The Kiss Off

by Sarah Billington

  “Right, your girlfriend Poppy Douglas, writer of The Kiss Off and several other songs she has aired on YouTube,” she said. “Tell us about Poppy. From the look of her latest video a couple of weeks ago, she wasn’t too happy with you.”

  “No, she wasn’t, and it-”

  “Have you spoken to her since?”

  He paused for a moment, like he wasn’t sure if he should answer. Pretty ballsy of her to ask something like that. Wasn’t he just talking about wanting privacy? Finally he decided to answer. “No.” He sighed, looking frustrated. He looked at the camera for a moment, looked at me, and then back to the presenter. “No, she’s not talking to me. She’s blocked my number or something.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What a hypocrite,” Cam muttered. I glanced at him, confused. “Yeah, he’s a hypocrite. He’s on national TV talking about how he wants privacy, and about how his girlfriend’s not taking his calls. Couldn’t get much more public. Hy-po-crite.”

  I grimaced and looked back at the TV. He was totally right. I couldn’t believe he was saying all this at all, but on TV? For the whole world to watch? But then again…well I guess I’d done the same thing. Except who knew where in the world my viewers were coming from. And it could be viewed day and night forever more. This interview was on now, and after that it was gone. Probably not completely, but more gone than my videos were. Hopefully my parents weren’t watching this. Surely not. They wouldn’t be home for ages.

  “I hear she’s been grounded,” the reporter said. Ty’s eyes lit up. I guess she knew that since her colleagues hadn’t caught me out of the house in forever.

  “Really? Oh,” he said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yeah. So maybe even if she wanted to talk to you, she’s not allowed.”

  “Oh. Yeah. Okay,” Ty said, looking thoughtful.

  “Do you want to talk to him?” Cam said.

  “Sshhh!” I waved him away, staring at the screen. I so wasn’t able to answer that. I closed my eyes and the image of my naked self all over the internet flashed behind my eyelids. I opened them again and blinked at the screen, trying to flush it away. No. No, I didn’t want to talk to him.

  “But, of course, she has pretty good reason to not be returning your calls, doesn’t she, Ty?” the presenter said. Damn right.

  “Well that’s the thing. That’s what the new track is all about.”

  “Okay, tell us about your new track, Liar Liar. You haven’t responded publicly to any of the claims or accusations that have been made until now.”

  “No, I haven’t, Anita, it’s my private life, our private lives. It’s not something I would have wanted public anyway so we, as a band decided it didn’t require a comment.”

  “Keeping your private life private, as it should be,” the woman, Anita said. Like it wasn’t her job to dig up all the dirt she could find. The hypocrisy was breeding.

  “What a douche,” Cam muttered.

  “But there is someone who needs me to make a statement, have a response, and this is it. We wrote this song all together as a band, and the guys, they wouldn’t let me lie even if I wanted to, so it’s the honest truth about everything. The boys, we all love her, so we wrote-”

  Anita’s eyes lit up and she cut in. “You and Seb, Archie and Tom all love Poppy Douglas?”

  “Yeah, they all think she’s great, and-”

  “So you love her, Ty?” she asked with a sly smile. “Are you in love with Poppy Douglas?”

  Ty cringed and looked away, his eyes wandered the floor, the ceiling, he glanced at the camera in panic. He’d walked right into it.

  “Holy shit,” someone said from behind me. More eyes flit in my direction, everyone held a collective breath.

  “Yeah,” Ty said finally. On live TV. Oh my God. “Yeah, I am.” He walked over to the camera and pointed at it, pointed at me. A girl beside me squealed and clapped her hands over her mouth. Anita the presenter looked beside herself with joy. Of course she was. What an exclusive. “Poppy, I’m in love with you, and I’m sorry. About everything.”

  “You heard it here, first, girls,” Anita said, putting her arm around Ty and giving him a side hug. He grinned, seeming to feel pretty happy with himself. “Ty Academy of Lies is most definitely, completely-”

  “Uncontrollably,” Ty added.

