The Things You Kiss Goodbye (13 page)

“Hey, Bettina!” I looked up, there was Big Bonnie standing half in, half out of the art room doorway. “I’m unloading a firing this morning. Wanna come?”

“Oh. Umm . . .” I did want to see this. I did want to help her. I wanted to see Cowboy, too. But the kiln was ready now. I looked at Bonnie. Nobody ever helped her. I heard myself say yes.

From the moment Bonnie unlatched the hatch of the kiln and swung it open, I was mesmerized. Gentle heat left over from the firing rose into the art room. We listened to the quiet
tink-tink
of the warm surfaces as they cooled.

Bonnie put on a pair of oven mitts and reached into the kiln. I watched each piece come into the light. I made space on the shelves.

“I love this glaze. . . . Check out the layers of blue. . . .” Bonnie turned a pot this way and that. She settled it on a shelf and faced me. “Half the time people come in here and don’t even recognize their own work after the glaze firing,” Bonnie said.

“Oh, right . . .” I thought about that. “There’s a sort of ugly-duckling phase first, isn’t there?”

“Ha! That’s a really good way to describe it,” Bonnie agreed. “Here,” she said, sliding out of the mitts. “You pull the next one out. You have to get low, make your arms kind of like a pair of tongs—”

“Oh. Yikes.” I fretted. I clenched my teeth as I cupped a small bowl.

“You’ve got it,” Bonnie said, unworried. I watched my padded hands set the pot down on the shelf. Slowly, I released it.

“Done,” said Bonnie, and a broad smile broke across her chapped face.

“Ah,” said Mr. Terrazzi, who had appeared out of nowhere. “The mistress of the kiln has an apprentice. It’s about time.”

I guess life was okay. I had things to do. But I was surprised at how much I missed Cowboy—and the
way
I missed him, like a boat unable to touch shore. I told myself that I belonged at school where people were my own age, and when I thought back to that little moment when Cowboy hid me away from the cops, well, if nothing else, it was a relief to be
“not-jailbait.” The days went by, there just wasn’t the opportunity to get over to SWS Auto. I thought maybe I’d given him up. Maybe that was the way it should be. Or maybe it was the cause of the creeping, seeping sort of sadness that seemed to be making its way to my core.

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T
HE BEGINNING OF
O
CTOBER FINALLY BROUGHT ME A DAY
I was looking forward to pretty much no matter what else was going on. Mr. Terrazzi had promised to hand back our projects. I was dying to know how I’d done with the Steam & Bean at 66 Green. Bonnie had settled on her topic for the project late, but then she had kicked butt. She invented a business called
Art~
Urnity—as in, creative
cremation
urns.

“I’m combining my love of pottery with my knowledge of death,” she’d said, “
and
I’m honoring the business that puts bread on my family’s table and will hopefully send me to college one day.” That bit of melodrama had freaked out a few people, but I’d split a grin with her.

I was invested in Bonnie’s grade as well as my own; she’d asked me for advice on typefaces and layout. I’d spent a while with her. I suggested she italicize the “art” part of
Art
~Urnity and use the tilde to both separate and join the words. She’d liked the balance. Mr. Terrazzi had seen us working together and had said, “The kiln mistress becomes apprentice to the graphics mistress now. Oh, you’re both so smart.”

When I got to school in the morning, I peeked into the art room. I could see our projects waiting in folders on his desk. But I was going to have to wait until sixth period to see the grade. This would be a deadly long morning.

“What’s that?” Brady leaned against the locker next to mine. He tapped a finger on a pair of to-go containers on the shelf inside my locker.

“In translation? This would be
cheese pastry
,” I said. I flashed him a grin on the
cheese
part. “For this afternoon,” I added. Brady shook his head at me.

“Ya know, you should just make normal stuff. That thing you made with all the nuts in it—that sticky stuff?”

“Baklava.” I gave him the word.

“It seemed like there was something wrong with it.”

“I didn’t know you had tasted it,” I said.

“Naw, I didn’t. It was too much mess.”

I sighed. It was true that my creation had resented its hours of warm storage and was a little less beautiful by the
time I’d offer it to the masses. “Well, this is a totally different pastry this time. These are little sweet cheese pies—”

“P’teen-uh! I’m just trying to tell you, do cookies or brownies. Okay? Ya got it?” His face was turning red.

