t he?” he said. “I mean I saw you turn around and that was the first time I even noticed the stupid mutt was bolting at you.”
“Yeah,” I said, narrowing my eyes at the dog again. He arched around behind himself and started sniffing his own butt.
“Doesn’t have a collar on him,” the guy continued. “Do you think he’s a stray?”
I shook my head with a shrug.
“I’m Ty, by the way,” he said.
I nodded. Well he had a name. I could tell Mads that. And Vanya. Mads had probably told Vanya all about the boy I was in like with and how I was making my move as they spoke. Some move. Anyway, I could tell them he was called Ty. And that he was the big hero type. If a hero points and laughs at you when you get mauled.
He stood there looking at me. What was he…oh. “Poppy,” I replied. “I’m Poppy.”
He nodded. “Cool.”
I motioned to the dog, which I was happily keeping my distance from. “So what do you think we should do with him?”
“He has to have come from somewhere,” Ty said, looking around. “Hey, did anyone lose a dog?”
Nobody answered. Nobody even peeked through their curtains. Nobody cared.
“We can’t just leave him here,” he said. “He could get run over or something.”
Or he could do the running over.
Ty continued. “One of us needs to take him to the pound or something. But I can’t take him, we’re renting,” he said. I didn’t know what that had to do with anything. “And my mom’s out until late tonight so I have no way of getting him to the pound. I borrow her car. My boy Archie has a car, but he’s working tonight.”
“Oh,” I said. He looked at me expectantly. Oh no. “Well I’m not taking him!” I pointed at the dog with an accusing finger. “Did you see what he was doing to my legs?”
The Kiss Off Page 3