I shot up, flushed and surprised. “Why tell me that you were both of our first kisses then? Just to bring mine up?” I turned away from him. I marched past the pool. The stone path was wet and slippery as I rounded the corner of the house.
Ninth grade, right before Thanksgiving, Harry and Viv were out of town. Graham and I ended up at a classmate’s house party. We were standing too close to a game of truth or dare. At Graham’s turn, he said “dare” with his typical bravado. The junior dared him to kiss me. Graham asked if it was okay, whispered and in front of the other players in the circle. I nodded, dumbstruck. I’d never kissed anyone before; he hadn’t either. It was gentle. His braces nipped my lips. Kids watched, joking, critiquing our form.
I made it to the front porch swing as Graham emerged from the other direction.
“Izzie,” he said.
“Go away.”
“I’m redacting everything. I put my foot in my mouth. I shouldn’t have brought our kiss up. I shouldn’t have kissed Viv at all. It was the night, the rock, our ceremony, the way you both looked. You were in your underwear. I wanted to kiss someone.” He fisted his hair. “The opportunity presented itself.”
It had. I crossed my arms, blinking at him.
“Why do you mind?” he asked.
Graham and I had crossed an invisible line freshman year and I worried at the time that we wouldn’t be able to return to the side where we were best friends. My worry was for no good reason. “You kissing Viv could have ruined everything.”
“But you and Harry dating couldn’t?” He held his arms up, agitated. “I regret kissing you that way. On a dare. I’d do it over.” He was breathing like an asthmatic.
I couldn’t settle on what I wanted from him. To apologize more for kissing Vivian. To never kiss anyone again. Jealousy contracted my stomach. Graham belonged to me. He was my oldest friend. I wanted to keep him from kissing other girls, but I didn’t want to kiss him myself.
I took his hand, warm and familiar, soft scar on his palm from the blood moon ritual. I thought about the tattoo scabbing over on my ribs, identical to his. I cupped his palm and pressed my lips to the scar. I tasted salt and cider. “There. Do-over complete,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
His expression was shadowed. He wasn’t talking. I couldn’t even hear his breath.
Nervous, I offered, “You could still make an epic connection with Jess. Let’s go back and try.”
He held his arm taut, resisting me for a moment. Then a plaintive sigh, and his arm slackened, and he shuffled after me.
When we were under the trellis, a few yards away from the bumping music, I heard him whisper behind me. His voice ghosted into the night and I pretended not to notice.
I wonder, what if I’d stopped. Faced him. And listened.
Retrieved from the cellular phone of Vivian Marlo
Transcript and notes prepared by Badge #821891
Shared Media Folder Titled: IV, Sun., Oct. 13, 2:06 a.m.
Video start.
V. Marlo levels a finger at the camera. “I am not drunk.” She laughs. “Okay, maybe just a teensy little bit. The head drama instructor at the Lessing Summer Theater Academy is this ancient hag who once upon a time starred in an off-Broadway production of The Fantastics.” She twirls a finger in the air. “Stuff of legends, I know. She’s a million years old, a cigarette dangling from her mouth, and wine stains on her coat. Most of my fellow thespians consider themselves too advanced to humor her. But once she heard me say that acting is the best kind of lying, lies even the liar believes, and she pulled me aside where she breathed her rancid old-person breath into my face and said, ‘People are all lies, Ms. Marlo, lies piled on lies, on top of lies, and they almost always believe their own hype. To be a truly great actor,’ she wheezed past her cigarette, ‘is to forget the truth.’?”
She stares at the lens for a long time. When she speaks again, she’s whispering. “The old crow was right. Last night at homecoming, I forgot the truth. Those girls.” She slowly shakes her head. “Jess always acts way over the world, so when she thinks you’re interesting, it’s major. Rachel is the best sidekick ever. She’s all uh-huh and absolutely and amirite to everything. She said her dad could show my headshot to one of his clients who represents models. And Amanda, she was the best. All reminiscing, like Remember when you played Lucy in Dracula, now I can say you were the be-all end-all.”
She smiles slyly. “And I almost bought it. Those slippery bitches. I grinned, said thank you, danced, and shared their flask of raspberry vodka. I loved the way they sat in one another’s laps, fell over hugging, and acted grossed out by the boys but were all flirty anyway. By the end of the night, when Amanda air-kissed me good-bye after her little performance confessing to breaking and entering, I saw it in her eyes. Amanda thinks she played me. She thinks I’m dumb enough to ever trust her again.”
She hugs herself. “I’d hold a grudge against that girl after a hundred years of her kissing my ass. Some things you never forgive.”
Video stop.
21
Our story has to be a tragedy. Epic. Shakespearean. Greek,” Viv proclaimed, arms thrown wide as she balanced along the edge of the stage. “It’ll have betrayal. Intrigue. Murder. Maybe an exiled queen. And heroes.” She went up on her toes to pivot and reverse, her black dress lifting and swirling. “I just love a tragic hero.”
I was on my stomach, idly kicking my socked heels together. “Tragic hero. Murder. Intrigue,” I recited, adding each to my notes.
“People like their heroes to be partly bad,” Graham said.
I typed antihero.
Harry’s calculus text thudded on the stage as he said, “Not really.”
I highlighted antihero; hit backspace. On second thought, I added it again, with a question mark.
Graham considered Harry with an intense stare. “We’ll agree to disagree on the subject of heroics.” He chomped down on a fistful of chocolate-covered peanuts, ruminating over his next thought. “The Order’s story has got to be a spectacle of blood and guts. Like the apocalypse of an ancient civilization who worshipped our idol.”
“But if this ancient civilization ended, who passed their story on?” Harry asked, propping his elbows on his knees. “History’s written by winners, and winners say sucky things about losers. They don’t pass on their legends and stories.”
“Maybe they weren’t completely obliterated, then. There were a few survivors of a fallen kingdom and they kept the story alive,” Graham said. “Satisfied?”
Harry scratched the back of his head. “It’s too complicated. Amanda, Conner—they begged us to join. They bragged about their crappy behavior. We’re allowing them in. No convincing needed.”
“Do you think that’ll be enough for them to do whatever we say?” Viv asked. “Like, if Amanda goes, Why do we have to do blah-blah rebellion and we say, Because, it’ll be enough?”
“We’ll say, Because the rebellion punks this or that jerk,” Harry said. “And yeah, I think it’ll be enough.”