The Kiss Off (13 page)

“Stop!” someone shouted. “I don’t wanna hear this!” We all turned around, and half-hidden behind the last light post was the Pest, his face screwed up and hands covering his ears. His hands holding scrunched up pieces of paper. I looked at the last light post – the poster was gone.

“Rory!” I yelled, running at him. As soon as I started, he bolted back down the street and I chased him all the way home. Saved by the Pest.

***

I chased him back to the house and he slammed the front door in my face. I swore, fished out my keys and let myself in. By then, he was in his room, door closed behind him. I didn’t care. I threw the door open and it hit the wall with a bang, making his cheat code-filled notice board tilt to the side. Rory sat on the floor in front of his bed. Poo Bum was sidled up beside him, pressing his head into his friend, my brother. Rory stroked his fur and scratched him behind his ears. I watched the dog’s eyes flutter closed and he pressed his head toward Rory’s fingers.

“Thanks a lot for tearing down the posters, butt head,” I said. “I’ve been wondering why they kept disappearing, why I had to keep putting them up over and over.” He didn’t look at me, just focussed on patting the dog. “Have you even been doing the mail box drops?”

“No.”

I figured. “Look, you heard Mom, we can’t keep him. Besides, his family is probably missing him like crazy.”

“Do you think he has a family?”

“Well, yeah. Don’t you?”

“I thought maybe he was a street dog. Didn’t have a home.”

“I guess it’s possible.”

“Yeah, and maybe we could be his home, his family,” he said. “So can you stop putting up the posters for a while?”

“Rory-”

“Please, Poppy? Mom doesn’t want to send him to the pound, and if no one claims him then he’s ours. Just stop putting the posters up.”

“You should talk to Mom, kid.”

“I know,” he said sadly. He rubbed his face against Poo Bum’s face and the dog licked him on the cheek. It was quite sweet. I closed the door gently behind me and walked to my room where I picked up my guitar and flopped onto my bed. I strummed slowly, staring at the ceiling. We couldn’t let the dog go to the pound. We couldn’t. It had taken lots of chewed up socks and some of Mom’s favorite shoes, not to mention that time Dad told me about when he came home and there were feathers and stuffing all over their bedroom, but not a whole lot of the bedding left. It had been trashed. And peed on. There had been lots of peeing inside and those great steaming mounds of turd outside, not to mention leg humping and dinner stealing. It had taken time to get him out of those habits, for him to be comfortable with our family, and for us to be comfortable with him. There was no way he’d get re-homed at the pound, not a leg humping home-wrecker. And there was only one thing that happened to dogs that didn’t get re-homed.

I started to write a song.

***

I was on the computer later, taking a break from a solid five or so minutes of essay writing. I clicked straight over to YouTube and checked out my channel. The Kiss Off was getting crazy hits, which were overflowing to my other videos, my other songs. Everything that used to have maybe ten thousand hits which had been generated over the course of a year, now had a hundred thousand hits and growing. What else was new, in the sidebar were links to footage of Academy of Lies playing The Kiss Off at a handful of different gigs. And then a couple of their other songs too. My insides squirmed with excitement. They were getting a heap of exposure, if only with the cyber crowd. Wait a second, what was…I clicked on a link that had caught my eye, called PoppyLongStocking. It was a short camera-phone video of my…er…for lack of a better word, my ‘fans’ taking photos with me from the gig at FoxTail. I pressed my speed-dial immediately.

“There is a video of me on YouTube, where people are milling around staring and taking photos with me like I’m some sort of celebrity,” I told Van.

“Can you call me later? I’m working on my Biology project and I’m kind of in the zone-”

“Isn’t that freaking awesome?”

“Completely freaking awesome, it is. But I’ll have to talk to you later bye.” And she hung up on me.

My shoulders slumped at her lack of enthusiasm. I paused before calling Mads. We’d left it kind of weird, earlier. But before I came to a decision, it was as if our brains had synced up and my cell vibrated in my hand.

