Becky's Kiss (6 page)

She closed her eyes, cereal spoon still in her mouth.
Hold him.
Now
that
was a dream worth thinking about. She chewed her Fiber One slowly, a bit of a grin at the corners of her lips. Oh yes, she wanted to hold him, and not with her butt poked out and away like some prissy little queen bee, but rather tight and close, molding together in absolute warmth and security.

Her cell alarm beeped and her eyes flew open. Right. 6:25 a.m., time to get moving. Like Mrs. Schultz, her counselor back at Lincoln Middle School in Syracuse had taught her, time, or the lack of it, was a clumsy person’s worst enemy. Best to over-prepare, keep ahead. Leave for the bus stop early and you won’t trip over the curb, looking in your book bag for something you think you forgot to pack in your rush to leave the house.

Becky did her dishes and gathered her school stuff, pausing at her parent’s bedroom door, opening it just a crack.

“Dad,” she whispered. “Dad!”

“Hmmph…yeah…yes?”

“You’re gonna be late. Get up. You’re usually in the bathroom by now!”

“Uh…right. Okay, Miss Rebecca.”

Becky closed the door quietly, then leaned her forehead against it, eyes squeezed shut. Not now. She wouldn’t have the conversation now when it would make everyone late, not now when Dad was hung over and Ma had pulled a tough late shift, not now, when every second lost magnified Becky’s chances of having a blunder or three.

She walked out into the light rain, wondering if she ever really
could
have that conversation with Brett Michigan, telling him that maybe ‘Miss Rebecca’ needed a father more than he needed a mother. Just the fact that she brought it up would reverse them even more! She plodded down the street, thinking about how backward life was, how much you had to learn, how much you couldn’t really change even when you tried your very, very hardest.

She was almost to the corner of Stonybrook and Elm, and she saw an interesting looking rock under a hedge. It was glistening, round, the size of one of those mega super-balls you got out of the machines that let you try to snag a prize with the three robotic tongs worked by a lever. She bent and reached for it so she could try the ball trick she’d performed in her dream.

She stood and balanced the rock on the backs of her index and middle fingers, the pair of digits aimed out as if she was going to poke someone in both eyes, only at waist level. She flicked the round stone into the air and caught it in the Four Seam Fastball grip—well, almost, the rock wasn’t quite big enough to do it just right. She was walking now, and she rolled it back to her knuckles like a magician, and it felt right and she flicked it up to the Cutter grip. She missed, however, and the rock slipped, and she grabbed at it, stumbling forward.

She tried to save it, pawed for it, and just managed to flick it airborne with the tips of her fingers, leading herself on like an idiot, thinking the dream-trick was way more suave than the reality, and she tipped it again, her feet making splashes, and someone honked at her long and loud.

It was the school bus, and she’d run right in front of it. The stone fell away, bouncing to the far curb, and she walked around the front fender, head down, never more embarrassed in her entire life. People were laughing and saying things she couldn’t really distinguish as she trudged up the treaded stairs. The bus was pretty much filled, most of the students in hoodies, some gray, some off white with stripes, some black, some with American Eagle logos and Gap insignias. The only empty space was beside a handsome but rather uptight Asian boy who had an umbrella resting across his knees. He politely moved in for her, and she sat, feeling a lot of eyes from behind her burning a hole in her head. She stared at the seat in front of her.

It seemed already that this was going to be one of those long, uncomfortable days.

Chapter Eight

Becky got to class a few minutes early, 7:19 a.m. to be exact, and to her surprise, most of the students were already there. Clearly, Mr. Marcus had frightened everybody, and they didn’t want to make him mad even though rainy days usually formed an automatic recipe for stragglers. He was at the board, and he was making a joke about squeaky chalk, playing the laugh, everyone’s Mr. Nice Guy and ready to turn on a dime if you rubbed him the wrong way. He’d clearly shown that side yesterday, making it known loud and clear, right here in the first week of school, that he was the boss, the chief, the president, and king, and while the laughs were forced and nervous, he knew it and didn’t seem to care. He’d turned the whole class around in one day and was proud of it, you could tell.

“Michigan,” he said, not turning from the pre-class prompt he was writing. “Your new seat is over there by the window, second down from the front.”