  “Uncontrollably,” Anita repeated. “You can’t help it. It’s love. Ty, Academy of Lies is definitely, completely, uncontrollably in love. Taken. Off the market. I can almost hear the sounds of fan girls across the country crying.”

  “Whoa. That took some balls,” Drew said.

  “Talk about the big gesture,” Ravi agreed.

  “But wait!” Anita said, turning to Ty with concern. “We don’t know what Poppy thinks!” That was true, they didn’t. And I had to admit, neither did Poppy. I couldn’t look at Cam, standing somewhere off to my left. I just couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to know what he was thinking.

  “That’s true,” Ty agreed with Anita.

  “Do you think she’ll take you back?”

  “I hope she will.”

  “Stay tuned?” Anita beamed.

  “Well…if she does I hope it’s between us. Anyway, should we introduce the song now?”

  Anita blinked a couple of times, disappointed that the interview, her exclusive was clearly over. “Yes, let’s do it. Take it away.”

  “Okay everyone at home, this is the Academy of Lies’ new song, it’s called Liar Liar. And it’s my one and only response, our response, to all the stuff that’s been going on lately. It’s all we have to say. Poppy, I hope you’re watching.”

  And the clip started. The camera panned out from a pile of scattered photos, all of Ty and a girl in a Beatles tee shirt with messy blond curls. I guess she was supposed to be me. Photos from happy times. It panned out to find Ty and the boys sleeping in a trashed hotel suite after a party, sleeping on the couch, on the floor, Tommy was even lying on the bar. A woman snuck over to Ty and picked up his cell phone and scrolled through. Her eyes lit up and she glanced deviously at Ty and pressed some more buttons. A sext of the girl, the Fake Poppy flashed onto the screen, she was posed the same as my photo but there were big black stars over her private parts. I cringed and looked away from the screen for a moment. I took a deep breath and looked back. The photo replicated and replicated and there were shots of people of a bunch of different nationalities looking at it on their computers. It was global.

  Then the boys were all in an office with platinum records all over the walls. They were on one side of a desk yelling and pointing at a man and that same evil cell phone spying bee-yotch on the other side of the desk. The woman walked out of the building carrying a box and her belongings. Was he saying it was super-publicist Sasha that released the sext? He didn’t do it? And they fired her because of me?

  Soon there were shots of Ty and a girl like Roxy Washington holding hands and laughing in the street. They did a cute peck on the lips, some photos were taken and seconds later the pair separated, stopped laughing and both looked off camera. Ty was wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, like he found the kiss gross. Oh wait, was that lip gloss he was wiping off? It panned back to find a guy holding a boom above them, a bunch of camera men, a makeup artist who walked over and fiddled with Fake Roxy’s hair. Was that intimate moment on the cover of magazines actually nothing more than… yes. A scene from the real commercial with Roxy and Ty came on screen, they held a pack of chewing gum toward the camera. Next, Ty was watching my video, or Fake Poppy doing an impression of it. He looked sad. Photos of Ty with his arm around the woman in pink, coming out of the nightclub flashed onto the screen, followed by some grainy video footage, maybe a fan’s camera phone. The woman showed off for the cameras, ignoring Ty until she nearly fell in the gutter and he helped her up. She clung to him and he tried to duck away but she planted a kiss on his lips which sent the camera flashes into a frenzy. He looked sort of repulsed by it when she let
him go. Then he was on his phone, trying to call someone. And the girl that was me wouldn’t answer.

  So there wasn’t a lot of artistry to the video, but it was clear as day what the point was. I got it. It was all lies, nothing was the way it looked. Except for the part where I wouldn’t take his calls. At least now I knew he had been calling.

  “Soooo I’m gonna take off,” I said with a tight smile. I looked around at everyone, skimming my gaze past Cam.

  “What?”

  “You’re leaving?” a girl said.

  “It hasn’t even finished.”

  “You seriously can’t go yet,” a girl with…actually she had really cute earrings, said to me. “Don’t you want to talk about it?”

  Um…no. I didn’t even remotely want to talk about it, not with you. I caught a couple of quick glances at Cam. Oooh this was going to be awkward.