“Yeah, yeah. Okay,” I said. I wanted to stop talking about it—maybe a little of Bampas’s old
fili antio
philosophy at work. Besides, I had something more important on my mind.

The news in sixth period couldn’t have been better. Mr. T gave me an A-plus for my work on the Steam & Bean. Then he’d written me a note:

Miss Vasilis
,

Your effort has been impressive. If I could hand out double A’s, you’d have one for this work. Nice! Keep it up
.

T~

From across the room, Bonnie flashed me a satisfied smile. She showed the large letter
A
Mr. T had put on the back of her cover page. Awesome.

As a class, we pinned the projects up around the room and had a free-flowing art show for the entire period. People were talking about everything from composition to computer enhancements. I made my way around the space twice.
This is my fuel
, I thought.
Making art, talking about design. This is
what I want to do
. When the bell rang, we answered with a collective groan.

“Ack, people!” Mr Terrazzi called out. “How did this happen? We’re not going to have time to take this down but I will be pleased for the next two classes to see what you’ve done. Hey, hey!” he said, raising his voice above the buzz in the room. “New project assignment tomorrow! Be ready!” I think he meant to sober us with his tone. But actually, I felt invincible.

On my way out the door, I glanced back at everybody’s work, and yes, my own, which, in a removed sort of way, caught me as rock-solid. “Miss Vasilis and Miss Swenson,” Mr. Terrazzi said, “I’ve got a faculty meeting today. Any chance the two of you could come back here to take these down right after school?”

“I’m in,” said Bonnie, and I echoed her.

So at the end of the day, I had to tell Brady I wasn’t heading down to the White Tiger mosaic with him for the usual assembly. I was talking fast while I shuffled things around inside my locker. “I’m helping take down a bunch of art. Oh, and Brady, and I got an A-
plus
on this huge thing we just did . . . and all the projects were so cool . . .” I realized I was losing his attention. “So anyway, I was wondering if you could tell one of the Not-So—I mean, a
cheerleader
not to worry; I
will
be at practice. And will you take these to everyone?” I
pulled the boxes of pastries out of my locker. “By the time I finish up it’ll be too late to—”

“No effin’ way,” Brady said. I looked into his eyes—ice-cold.

“You won’t? Really?”

“You want be in the art room, instead of going with me. Fine. Do that. But I’m not taking your pie-turds down there. I’m not your delivery boy.”

“I wasn’t trying to send you on an errand. Never mind . . .” I turned back toward my locker. “I’ll just leave them here and—”

“Whatever,” Brady said. I looked at him. His jaw was set hard. He wrapped his hand around the edge of my locker door. He flung it backward on its hinges. It smashed into the locker beside mine with a loud bang. Then it bounced into me and knocked the pastry boxes out of my hands. There went Brady, striding away on khaki-covered legs. Lockers
always
bang in a crowded hallway. Not a soul had noticed. But my hands felt weightless and my knees felt weak. I shook it off. I straightened up, set the pastries back on my shelf, and went into the art room to help Bonnie.

“Bettina,” she said. She already was already holding several pages in her fingers. “I know Mr. Terrazzi asked us both to do this but I can handle it on my own,” she said. “If you want to go join Brady and your friends—”

“I’m good here,” I interrupted her.
My
friends? Did she really see them that way? “We can get it done before I have to go to practice,” I said.

“Okay . . .” I could feel her looking at me. “Hey, is something wrong?”

“No.” I gave a convincing eyebrow scrunch and swallowed the lump in my throat. I looked at the artwork on the wall. “So, hey, this is cool,” I said. “We get to have another look at everything, up close.”

We talked about the projects as we pulled out pushpins and peeled tape. I tried hard to forget about Brady’s fit, but it weighed on me. Bonnie and I squared up everyone’s pages and packed the work back into the folders Mr. T had left for us.

“More of a job than it looked like,” Bonnie mused.

“Yeah—oh, hell! Is that clock right?”

“W-well, yeah, probably. Oh, your practice!”