“But—“

“Uh-uh,” he said with a short laugh, looking at the board. “Uncle Marcus say, student do, that’s the way of things here in the nuthouse.” She just stood there for a second, and his voice got a bit louder and clownish.

“C’mon, Michigan, don’t be shy.” He was motioning at her now with overly exaggerated “C’mon-ins,” his arm doing big cartoon bull dozer scoops. “That’s it, march, like you’re in the army, hut-two-three-four, five-seven-nine-twelve.” She walked past him through the spatter of classroom giggles, unable to do it outside of his rhythm. That made her laugh a bit herself, and she moved quickly to her new seat next to the weird girl with the red librarian glasses, she who was wearing a flowered dress today that seemed far too soft for her abrasive personality.

Marcus was good, Becky had to admit it. Kids hating switching seats, like it was a badge of failure or something, and he’d handled it quickly and effectively. He’d guessed she’d be the easier one to budge, and successfully split her from Cody Hatcher in one fell swoop. The problem was that sitting next to someone was easier than sitting across from him, and now she’d have to work extra hard not to look at the jerk, making sure he wasn’t looking at her.

“Darn,” Mr. Marcus said. He’d broken his chalk in two and was left with a nub. “I have to go get a new box,” he said.

“Oooh!” Hatcher spouted, hand shooting into the air. He was wearing black jeans today and a rather dirty looking army jacket. He’d cut himself shaving and had left the little toilet paper square there on his cheek with the tiny red dot in the middle. “Can I go get your box of chalk, Mr. Marcus?” he said.

“No,” Marcus muttered. “It’s got to be signed for by a faculty member.” He turned, looked back at the board, and shouted,

“Whoa!”

Everyone jumped in their seats a bit, and Mr. Marcus’s voice had a big smile in it.

“Look at my handwriting,” he said. “I mean,
look
at it! Am I imagining this, or does it sort of slope down to the right and fall off the cliff?”

“Sure does, Mr. Marcus, sir,” Hatcher said.

Marcus spun.

“If I’d wanted you to chirp, Hatcher, I’d have built you a little house and fed you birdseed.”

That one made the class chuckle, even more openly when Mr. Marcus forfeited a grin, letting on that he’d played for the laugh all along. Yes. That was going to be his thing. Fearlessness, raw humor, and you’d never quite know when he was joking. K. Got it.

Mr. Marcus went to his desk and rummaged a bit. No chalk. He put his hands down then, palms flat.

“Your attention, please. I’m going to go thirty feet down the hall to the office to sign out some chalk. Cody Hatcher will erase the board for me, and you will all sit here in cheerful obedience.” His eyes gained an extra twinkle. “Now, now, kiddies. No pencils chucked into the drop ceiling, no fires in the trash can, no pianos pushed out the window.” He looked at them all meaningfully. Then, abruptly, he left.

Silence.

Then came the whistling.

Whistling with a trill in it. Horror movie whistling.

It was Cody Hatcher, feet jutted out from under his desk, unbuckled black boots crossed at the ankles, fingers webbed behind his head: the La-Z-Boy pose. Suddenly he stopped whistling and faked waking up violently, “What? Huh? Gosh!” all jerking and flailing and banging his forearm into the big kid sitting next to him, who shoved Hatcher away with a tight grin.

‘Sorry,’ he motioned, palms out. ‘Sorry.’ He turned, looking slowly around him, and then he slapped the desk.

“Well looky-looky what kind of crew we got here now, will ya?” He cleared his throat, his signature move evidently, then made like straightening a bow tie. Suddenly he was up on his feet, and as he made his way behind people across from where Becky was sitting, he purposely kicked into their chair legs, apologizing in the overplayed tone of a country simpleton, “Sorry ma’am, golly gee, pardon, shucks.”

Becky blinked. A hick joke? Really? A Syracuse insult? Her stomach had tightened into a slick knot a few seconds ago, and now her mouth went coppery. Hatcher poked his head out into the hall and looked up and down. Then he let the door swing slowly shut. When he turned to again take measure of the room, his eyes were smiling so brightly it stung to look at him.

He started whistling again, to the tune of “It’s Beginning to Look a lot like Christmas,” and his hands were behind his back. He made his way over to the board like he was strolling through the park in one of those old fashioned movies where guys wore crew-neck sweaters and slacks and broke into song for no reason.

