The Last Best Kiss (16 page)

She goes upstairs to change, and I go into the kitchen to make the reservation. That’s when Dad comes out of his office and says with studied offhandedness, “Hey, I just had an idea.”

“He wants to invite Ginny Clay to come to dinner with us,” I tell Molly, who’s upstairs in her room, changing into jeans.

“Who’s that?”

“Lizzie’s friend. The assistant volleyball coach? Remember? She came to Lizzie’s graduation party. She’s tall and blond. Very blond. Ridiculously blond.”

“Oh, her.” Molly makes a face, which proves to me that she does indeed remember Ginny accurately. “That’s weird—why does Dad want to invite Lizzie’s friend to come to dinner with us?”

“Honestly? I think they’re interested in each other. Like in a going-out kind of way.”

She looks horrified. “Are you serious? Isn’t she basically my age?”

“Basically. A year older, I think.”

She makes a retching sound. Then she covers her mouth with her hand like she’s shutting herself up. She drops her hand and says, “I shouldn’t be like this. I mean, if I expect other people to be open-minded about
me
, I need to be open-minded about other people. Two consenting adults and all that.”

“Don’t judge yourself too harshly just yet. Let’s talk again after you’ve spent an evening with her.”

“Ginny Clay is a ridiculous human being,” Molly tells me, after she’s spent an evening with her. We don’t go to Katsuya, because Ginny doesn’t eat fish. We go to some high-end vegetarian restaurant Ginny likes, where one section of the menu is devoted entirely to “raw foods” and another to “vegan foods.” I’m amazed my father agreed to go there. He said to Ginny at the beginning of the meal, “I’m giving you this one chance to convince me this kind of food can be appealing,” and at the end of the meal, he said, “I am not convinced.”

“Next week, a steak house!” Ginny said gamely, and he smiled at her with genuine delight, although that may have just been at the prospect of eating steak. No matter what, it sounds like they’re planning to see each other again. I just hope they don’t drag me along. I’m beginning to feel like some kind of weird beard.

“I just don’t get it,” Molly says now. We’re in her room, sitting on her bed. She’s curled up against the headboard, hugging her knees to her chest; I’m sideways, my back against the wall, my legs extended out in front of me, my feet hanging off the side of the bed. “Why her? She’s not particularly bright or interesting or sophisticated. . . .”

“She’s pretty,” I say. “Dad likes pretty things. And it’s not like he’s ever had good taste in women.”

“Mom, for example.”

“For example.”

Molly releases her knees and stretches, yawning. “Anna, I’m sorry, but I have to kick you out. I’ve got to get up brutally early tomorrow if I’m going to make my one o’clock class. I’ll probably be gone before you even get up.”

“Okay.” I scootch off the bed and onto my feet. “I’m glad you came home, Molly. I mean, I’m sorry it was for the reason it was, but it’s good to see you.”

“Yeah, ditto.” She reaches out her hand and squeezes mine. “Thanks for being here when I needed you.”

“I’m very good at being home,” I say. “It’s my finest quality.”

“Be careful,” she says, “or you may make us lose our Most Dysfunctional Family award.”

“Nah,” I say. “We’ve still got that one covered.”

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

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eleven

“F
our days and counting until we leave for the music festival,” Hilary announces at lunch on Monday. “Is everyone excited?”

“Ms. Malik just told us we’re having a quiz in AP bio next Tuesday,” Lucy says. “I’d say I’m more conflicted than excited. And more nervous than conflicted.”

“Thank you, Ms. Buzzkill,” says Hilary. “So sorry this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see some of the best bands in the country perform may cut into your study time for a test you’re going to ace, anyway.”

“I believe she’s being sarcastic,” I say to Lucy.

“How shocking,” Lucy says. “I’ve never been exposed to sarcasm before.”

“I believe
she’s
being sarcastic,” Finn says to Lily.

“I’m pissed,” Lily says, ending the joke.

“And why are you pissed?” asks Finn.

“Well, first of all, someone put raisins into the chocolate chip cookies.” She waves the offending cookie in the air.

“That’s because it’s an oatmeal raisin cookie,” Finn says.

“What?” She flings it across the table onto Hilary’s tray. “Poseur! Why do people even make these things when no one likes them?”

