The Last Best Kiss

by Claire Lazebnik

  They’re not identical twins, but they still look a lot alike: they both have stick-straight brown hair and the same pointy chins; dark eyes with a mildly exotic tilt to them (their mother was born in Korea); and small, straight noses. But Hilary’s hair is very long right now, and Lily cut hers last year, so it’s asymmetrical, chin-length on one side, midway up her cheek on the other. She changes the way she wears it every day—sometimes she pins it up at the sides; sometimes she lets it swing forward; sometimes she makes these tiny braids in front—and she changes her makeup to suit her hair, so you never know what she’s going to look like, only that she’s going to make everyone else look boring and predictable. Especially her own sister, who has pretty classic taste in general.

  Right now, though, all three of them are in their pajamas, because the twins are sleeping over at Lucy’s. I join them at the kitchen table, and Lucy offers me hot chocolate. They’ve already got three steaming mugs in front of them, each one blanketed with marshmallows. I’m still stuffed from dinner, so I pass on the cocoa and beg them to hurry up and tell me what I missed.

  “It was an amazing party,” Lily says. She’s wearing a pair of tiny plaid boxers and a tank top. She’s pulled her hair into a ridiculous, small ponytail on the crown of her head and it bobs while she talks. “There must have been, like, five hundred kids there before the cops came.”

  “More like seventy,” Hilary says.

  Her sister shakes her head. “Way more than that. And then the cops saw someone drinking out front—I don’t know the guy; he doesn’t go to our school—and they handcuffed him and arrested him—”

  “No, they didn’t,” her sister says.

  “Yes, they did! I heard they shoved him into the back of their car without even reading him his rights.”

  “I was there,” Hilary says. “I saw the whole thing, and none of that’s true. They just made him pour out his drink and gave him a warning—they didn’t even call his parents. People exaggerate so much.” She tugs on the thick braid that’s hanging over her right shoulder. She’s wearing Harvard sweatpants and a Princeton T-shirt, souvenirs from our junior year East Coast college tour.

  “Why’d they shut down the party?” I ask.

  Lucy answers. She’s round and adorable in old-fashioned lace pj’s, her hair piled on top of her head. With her thick light hair, big blue eyes, round face, and curvy figure, she sometimes looks like she’s stepped out of a nineteenth-century painting. “I think the neighbors were complaining. Probably because a couple of guys were peeing on people’s lawns.”

  Hilary wrinkles her nose. “May I just say—boys are gross.”

  “Oh, like you wouldn’t pee on a lawn now and then if you could,” I say jovially.

  “I have,” says Lily.

  “I don’t even want to think about that,” says Lucy.

  “Ignore her,” says Hilary. “She says things like that for the shock value.”

  “I do,” Lily agrees. “But it’s also true.”

  I push off my short leather boots and curl up in the chair, hugging my knees to my chest. “Moving right along . . . Any juicy hookups? Who’s going to be embarrassed when school starts on Tuesday?”

  “Dylan and Dylan!” says Lucy, and the others nod.

  “Boy Dylan and girl Dylan?” I say. “Or the two boy Dylans? Which would be way more interesting.”

  “Coed Dylans. Dylan Ryan and Dylan Britton.”

  “I totally want them to become a couple,” Lily says. “Just so we can say things like, ‘I hate when Dylan tongues Dylan in front of everyone.’”

  “And think about their couple name,” Hilary says. “I mean, if you put the first half of one of their names together with the second half of the other one’s name, you get—”

  “Dylan!” we all cry out together.

  “It would be weird dating someone with the same name as you,” Lucy says.

  “It would certainly be weird if you dated a boy named Lucy,” I say. “Speaking of which, what happened with you and Jackson tonight? Anything?”

  “Nothing,” Lucy says. “Well, maybe a little flirting. But the wheels turn slowly.” She sighs. “I don’t know why—we’re made for each other. He’s the captain of the lacrosse team, and I’m the captain of the field hockey team; he coaches little kids’ soccer on the weekends, and I teach dance at Fresh Feet. We both take AP French and AP bio and—” She stops abruptly. “Oh my god—I can’t believe I forgot to tell you, Anna! Guess who was at the party?”