  “It’s cool,” Drew said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Right,” I said, backing toward the front hallway, my feet itching to flee. “Thanks for inviting me, Drew. See you all at school.”

  I turned and scurried down the hallway, hopping as I put one sneaker on and then the other. The door slammed behind me, banging a couple of times against the frame. I scampered down off the porch, scratched my legs on some branches as I wrenched the bike out of the bush and rode it as fast as I could, all the way home. I didn’t look back.

  ***

  Chapter Twenty-One

  When I slowed the bike and pulled onto the sidewalk in front of the house, our car was in the driveway. Oh crap. What were they doing home so soon? I swear it hadn’t been more than an hour…maybe an hour and a half? There was no way dinner and ice-skating only took an hour and a half.

  I stopped the bike outside the gate and sat on it, thinking. What do I do? How long had they been home? Had they noticed I was missing yet? Could I sneak in and pretend I’d been napping? I should have thought of that. Before I even left I should have made big lumps in the blankets and recorded some snoring sounds in case of this exact eventuality. Well. Okay, maybe not that but I should have done something.

  I wheeled the bike back to the garage and dumped it in the driveway, took a deep breath and trudged toward the house.

  I opened the front door and was immediately accosted by Poo Bum, jumping around and waggling his tail so fast I wasn’t sure he hadn’t gotten into mom’s jelly bean stash.

  Dad poked his head around the corner from the living room. “Poppy!”

  Mom appeared, followed by Bex who was jumping around and meowing like a cat, for some reason. And to my surprise, Mads and Vanya appeared too.

  I opened my mouth but had no idea what to say.

  “Where have you been?” Dad demanded. He had his angry face on, his bushy eyebrows narrowed, and eyes all wrinkly.

  “Um, what should really be the question is why are you home so soon?” I said, manoeuvring past them into the living room. I stopped short as I was faced with Rory sitting on the couch. With his foot on the coffee table. With a bag of peas and another of carrots sitting on top of it. It was going red from cold. Or the swelling, because his ankle was the size of an orange and getting bigger.

  “What the hell happened?” I said.

  Rory stopped wincing and smiled at me with, in my opinion, a bit too much enjoyment. “You are in so much trouble…”

  “Poppy!” Mom said. “Where. Have. You. Been?”

  “I went out.” I turned to Mads and Van. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “You’re still grounded, young lady.”

  “How are you even surprised I left the house?” I said. “Come on. All the prison guards were gone and the doors were unlocked. What did you think I was going to do?”

  Vanya cringed and closed her eyes. I could tell she was mentally smacking me over the head.

  “Where were you?” Dad said.

  I shrugged. “I went to Drew’s place. He was having people over.”

  “And how did you know that?”

  “Because I went on Facebook, okay? And I borrowed my phone. I put it all back though.”

  Mom pursed her lips, clamping them shut. She stared at Dad as her blood pressure rose.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Douglas, please don’t be too hard on Poppy,” Mads said, stepping in front of me, hands pressed together in prayer. She twisted and looked behind her, at me, her eyes huge and sympathetic. “She’s had a really hard night.”

  “What are you talking about?” Mom said through tight lips.

  “How are you feeling, Poppy?” Mads said facing me and clamping both hands on my shoulders. “Drew told me you saw it.”

  “Saw what?” Dad said.

  “I can’t even…what are you going to do?” Mads shook her head with incomprehension.

  “She doesn’t have to decided right now,” Vanya said, glancing around at our audience. “But even though she’s grounded and all, we wanted to come and see if you’d let us see her. Only for a minute. To be supportive.”

  “Right,” Mads said. “Supportive. And to totally talk strategy. What are you going to do?”

  “Mads-”

  “Ladies!” Dad said. Mads gasped and snapped to attention. Dad breathed in, breathed out and asked one more time “What, for the love of God, are you girls talking about?”

  “Ty loves Poppy!” Mads gushed.

  “Mads!” I said, appalled. Vanya pinched her arm and Mads squeaked and slapped her hands over her mouth,

  “What?” Mom said. “How do you know that?”