“Just because
you
don’t doesn’t mean other people don’t,” Hilary says. “Not everyone has the exact same opinions as you. Thank god.”

“Well, they should. Because I’m always right.”

“You’d hate it if everyone thought like you. Then you couldn’t go around saying, ‘Look at me, I’m so special and unique and different!’”

“A, I don’t talk like that,” Lily says. “And two, ‘special and unique’ feels repetitive.”

“So what else are you pissed about this lovely school day?” Finn asks her.

“I’m pissed at how boring my life is.”

“She suffers,” I say. “Lord, how she suffers.”

She glares at me. “I don’t mind that I have a perfect life—”

“She’s a stoic,” Lucy says.

“—not usually. But our stupid college-essay tutor told us to come up with five different ideas. He said we should draw on pivotal moments in our lives—something that’s changed us.” She turns to Finn. “And do you know how many pivotal moments my life has had? None. Nothing important has ever happened to me. Nothing ever will.”

“You’re a twin,” Lucy says. “That could be a cool topic.”

Lily rolls her eyes. “Look at Hilary. Just look at her. Could anything be more boring to write about than
her
?”

“Screw you,” her sister says.

“What are
you
writing about?” I ask Hilary.

“I was alone with my grandmother when she died,” she says. “My mother’s mother. We were at the hospital, but my mom had taken Lily to use the bathroom and I was just sitting there by myself, and she was taking all these long, slow breaths, but then she just
stopped
and some alarm went off, and the nurse came in and said she had died.”

Lucy rubs Hilary’s arm. “I’m so sorry. That sounds scary and sad.”

“It was
weird
,” Hilary says. “I barely knew her. We never visited—she and my dad didn’t get along, and Mom said she was kind of evil. But we went because she was dying and then—”

“And then she died,” Lily says. “And cute little eight-year-old Hilary instantly thought, Now I know what I’m writing my college essay about. Good thing Lily has a small bladder or she might have stolen it from me.”

“Right,” Hilary says. “That’s exactly what I thought as I gazed at Grandma’s lifeless body. You’re a mind reader.” She looks around the table. “What’s everyone else doing for their essays?”

Oscar says, “I’m playing the gay card—talking about the summer I came out to my family.”

No one says anything right away, and I bet the others are thinking what I am: that colleges must receive a million essays from gay kids about how they came out or didn’t come out or how hard it’s been or how accepting people have been and so on. Oscar must know that it doesn’t sound like the most original idea in the world, because he quickly adds, “It’s a funny essay, not a serious one. When I came out to my grandmother, she started telling me that she had always suspected that her sister liked other girls, but ‘in those days no one knew what that meant.’ So I told her I was pretty sure that even back in those days people understood homosexuality, they just didn’t talk about it. And she said, ‘Well, all I know is that if I’d had a choice between a husband and a wife, I’d have taken the wife. We do all the hard work.’ And then she told me to take that into consideration before I committed myself to a man.”

“I love that,” I say sincerely, and everyone else agrees it sounds great.

“What’s yours?” Oscar asks me.

Since I’m applying mostly to art schools, my essay (which is a work in progress) is about how I started drawing. After my mother left us, the school told my father I should see a therapist. The therapist told me to draw a picture every week; she would use it to start a discussion. I discovered I liked the drawing part more than the talking part, and it became my favorite thing to do—especially when I realized I could draw horses.

Everyone’s quiet when I finish talking. Finn breaks the silence. He says slowly, “I wonder if that has something to do with the kind of art you make. The way there’s always something hidden—”

I cut him off, excited. “It’s so weird that you said that! One of the first things I drew was our house. I made it really big, and the sun was shining and there was grass in front—the whole classic kid thing. And the therapist looked at it and told me it was beautiful. And she put it down. And then like ten minutes later, we were talking and her eyes fell on it again and she suddenly gasped and said, ‘What is that in the window? I didn’t notice it before.’ I had drawn this weird distorted face staring out. . . . I still have the picture, and it is genuinely creepy. I’m lucky she didn’t have me committed.”

“What was it supposed to be?” Finn asks.

“My mom,” I said sheepishly. “The therapist seemed kind of disturbed by that.”

“Because it’s
disturbing
,” Hilary says.

