Becky's Kiss (7 page)

“Please,” the Asian boy said. “Don’t say anything.”

He still had a bit of the chalk dust in his eyebrows and slashed across his cheek like the Nike logo. He had his umbrella tucked under one arm and his books in a briefcase. He might as well have had ‘target’ stamped on his forehead. “Please,” he repeated.

He moved off to the hall then, walking in a slow, measured way that was either an attempt to front dignity, or to melt silently into the wall shadows. Becky sighed and made her own exit a few moments later.

Tree frogs jump branches.

Sure, she respected this quiet boy’s wishes, but what about her, what about tomorrow? There was no way she was going to let Cody Hatcher hit
her
on the head with an eraser. She’d die first.

Defense options?

Not many. Becky rounded the corner and made for the gym area. Her bra was tight, and she gave it one of those aggravated tugs and jerks from both sides. She didn’t care who was looking. Her skin felt suddenly cold, and she broke a nervous sweat, beads collecting on the bridge of her nose. She put her head down and plodded along, her thumbs tucked under her backpack straps.

She was going to have to fight a boy.

And he was the type that would punch her like a dude, she just knew it.

“Hey,” someone said. She had been watching her sneaker laces bounce, and she looked up. It was just some kid with black, dyed hair dangling over one eye coming the other way, saying hi to his buddy walking across the hall from her with the studs, black lips, and half-shaved head. Becky chewed at the inside of her cheek and kept moving. For a second, she thought Baseball Boy had shown up out of nowhere to give her some pointers, or better yet, to boast that he would fight Hatcher for her. A lump rose in her throat. Though she had no doubt that this Danny could scrap with the best of them, the thought of his coming away with even one scratch or bruise on that beautiful portrait of a face broke her heart.

Becky got out of swimming again—the other fakers simply cut class—and she sat in the bleachers, did her homework for Marcus, and looked in the school catalog. She had only been block-scheduled for one major subject this semester, and the distant spring had World History, Geometry, Biology, and Spanish waiting for her like dark omens. Was the counseling department insane?

The bell sounded, making her jerk in her place. It was like a basketball buzzer in here, echoing off the walls, making her skin vibrate. She made for the aisle, and Mr. Troy called out that he expected her in the water next time like the other girls. He looked at her an extra second from down there, and she saluted back in his general direction. So lame! At least after Christmas, she wouldn’t have to wear a stupid bathing cap, or play matt ball like a dork, or put a condom on a wooden penis like she’d heard was coming up in health class next month.

She walked into the crowded hall. Boys with fro-hawks were playing pseudo-soccer with an old, crimped up coffee cup. Members of the Gay-Straight Alliance stood in a crowd before a picture collage on the block wall, and a group of girls kept poking each other and screaming. Becky Michigan had never felt so alone or insignificant in her entire life.

Across the hall, there was something taped to her locker. People merged in front of her, and Becky went up on her tip-toes for a second, absently pushing her fingers in her front pocket for the slip the office sent last week with the number and combination. Then she didn’t bother digging it out after all. Sure, she was still a bit disoriented, but she was absolutely positive that it was her locker over there, down to the right of the fire alarm with the crack in the glass that curved like an eagle’s claw.

Becky crossed the hall, weaving her way between the crowd of students doing that strange mob shuffle both ways where they had no apparent concern for creating lanes that made sense, the note on her locker waving as passers-by created a cross breeze.

“I wrote it for you,” Danny said.

Becky whirled around, almost cracking her elbow into some audio equipment a teacher was pushing through on a black cart right behind her. Over the shoulder of a girl with big fake eyelashes, sleek bangs, and a big red hair ribbon, she thought she saw a flash of blond and baseball cap.

“No, Becky. This way,” he said in her other ear.

She spun furiously and almost fell down. In fact, some big guy from behind caught her by the backpack, righted her, and gently guided her to the left, never breaking stride and continuing without a hitch to brag to his friend about the keg party he was planning this weekend in the woods behind the quarry.

Becky was five feet from her locker now. People passed behind her and all the sound seemed to fade and wash out to the edges.