  “Because their new single debuted tonight and he said so in this interview – the only interview he’s given about the whole debacle.”

  “Mads!”

  “And the song is this complete apology and how he didn’t actually do anything wrong and it was all misconstrued and blown out of proportion and he’s freaking in love with her,” Mads said. “It’s actually pretty catchy.”

  It took Dad a moment to process, because he continued to look at Mads like he was still listening for a while after she finished talking, and he turned to Mom for some sort of sign as how to respond, and found her clutching her hands to her chest, smiling at me the same way she had when I’d gotten my first period and she had wiped away a tear and told me I was becoming a woman.

  “He said he loves you?” she asked. I could tell her voice was going to raise an octave any second in a ‘Squee! That kitten is so cute!’ way and I wasn’t sure I could deal.

  “Not just that he loves her, it was a big time telling her that he loves her. Like, the national TV, jumping-on-chairs type,” Mads said.

  “Mads.”

  “Only they were standing,” Van added. “And he didn’t jump.”

  “Thank you guys!” I said, glaring at them to shut up already. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. We’re broken up.”

  But Mom didn’t seem to care, or she wasn’t hearing a word of it. She clutched her hands together in front of her, still watching me, shaking her head with a sigh because a boy was in love with her daughter. She opened her mouth to speak. It was coming, the adorable kitty voice was coming.

  “But I snuck out before I knew there was going to be any of this stuff going on tonight,” I said quickly, trying to get the conversation back on track. “I shouldn’t have snuck out. It was wrong, and all that stuff.”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Dad said, nudging Mom. She blinked a couple of times and lowered her hands.

  “Yes,” she said, slowly climbing back on board the ‘Poppy was bad’ train.

  “And you,” she said, turning to my friends. “You know she’s grounded. She’s not allowed to see anybody.”

  “We know,” Mads said.

  “We just thought-”

  Dad cut Van off. “You thought wrong. Out. You’ll see her at school and no sooner.”

  “Well what about the block party tomorrow?” Mads said as Dad, a hand on each of her shoulders, pushed her toward the door. “Everyone goes to block party, and you were letting her out tomorrow
anyway, so-”

  Dad said, “No block party!” He opened the front door and ushered my friends onto the porch.

  “What?” I said, following after them. “My grounding is over tomorrow. You said! Mom!”

  “What’s going on, I can’t hear! What’s going on?” Rory yelled from the living room. But we ignored him.

  Mom crossed her arms against her chest, it was like adorable kitty mode had never existed.. “I agree with your father, Poppy,” she said. “You snuck out. You had one night left and you broke out. You get to make up that night by staying here tomorrow, and babysitting Bex.”

  Bex jumped in the air. “Yay!” and she ran and hugged me around the waist, still jumping and jiggling up and down. “Stacey and Natalie are coming over too! I’m going to give you a makeover!”

  “Mom that’s not fair!” I said. Shouted. Whined. One of those.

  Mom shook her head at me. Tough love. She headed toward the kitchen. “I’m going to call Pashmani right now and tell her we don’t need a sitter anymore,” she said. “Maybe she’d like to go to the block party.”

  “Ooh,” Mads said. “Low blow, Mrs. D.”

  “Good night girls,” Dad said, closing the door in their faces.

  “We’ll see you next week at school!” Van yelled through the door.

  Dad and I stood in silence staring at each other for a minute. I could see the mountain of emotions flickering all over his face. Disappointment and anger at my bailing on my act as a responsible young adult who could be trusted to respect the terms of her grounding (even though the very reason I was grounded was because I was very much the definition of an irresponsible young adult); frustration and fluster from Mads and Van’s appearance and, finally, aggression and sheer awkwardness about the whole rock star loving his baby girl thing. God, I couldn’t think about it. An image of Cam’s hand on mine, his finger gently caressing the back of my hand, his face so close to my own that we could have…we were going to…we almost… I shoved those thoughts away because the last thing I needed was my dad seeing that all over my face.