  “Lady Gaga? Was she pissed I didn’t show?”

  “Seriously.” She leans forward. “Remember that kid you carpooled with in ninth grade? Finn Westbrook?”

  “You know that guy?” Hilary asks, turning to me.

  “Wait, what?” I sit up straight, suddenly very alert. “Finn Westbrook? He was at the party? Why? How? Did you talk to him?”

  “He moved back!” Lucy says. “They’re living in that same house, and he’s going to be in our class again.”

  I blink. Then I blink again. “Wow,” I say. “I haven’t thought about Finn Westbrook in ages.” This is a lie. I’ve thought about him a lot. And right now I’m thinking especially furiously about him—everything from He probably still hates me, to Maybe he doesn’t hate me anymore, to a whole bunch of points in between, like, Maybe he only hates me a little bit.

  “I can’t believe he was in your carpool!” Hilary says. “I had three stuck-up seniors in my freshman year carpool, and not one of them would even talk to me. You got so lucky, Anna.”

  “You think? I mean, he was—is—a great guy, but—” I stop before I say what I’m thinking, which is that I wouldn’t expect a girl like Hilary—who’s been asked out by a lot of guys and has found fault with almost all of them—to get excited about a guy like Finn. Unless . . . “Has he changed a lot?” I ask Lucy.

  “A ton. He’s a lot taller, for one thing. He was really short in ninth grade,” she tells the twins. “You know how some guys still look like little kids when they’re fourteen? He was one of those.”

  “Late to the puberty buffet,” says Lily.

  Her sister stares at her. “Sometimes I don’t know who you are.”

  I’m impatient to get back to the subject of Finn. “Is he tall now? I mean, like actually tall?” That seems impossible. That has to be impossible. Although . . . it’s been three years. And he was growing quickly back when I knew him.

  “Tall-ish,” says Lucy. “Like maybe five eleven?”

  “Not that tall,” Hilary says. “I saw him standing next to Jackson, and he was at least three inches shorter. So probably more like five nine, five ten.”

  Lucy shrugs. “All I know is he’s not a shrimp anymore. He’s totally in the right range. And he’s cute now, Anna. Seriously cute.”

  “He was always kind of cute,” I say, even though I had never said I thought so back when I should have.

  She gives me a skeptical look. “I guess, maybe . . . but not the right kind of cute. He was cute like a little brother. Like a little cute nerd brother. Now he’s hot-cute. And did you know he invented an iPhone app?”

  “Which means he’s rich,” says Lily.

  Hilary shakes her head. “People don’t make money off of apps.”

  “They do if enough people buy them.”

  “Then Apple makes a ton of money, not the designer.”

  I look to Lucy for clarity, since I have no idea which one of them’s right, if either.

  “All I know,” she says, “is that someone at the party already had his app on their phone without knowing it was his. Which is pretty cool.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t completely understand it, but you know how you can’t see stars in big cities because of all the light pollution? With his app you can take a photo of someone against the night sky, and it figures out which stars should be there based on the location and angle and fills them in. So you end up with this amazing starry-night sky in your photos. You can also just use it to
see what constellations are above you.”

  “I really don’t think it’s made him rich,” Hilary says. “He didn’t feel rich.”

  “How does rich feel?” I ask.

  “Fabulous, darling,” says Lucy with a laugh.

  “I mean, he wasn’t driving a solid gold Ferrari or anything like that,” Hil says.

  “He drives an electric car,” Lily says. “I talked to him about it. It’s not a Tesla or anything crazy expensive, but it’s still pretty cool. He’s a super big environmentalist. He said he’s going to talk to the school’s board of directors about installing solar panels in the main building—he said the roof is perfect for it, and he can’t believe they haven’t done it yet.”