There, taped right below her number 157 and drawn on a sheet of loose-leaf, was the picture of a big heart, real Valentine stuff six months too early. Her own heart pounded and her face burned. She walked up closer, and in her head, Danny’s voice said,

“I see you everywhere, Becky. I see you in the reflections on the water, in the trees, in the wind. I see you in the sun and I see you in my dreams. Mostly though…Becky Michigan, I see you right here.”

In her mind, she could picture him pointing to his heart, and she almost burst into tears. She walked forward and took a closer look. There was an inscription below the two big curves coming down to a point, and in her own head she knew that it would be Danny’s careful printing, each letter worked in perfect parallel and spacing from the others, claiming, ‘I see you right here.’

Becky took the paper from the bottom edge and looked closer at the writing. Simply, it said, ‘This is Mrs. Washington bending over.’

Becky’s lower lip fell and her face went ashy and crestfallen. Mrs. Washington was the fat librarian who had prattled on earlier this week during orientation about the continuing relevance of shelf texts as opposed to electronic articles you could find on Google. And this note was nothing more than some random joke that happened to find locker 157. There was never any Danny in her head, pointing to his heart, and she was no more than…random.

Head down, shoulders slumped, she went to the cafeteria, and it smelled like old fat and bleach. Oh well. Dream boys or not, voices in her head or just hopeful echoes, she had to move on, as disappointing as that seemed, considering how nice that boy’s tone had sounded in her imagination just now. Becky almost laughed at herself. So she
wanted
strange whispers, mysteries, and disappearing acts? Well, no, not really. She was just tired of being random and boring and plain all her life.

She got in line. In her ‘well planned’ exit out the door this morning, she’d forgotten to check the fridge for her lunch, and now she had to buy. She made a half-hearted effort to see the steam table, and it looked like a choice of Sloppy Joe’s or tacos. Not her thing. And sandwich-bar bread was always stale, at least in any school Becky had ever attended. She exited the line, thinking maybe she would adopt a new vegetarian lifestyle, always allowing for hot dogs and Chicken McNuggets, of course.

Becky looked around at the seating choices. All week she’d had B lunch, but Thursday put her here in the A-group, noisy and jam-packed, mostly boys sitting with boys and girls sitting with girls. There was a group in the back doing little rap battles, a collection of quieter kids studying to the right along with the ear-bud zombies staring off into space, and a busted table in the middle of the room by the trash cans temporarily surrounded by passing boys playing keep-away with someone’s hat. There was friendly shoving, girls kneeing up on the benches and shouting in each other’s faces, a couple of long-hairs tapping quarters on the tables, and some upper classman trying to make a smaller kid eat something gross…a zoo, just like her old school.

So.

It was either the study-kids or the one empty table by the trash cans next to the concrete support beam that had a poster of Frederick Douglass on it. It was an old science desk at the edge of the walking aisle separating the two halves of the room, and one of its legs was broken at the base. The wobble-table. For losers.

One kid was sitting there, the Asian boy from English class. He had stuck his math book under the short leg, and was politely sipping soup, robotic and rigid, nothing else on his tray but a couple of pieces of fruit. Becky walked over, pulled out the chair across from him, and slipped off her backpack.

“What’s your name?” she said.

He was startled, but clearly glad he had a visitor.

“Joe,” he said. “Joey Chen.” He smiled then, and even though he had funny teeth, the expression had an interesting effect, like craft-show glass, like sidewalk art. His eyes glinted. “You,” he said, “are Becky Michigan.”

She shrugged.

“Are you new here?”

He looked down at his soup.

“I am from China. I been here one year, three months, eleven days.”

Becky sighed. A whole year and he was eating lunch alone.

“You like this great food?” she said.

“No.”

“Me neither.”

“I like YouTube,” he said. “Funny things.” Becky sat back and folded her arms.

“I like the Tosh show.”

“Me too,” he said, “But he sometimes disgusting.”

“That’s what’s funny.”

“Yes.”

“What else do you like to do?”

He straightened a bit and got stricter and severe in his posture, if that was even possible.

“I put things together.”

Becky sat forward and put her chin on her palm.

“What do you mean?”

His eyes squinted a bit, as if he was deciding whether or not to go on, like she was going to tease him or something. Carefully, he said,

“I put things together. Build things. I make birds and airplanes and flowers and castles. Out of anything. Out of everything.”