“Turn on the radio to WKM-one!” Mads shrieked.

I winced and held the phone away from my ear as I obeyed and turned on my stereo, searching for WKM1.

“Do it! Do it! Are you listening? Are you hearing this?”

“Okay, I’m doing it, hold on,” I stopped talking and listened to the familiar song. The song I had only heard acoustic and live. The real recorded song with a familiar voice. Ty’s voice - my boyfriend’s voice!

“It’s on the freaking radio?!” I screamed and jumped up and down, spinning around in circles. Bex must have heard the commotion because she wandered in and started shaking her body from side to side, dancing with me. She put her hands above her head like she learned in her ballet lessons and turned in a careful circle. She didn’t fall down so she must have done it right.

Mads was singing along at the top of her voice, and I joined in the ecstatic yell-singing, and Bex tried to sing too but mostly ended up yelling.

“It’s their pick of the week, they said it’s going to be a chart topper for sure!” Mads said when the song had finished.

“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I just can’t. I have to go, I’m going to go and see Ty!”

“You know, you never answered my question about-”

I hung up and flung open my closet, rifling through the clothes. I wasn’t wearing jeans and a sweater tonight, I wanted to wear something… I mean, he was on the radio.
We
were on the radio. We were celebrating.

“Mo-om!” I yelled. There’s this little strappy black dress that would be perfect. With my knee-high boots which I only ever wore on special occasions because they squinched my toes up and hurt like crazy. But this was a special occasion. Now, where the hell was that dress?

I stomped out of my room. “Mom, where are you?” I called.

“I’m in here, love,” I followed her voice toward her bedroom. The door was ajar and I pushed it open to find her sitting up on the bed, reading a cookbook with Poo Bum lounging beside her, watching me.

“Do you know where my little black dress is?”

“You have a little black dress?”

“You know the one, it has a bow on it.” Then my brain registered that she was holding a cookbook.

“Mom, back away from the book,” I said jumping onto the bed, trying to snatch the book away. She swatted me with it.

“I’m not that bad, Poppy,” she said. “Am I?”

“My favorite was the burnt maple syrup sweet potato,” I said. “It was really gross, Mom.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, but didn’t comment, turning back to her book. I laughed, leaned over and gave her a hug.

“Wow,” Mom said. “What’s this for?”

“Nothing, I’m just happy.”

“Really.”

“Yep, I won’t be around for you to poison tonight, by the way.”

“Poison? Oh that’s nice,” Mom said, hitting me with the book again. Bex followed me into the room and I helped her climb up beside me.

“How about you, Becka,” Mom said. “You like my cooking, don’t you honey?”

Bex screwed up her nose and stuck out her tongue.

“See? See?” I said.

Mom sighed and I tried not to laugh.

“So where is it you’re going that you need a little black dress?”

“Nowhere,” I said with a sly smile. “Just out.”

“Mm hmm,” Mom said, suspicious. “You do realize you’re still my daughter and technically you need my permission to go out. Or I could implant a tracking device. Give you a nice scar.”

“Where’s my dress, Mom?”

“Tell me what it looks like,” she said.

“You know, it’s got straps, and it’s above the knee and it has that lacy bow around the waist?”

“Oh,” Mom said. “You mean
my
little black dress.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked, sitting up straight. “It’s not yours.” I thought for a moment. “Oh, wait a second…”

Mom tapped me on the forehead, looking amused. I swatted her away.

“It’s in my closet,” she said. “So should I get the tracking device out now, or…?”

“I’m going over to Ty’s place,” I said.

Mom watched me. “This Ty boy, he’s a good friend of yours now, isn’t he.”

“Sort of, yeah,” I said.

“What’s wrong with what you’re wearing? Why do you need a cocktail dress to go and visit him?”

“Did you hear me screaming and singing just now?”