“You don’t know my mother.” I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry, that was mean. She’s not evil. I just drew her that way.”

“How’d you start doing the landscapes?” Finn asks. “I saw more of your stuff online—on deviantART—and it’s cool how you paint all these different kinds of worlds.”

He had looked up my artwork. I try not to let my pleasure show and say, “Yeah, I kind of got into that after ninth grade.” I look down at my half-eaten sandwich (too much mayonnaise, not enough lettuce—bleah). I say, “There was this guy I knew who was always showing me cool photos of other planets and faraway places. I guess I kind of absorbed more of that than I realized.”

“This guy?” Finn repeats. He catches my eye, and I smile.

“Who?” asks Lily, who’s been poking at a piece of tomato with a chopstick. “What guy? Someone at school?”

“Him,” I say, and point at Finn.

“Him?” She registers that with a tiny, little frown of uncertainty. Her forehead clears. “Oh, right—you guys knew each other! I always forget that. You feel like a new kid, Finn.”

“I’m new
and
old.”

“You and your photos,” Lily says, and bounces her elbow against his. “The first time you told me you wanted to ‘show me something,’ I was sure it was going to be pornographic. You sounded so excited. . . . And then it was just this weird fish.”

“A batfish,” Finn says. “Wasn’t it awesome?”

“All I know is it was the opposite of porn.”

“Were you relieved or disappointed?” Oscar asks her.

“A little bit of both.”

“I save the porn for special occasions,” Finn says in that slow—and, yes, if I’m being honest,
sexy
—drawl he’s acquired since ninth grade.

“My birthday’s coming up . . .” Lily murmurs.

“No, it’s not,” Hilary says.

Lily sighs. “You are the most literal person in the world.”

“The word you’re looking for is
honest
. Get to know it.”

“Why?” Lily says. “It has no relevance to my life.”

“That’s for sure.”

“Doesn’t anyone want to hear about
my
essay?” Lucy asks plaintively. “I’ve written three and don’t know which one to use—you guys need to help me decide. Or maybe I should just scrap them all and come up with something new.” We all turn our attention to her—just as the bell rings. “Oh, come on!” she says.

“Don’t worry about it.” I pick up my book bag and rise to my feet, along with everyone else. “We’ll have lots of time to discuss your essays this weekend, on the bus ride to the desert.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she says sadly. “They all suck.”

“Hilary,” I say. “Tell Lucy her essays don’t suck. I’ve got to get to history.”

“Your essays don’t suck,” Hilary tells her. And then we all go to class.

“Bad news?”

I look up from my phone. It’s an hour later, and we’re between classes. I’m standing at the bottom of a stairwell, using the space behind the doorway to hide the fact I’m looking at my phone from any teachers who might be in the hallway. Finn must have spotted me when he was coming down the stairs. I have no idea how long he’s been watching me from the bottom step—long enough to figure out that I’m frowning down at a text.

“Not bad exactly,” I say. “Just a little sad. A text from my sister—the good one. The one you don’t know.”

He comes down the last step, so we’re at the same level. “Molly?”

Of course he remembers her name. He remembers everything. “Yeah, that one. She had this weird thing happen when she was visiting a friend—” I raise my chin. “Not just a friend, her girlfriend—and the parents freaked out because they kissed and kicked her out.”

Here’s the thing about Finn: he’s the kind of guy who, when you throw something at him like,
My sister’s girlfriend’s parents threw her out of their house for being a lesbian
, doesn’t react instantly, doesn’t just say the obvious things. Instead he waits, absorbing the information, watching me with his dark brown eyes, his fingers twitching along the strap of his messenger bag. “When did this happen?” he asks.

“Last weekend,” I say. “Now she and her girlfriend are back at college together, and her girlfriend just assumed everything would go back to normal. But Molly’s too angry for that, so they had a huge fight.”

“Does Molly really like her?”

“Totally in love. Or at least she
was
. But Wally didn’t defend her.”

“Families are always the hardest thing to deal with. Maybe she just needs more time to figure out how to manage hers.”

I stick my phone in my pocket. “How do you ‘manage’ bigotry? I hate people like that. I don’t want them to exist.”

“Imagine how hard it would be to have parents like that.”