He took the eraser in his hand and stopped whistling. He seemed to weigh it, bobbing it up and down slightly. With his other hand, he stroked his goatee all professor-like, and nodded in casual, professional approval of the instrument. He gave it a soft test-sweep across the board, and muttered, “Hmmm, yes, that’ll do,”
and then he was erasing the board in slow motion, relishing every stroke, making sure to get every little line and scribble, using it flat, then at its edge to wipe up every possible trace of powder.

“Stop staring at me, you weirdos,” he said to the board. Laughter rippled, but not much, a few weeds poking up, that was all. He made sure to dab at the chalk dust gathered in all four corners and even rubbed across some stray marks up at the top of the board that were hardened and permanent. Then he turned slowly, looking around the ‘U.’ He was holding the eraser felt-side up, nodding patiently like everyone’s daddy, making it seem there was going to be a punishment and that it was going to hurt him far more than it was going to hurt them.

He started walking over to the side of the ‘U’ near the door, lips pursed, shaking his head like he was
so
disappointed, and he stopped right in front of the Asian boy Becky had sat next to on the bus. The kid had been absent yesterday, and she hadn’t really noticed him until now, fixed there in his place opposite her, eyes like little black beads looking straight ahead. He had on a dark sweater and a dress shirt underneath with a soft blue collar. His complexion had gone pasty, and the tips of his ears were burning red. Hatcher leaned over him, cocked his head, and said thinly,

“You staring at me, boy?”

The guy didn’t respond. He looked straight ahead as if he had made the spot decision that the best defense was to be hard-set and above it all, expressionless and still at all costs. Hatcher moved to the side, partly behind him, and leaned down again, almost in the guy’s ear.

“I said...was you staring at me. See…we don’t appreciate guys who like to stare, at least ’round these parts.”

No response. Hatcher straightened, took a deep breath through his nose, and then shouted,

“Tree frog!”

He windmilled his arm and smacked the eraser on the top of the boy’s head, making a whapping sound, flat and hard, the chalk dust exploding up into the air and rising toward the ceiling. The boy’s head was totally powdered, his hair frosted, his shoulders whitened, and Hatcher went all apologetic. “Oh, gosh, let me help you with that,” he said, dropping the eraser on the desk and slapping the boy with his open palms, hard, whapping all across the head and shoulders, a flurry of an attack that ‘ironically’ clapped most of the dust off of him, and the boy just sat there and took it, hands gripped to the edges of the desk, knuckles bone white.

It lasted about ten seconds that seemed like hours, and suddenly, Hatcher bounded across the room—of course, bullies had fantastic internal time mechanisms, and he could tell Marcus would be coming back momentarily. He stuck the eraser on the steel lip at the base of the board and then stopped, just for a moment, right there in the middle of the floor.

He looked over at Becky.

“Tree frogs jump branches,” he said.

Her mouth dropped open. Did he just threaten her? Did she hear that right? Did this jerk really think she was going to take this home and worry about it, dreading the moment Marcus decided to go take a whiz, or sneak down to teacher’s lounge for a fresh cup of tea?

She wanted to say something brilliant and cutting, but all she could think of was, You’re
the tree-frog!
so she settled for her best icy girl-stare. Marcus came back in right on cue then, and the rest was the same old all-American story. No one told. It was against code. And maybe if they kept quiet, Hatcher wouldn’t look their way tomorrow or the next.

Well, Becky was going to tell. Just not in front of everybody.

She’d wait until the end of the period, that’s right. So what if she was five minutes late to swimming? On Thursday’s it was on stagger-schedule with art, and she had it before lunch. It was clear that none of the mean, pretty girls were going to miss her all that much.

But Becky never got a chance to tell.

Marcus worked them to death, running them through a rubric sheet he was going to use to aid him in his ‘holistic grading technique,’ all grammar codes for the “issues I always see that make me feel like I’m cleaning your rooms, like rambling sentences, pronoun antecedent, blah, blah,” and by the time the bell rang, they were all seeing double.

The moment the period ended, Hatcher bolted as fast as he was able, and most followed suit. A couple of girls approached Marcus at his desk to confirm the place on his website to look up homework, and Becky waited. Someone was behind her, and she turned.