“Singing?” Mom said. “Is that what that was?”

“Ty’s band’s song was on the radio. I kind of wrote that song. They’re predicting it’s going to be a hit, we have to celebrate!”

“A song you wrote was on the radio?”

“Yeah – they recorded it, so can I borrow the dress?”

“That’s amazing, honey, congratulations!” she leaned over and gave me a hug that made Poo Bum yelp and jump off the bed as he was caught in the middle of it. This was all very nice but didn’t get me any closer to the dress.

“Can we hear it sometime?”

“Uh, yeah, sure. Of course,” I said, trying not to cringe. I was proud of the song, don’t get me wrong. And I thought Academy of Lies had done a kick ass job with it, but I wasn’t sure I needed my parents hearing how Cam and Nikki had broken my heart and I planned to get revenge. At least, I had back then.

“So can I wear the dress?”

“I guess you can borrow it if you like,” she said. “As long as you promise not to spill anything on it.”

“I promise,” I said, climbing over Bex and off the bed and to her closet. Seriously, it’s so stupid when people make you promise things like that. When you spill things on yourself you don’t exactly do it on purpose. There might be the odd occasion when you do, but mostly never.

I could feel my mom watching me as I sifted through her closet, the hangers making a metallic scrape as I pushed each one aside.

“So are you going out to celebrate?”

“Um, maybe,” I said. “I don’t know.” I hadn’t considered it, all I knew was that I had to go and see him. And that I had to look hot. And that Cam was buying condoms.

“Well what do you think you’ll be doing?”

“I don’t know, Mom!” I said as I found the dress and pulled it from her closet. “Just…celebrating!”

“And how do you plan on celebrating?”

“I. Don’t. Know.”

“Do we have to have the talk?” Mom said. “About being responsible?”

“No we don’t need to have the talk,” I mumbled, flitting my eyes to Bex. She was patting the dog, pat-pat-pat on the top of his head, oblivious to our conversation.

“I’m assuming Ty’s your boyfriend, right? Not just your friend?”

“Mom.”

“Why can’t we talk about this?”

“Yes. I mean, we haven’t exactly said it, but yes, he’s my boyfriend.”

“And he’s in a popular rock band?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry honey, but I don’t like it.”

“What, just because he’s in a band? Because he likes music, like I do?”

“Boys in bands, they’re different to other boys, Poppy. I mean, they have all this fame and…you know what groupies are, right? What they do?”

I covered my ears, I couldn’t listen to my mother talk about groupies.

“Oh my God, you have to stop talking,” I said. “He’s not some big player rock star who…” I looked at Bex. She was watching me, now interested in the grown up conversation. “He doesn’t ‘play’ with groupies. He doesn’t have groupies, they’re not even that famous yet. And besides, you don’t even know him,” I said. “Ty’s completely different, he’s not even remotely like that.”

“As long as you’re sure, honey,” Mom said.

“I’m sure.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Okay,” I said back. “So can I borrow the car tonight?”

Mom let out an ‘I don’t like it’ sigh, which usually meant she didn’t like it but was going to go along with it. “To get there and back but not to drive people around and definitely not to let other people drive it around, you got it?”

“Got it.” I nodded and hunted in Mom’s handbag on the dresser for her keys.

That was the point when Bex decided to join the conversation. “Can I have a groupie?”

***

Chapter Twelve

I didn’t drive often, I mean, I had gotten my permit like six months ago, but the dream I had once held of driving everywhere, driving my friends everywhere and having this insane amount of freedom were marred by the fact that I had neglected to take into account how often the car was in use. If my mom wasn’t using it, my dad was. And we were a one car family. So I was saving for a car, but that wasn’t coming along that well since Summer ended awhile back and I was back to being unemployed. And I tended to eat into my car fund by buying stuff. Like clothes and an IPod, and a new amp because I busted my old one when I accidently kicking it against the wall getting out of bed that time.