“Is starting!” I added. I swore and tore into my backpack for a pair of gym shorts. Bonnie laughed, but not unsympathetically. “Oh, hell . . . They think I don’t put in enough effort as it is. . . .” I mumbled.

“Here,” said Bonnie, “I’m putting your project into your pack.”

“Oh, thank you!” I stuck one booted foot then the other into the legs of my shorts. I pulled them up under my skirt
then unzipped and pushed the skirt to the floor. Bonnie grabbed that up and tucked it into my pack.

“Turn, turn!” she said. I did, and she hung the pack on my shoulders. “Go!”

“Bonnie, thank you! See you tomorrow!” I said.

I shot into the hall and spun my combination as fast as I could. I grabbed the boxes of pastries and started running. My backpack clobbered me, the pastries bounced around inside the boxes. My boots struck the floor like hammers—

“Boots! Oh, no!” I said it out loud. I came to a halt and turned around. Sneakers! I had them. Back in my locker. So there I went clobbering and hammering back down the empty hallway to get them.

Again I trotted, this time with my sneakers slung around my neck by their short laces and kicking me in the face as I went. Those girls were going to hate me for stumbling in late—especially after all the talk about commitment. And here I was with these dumb pastries.

“Yikes!” I stopped just short of crashing into two guys who were coming out of the music room. “Sorry!”

“Whoa! Bettina!”

“Oh, Tony. It’s you! Hi.” I stopped to catch my breath. I was so late. What was one more minute? Tony had a friend with him, and the guy was giving me a dazed sort of smile. I
said hi to him too. Apologized again for nearly taking them out.

“Moti, this is Bettina,” Tony told his friend. “She likes to run in big boots.”

“I heard,” the guy said. “I think the sound saved my life. I heard you coming.”

That made me laugh. “I forgot my sneakers,” I began to explain. “Now I’m really late and . . . oh, never mind.” Then a moment of brilliance struck me. “Tony, take these! Please!” I held the pastries toward him. “Maybe Regina would like some, and your family. Sorry they’re sorta broken.”

Tony laughed. He had one box lid up and his nose inside. “Oh, I remember. Kali . . .” He closed his eyes tight, thinking. “Kalit-sou-nia.”

“Yes!”

“Your mom’s?”

“But baked by me,” I said. I tapped my breastbone with my finger.

“There’s nothing better than this stuff,” Tony said, leaning toward his friend. “Except maybe my mom’s cannoli.”

“Right,” I said.

“Can I share these? Like with Moti, here? And the band?”

“Of course!” I said. I clapped my hands on both his shoulders. “You’re doing me a favor, Ton.” I started away again.

“Well, thank you,” Tony said. “Thanks a lot!”

“Sure!” I called over my shoulder.
Go, go, go
, was all I could think. I reached the end of the hall—a T where you must go either left to the main gym or right toward the auxiliary gym. I rounded toward the right and—
bam!
Something hit me in the side of my knee—and it felt like a bus.

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HarperCollins Publishers

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I
DON
’
T KNOW HOW
I
STAYED STANDING
. I
YELPED LIKE A
dog and went hopping to the opposite wall for support. I knew that no good thing had happened. A stray basketball rolled over my sneakers, which had landed in the middle of the hall. Brady came up to retrieve it. A handful of his teammates were gathered up not twenty feet away, waiting to go into the main gym. But they were talking, bouncing basketballs through their legs, spinning them on their fingers. Oblivious to the girl who been bowled down.

“You didn’t catch it,” Brady said to me. He drummed the ball into the floor a few times. Looked at me sideways.

“Oh, I caught it,” I mumbled. I reached for my knee.
There was that bent-the-wrong-way feeling—an ache and a strain together. I circled my knee with both hands and held it tightly.

“Well,
bad
catch,” Brady said, and he laughed. “I sent you an easy push pass.”

Or maybe you wailed the thing at me. . . 
.

“You were running. How come you’re so late?” He wedged the ball between his arm and his hip and waited for an answer.

“I was taking down that artwork,” I said. I played the last few minutes in my mind. Then I realized what he must have seen. “And I just handed Tony Colletti those pastries,” I said. I hoped I sounded as guiltless as I felt.

“Yeah.
Him again
,” Brady said.

“He just happened to be there. Besides, what else was I going to do with them?”