  “When did you talk to him?” Hilary asks her, almost accusingly. “I didn’t see you guys together.”

  “Right at the end. The cops came, and things got a little crazy, and I lost track of him. But we talked for, like, fifteen minutes before then.”

  “Where was I?”

  “How should I know? Oh, wait,” Lily says, turning to me with sudden excitement. “If you carpooled with him, does that mean you have his number? Could we text him? Maybe he’d come over and hang with us.”

  Hilary quickly seconds the idea.

  I shake my head. “I can’t text him.”

  “His number’s probably in the school directory,” Hilary says, already pulling her phone toward her. “You could use that.”

  “I seriously can’t text him,” I say. “It would be too weird.”

  “Oh, right.” Lucy hits herself in the head with the palm of her hand. “I can’t believe I forgot about semiformal and all that.”

  “What are you talking about?” Hilary asks.

  “Anna totally blew him off. In front of everyone.” Lucy plucks a dripping marshmallow out of her mug of cocoa and drops it into her mouth.

  “Why?” Lily asks.

  “She wasn’t into him,” Lucy says. “But he liked her. So it was a pretty awkward situation. It wasn’t her fault. She handled it as well as she could.”

  “Why didn’t you like him?” Hilary asks me.

  “I did,” I say. “He was a great guy.”

  “But you blew him off?” Lily says, her brow wrinkled like she’s trying to figure this out.

  “Yeah,” I say, and stare at the marshmallows turning into goo in her mug. “I blew him off.”

  I spend most of the rest of the weekend wondering whether I should try to get in touch with Finn before school starts. I could try texting him. . . . Or calling . . . Or dropping by . . . But it would be so awkward to try to pretend we’re just old friends—we were so much more than that. And then we weren’t even that.

  Maybe he’s forgotten what happened at semiformal.

  Yeah, right. The guy has a photographic memory.

  But maybe it no longer feels like such a big deal to him. We were only stupid little ninth graders, right? He’s probably moved on.

  Although . . . the fact that I’m sitting around obsessing about all this means I haven’t exactly put it behind me, so why should I expect him to have?

  I decide to wait to see him at school—he doesn’t know that I know he’s in town, anyway, and this way I can gauge how he feels about me and react accordingly. If he seems angry or distant, I’ll try to find a time to apologize and explain what happened. If he seems relaxed and friendly, I’ll meet him willingly as a friend. And if he seems really happy to see me again . . .

  I’ll explode with relief and joy. Because I still miss him, and I want a second chance.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  two

  This is how my reunion with Finn Westbrook goes:

  I walk into English class and I’m looking for a friend to sit near, when I notice a thin guy with dark, wavy hair already tucked into a desk next to the wall, and I’m just thinking, Wait—could that be—? when he looks up and spots me and I can tell it is, even though he’s changed a lot. He studies me for a brief moment and then he says, “Hi, Anna.”

  That’s it.

  “Hi, Anna.”

  Totally calm and relaxed.

  He’s wearing contacts, or at least I assume he is, since the glasses are gone, and he has shoulders now—decent ones too, not sloping at all—but it’s definitely Finn.

  It’s definitely Finn saying that completely indifferent “Hi, Anna.”

  This is not what I expected from our first reunion in over three years. Not that my expectations were particularly definite or anything—sometimes I pictured him deliberately turning his back on me, and sometimes I pictured him throwing his arms around me. But I thought it would be some kind of a Moment. I didn’t think it would be this: a flap of the fingers and a lazy “Hi, Anna.”

  “Finn!” I say. “Wow.” I step closer, wondering if we should hug—I mean, we should, shouldn’t we?—but he doesn’t get up or hold out his hand or anything, so I halt and adjust the strap of my book bag on my shoulder. “Hey, how are you? I heard you were back in LA.”

  “Yeah,” he says. “My parents like to keep moving.”

  “I remember that,” I say. “They go where the jobs are.”