“Really?”

He relaxed.

“Yes.”

“Anything?”

“Anything.”

Becky dug into her backpack. At the bottom, she found an orange Tic Tac, five rubber bands, four pencil stubs, a lipstick canister cover, five paper clips, and a Styrofoam packing square from the I-Pad Mother had mail ordered—Becky had gone through a phase where she liked digging her nails into it, making half-moon shapes when she was bored. She put everything up on the table and scooped it all into a makeshift pile.

“Sorry about the lint,” she said, pinching up a dust ball and flicking it aside.

“No problem. What you want me to build?”

“How about a boat?”

“Too easy.”

“A train caboose?”

“Something harder,” he said. “And be specific.”

She pushed out her lower lip and blew upward to fluff the hair off her forehead.

“Ok. How about a catapult?”

“That’s a good challenge.”

She grinned.

“It’s got to work, too.”

“How well?”

She looked over at the concrete pillar.

“You’ve got to be able to hit Freddie Douglass in the eye. Hard enough to tear the paper.”

Joe got to work, and it was amazing. His fingers were incredibly strong, and he was
flying
through the process, like a master craftsman on hyper-speed, carving out a base with the Styrofoam, inserting the pencils at strange angles, bending the paper clips into shapes and twisting them around the ends with the erasers, one of them a ‘stick-on’ she’d had since she was five, shaped like the Squirtle Pokémon. Then he was on to the next phase, making knots with the rubber bands, using his teeth to bite through them a couple of times when the length didn’t seem to appeal, then tying them around the pencils in crisscross patterns that made tiny triangle shapes in a broad, five-by-three inch webbing. Finally, he took the lipstick cover and with his fork, punched a pair of small holes on opposite sides of the closed end, using his spoon as a buffer and the heel of his palm as a hammer. He stuck the two rear paper clip ends through the holes, jammed in the pencil to turn down the edges on the inside, loaded the Tic-Tac, turned toward the pillar, and pulled back the little cannon he had created, stretching the rubber band web so far back the brown textured strands in the middle turned a strained grayish-white.

He released, and the lipstick cover snapped forward on its mounts, pistoning across, shooting the Tic-Tac right at the poster. He didn’t get Freddie in the eye, but it tore the paper a bit under his left jaw. Becky cheered, and then something hit her in the ear.

She reached there, thinking that somehow the Tic-Tac had had a delay-action ricochet, and then she felt something hit her again, this time on the cheek. The projectile rolled and wobbled across the table, settling at the far edge. It was a grape. A purple grape.

Another one struck her right on the end of the nose, leaving a hint of moisture, making her blink stupidly, and yet another plinked off her forehead. So immature! She pushed back her chair and looked over in the general direction of the assault. There, across the aisle and about eighteen rows down, was Cody Hatcher, sitting at the edge of the table with what seemed to be four of his idiot friends, all of them laughing like hyenas, one stamping his foot he was so overcome with the hilarity of it all. Hatcher stopped and looked right at Becky. He reached in front of him and took a purple grape off the stem. He put it in his mouth and chewed real slow. Swallowed. Licked his top lip and winked. Then his friends were laughing again, slapping him on the back.

Becky didn’t think, she just acted. Joe didn’t have time to move. In a flash, she reached across the table, knocked over his milk, grabbed his orange, and pivoted back, side-stepping into the aisle. She had a split second to look at her target, and Hatcher had his mouth open, all teeth, eyes up at the ceiling he was laughing so hard.

She kicked up a knee and spread her hands, throwing-arm dangling way low behind her. There was a moment of perfect balance there, and then her body became a machine: all hot fluid and angry levers. She stepped into it deep, cocked up her arm, snapped her hips, and fired.

The orange flew out of her hand as if on a clothesline. Even through the noise, she could hear it hiss through the air, and heads turned with it as if in slow motion. Hatcher had just enough time to adjust his eyes from the ceiling and focus on what was coming. It hit him square in the forehead with a hard splat and his hands flew up. It knocked him straight back out of his chair, and the fruit ruptured in a blast of spray and peel.