  He just nods and smiles up at me. Blandly. Like we’re two people who once carpooled together and haven’t seen each other in a while. Like he never pulled a phone out of his pocket and said with almost delirious delight, “You have to see this photo of Mars—how amazing is that?” Like he never met me at the bluffs for private kisses and stupid jokes. Like he never looked at me as if I were the most important thing in the world to him.

  My throat suddenly feels too big to fit inside my neck.

  I manage to swallow and try to think of something else to say. He’s got a pleasant enough expression on his face, but his eyes keep shifting away and darting around the room, as if he wouldn’t mind finding someone more interesting to talk to.

  “My sister’s in college now,” I say. “Lizzie—the one who used to drive us.”

  “Huh,” he says politely, and then he shifts and waves with sudden enthusiasm at someone who comes running up and dives into the seat in front of him, twisting her body so she can talk to us while simultaneously plunking an enormous turquoise-and-silver tote bag on the desk.

  Lily.

  Her hair is curled today, little banana ringlets all over her head, with a fat, bouncy one hanging down over her right eye. She’s wearing pink eye shadow and pink blush and pink lipstick. She looks like a cross between a four-year-old and a geisha. It’s an odd look but undeniably eye-catching.

  Finn’s eyes are caught.

  “I know you!” he says. “We’re basically best friends, except I can’t remember how I met you or what your name is.”

  “We talked at Jackson’s party,” she says with a pleased wriggle. She’s wearing a flowered spaghetti-strap summer dress with cherry-colored Doc Martens.

  “Right,” he says. “We talked until the cops came.”

  “Stupid cops,” she says. “They ruin everything.”

  His brow puckers. “Lily? Lila? Lucy?”

  “Lily,” she says. “Lucy’s another girl.”

  “Yeah,” he says, and glances briefly at me. “Your friend, right?” Before I can even respond, he turns back to Lily and gestures at the top of her tote bag, where you can see the neck of a sparkling green ukulele peeking out. “What’s up with that? You going to serenade us in class?”

  “I might,” Lily says with a little smile. “If I feel inspired.”

  “She actually does sometimes,” I say, because it’s true: Lily takes the ukulele to classes and sometimes picks it up and strums a little song and sings and gets away with it, because she’s Lily and everyone adores her.

  “Don’t the teachers mind?” Finn asks her.

  “As if I care.”

  He grins at her. “That’s the spirit.”

  “They
don’t mind,” I say. “Everyone likes it when Lily plays.”

  “I bet,” he says, still looking at her.

  The teacher calls for class to start, so I have to find a place to sit in a rush, and end up next to Samantha Gutterson, which I hate—I’ve hated sitting next to her since sixth grade—because she has this habit of whispering to me when the teacher’s saying something important, and then going, “Wait, what did she say? Did we miss something?” which makes me miss even more.

  Lily actually does play her ukulele during class: Mrs. Reese says something about conjunctions, and Lily calls out, “‘Conjunction Junction’!” and launches into the song from Schoolhouse Rock! Everyone joins in, including Mrs. Reese. Lily gives a self-satisfied glance back at Finn when she’s done, and he gives her an enthusiastic thumbs-up. He knew all the lyrics to the song. So did I, but no one was looking at me when I sang.

  At lunch Lily hauls Finn over to our table. “He’s going to eat with us,” she says, and pushes him down on the bench.

  “That will be much more successful if I’m allowed to get myself some food first,” he says meekly.

  “You can feast on our beauty,” Lily says as she sits down next to him.

  “Then I’m already full.” Wow. He’s definitely gotten slicker since ninth grade. He didn’t know how to do the flirty-teasing thing back then, but I guess he’s learned. His voice is different too: deeper, of course—no surprise—but also slower, like he’s trained himself to sound less enthusiastic. I guess speeding up with excitement when you talk is sort of a little-kid thing, but I miss that about him.

  “Let him eat, Lily,” Lucy says with a yawn. She and Hilary and I all came straight from AP bio, and we’re still recovering from getting too much information hammered into us too quickly.