Page 9 of What's in a Kiss?

Everyone except Glasswell.

Maybe it’s because my problems with him started rightbeforeDad died, but Glasswell seems to have been grandfathered in, reserving the lone parking space of antipathy in me ever since.

Gram Parsons resituates himself so his paws push my yellow journal into the center console. I take the hint and open the book. My dog may not have any idea what’s going on, but I like to think he has my best interests at heart.

It’s strange: even after all these years, the book still opens automatically to the longest entry, a record twenty-seven pages. Holding the book open in my hands, the memory of writing it rushes back so vividly it makes my stomach hurt.

May 25, 2014

Dear Princess Di,

About last night...

All I can say is I’ve been sold a bill of goods. By adults. By eighties movies. By the universe.

What was supposed to be a magical evening became mortifying. And now, for the rest of my days, whenever anyone says the word “prom,” I’ll be stuck thinking ofhim.

I laugh, because I brought this diary to read some vintage Mash and Eli romance, not to trip into a Glasswell wormhole.

The years have dulled the acute humiliation of that night, but as I read on, unexpected sensations tiptoe across my chest. I feel agitated, on high alert.

Like I’m suddenly on a collision course with shame.

The dress—my mom’s yellow tulle, debuted at her own senior prom.

My date—Eli Morgan, whom I asked as a friend, because Mash was too scared to ask him as a crush. And too worried that if I didn’t take him, he’d go with Natalie Planco, and the next thing you’d hear would be wedding bells.

The plan—to go in a group. The plan was fun. But then Sumi got mono, and Alina and Duke had a fight, and soon our whole limo was dropping like flies, until it was just Masha, Eli, me, and—

Jake Glasswell.

Yes, Di,thatGlasswell. He’s haunted these pages before. Remember when he joined Debate Club (see p. 58) and made verbal sparring with me his national pastime? Remember when he walked onto varsity baseball as starting pitcher (p. 63), right up-mound from my catcher’s mitt? Remember when he capered into the auditions forRomeo and Juliet(p. 69), took one look at me atop the balcony and—mercifully—walked right out? Or, just last week, in homeroom (p. 89), when we received the same slip of paper, notifying us we’d each been named Most Likely to Succeed?

Why Glasswell decided to single me out as his lone high school rival, invadingevery oneof my spaces, is a mystery. The boy has been enrolled at Palisades for only one year, but the two of us have enough rivalries to last at least three lifetimes.

That ends tonight, Di. Mark my words. I’m going to tell you this sad story, but let it be thelasttime I give Glasswell page space in my life’s unwritten book.

What is up with my writing style in this journal? I must have been readingDangerous Liaisonsat the time. It has that breathless epistolary feel. I just hope I don’t pull out the termsblackguardandalas.

I skip ahead, scanning for references to Masha and Eli. Surely I documented their first kiss? I can see it so clearly in my mind: The two of them at the center of the dance floor, under the disco ball, her hand on his butt as they swayed to Alicia Keys. She gave him her incandescent whole-soul smile, and then she rose on her toes to kiss him. It was the cutest. Full stop.

But somehow, it seems I didn’t get around to documenting their first kiss here. Maybe I didn’t feel that moment’s sweetness suited the style of my apocalyptic outrage?

Instead, I wrote twenty-seven angry pages... about Glasswell. I let it rip about his snug-fitting tuxedo and his long legs taking up the limo’s back seat. I wrote about how, on the way to prom, Glasswell made the limo pull over because he couldn’t pass a Baskin-Robbins without ordering a rum raisin. Then tried to get me to share it with him.

What kind of person likes rum raisin?

After that, I waffled, detailing moments when Glasswell had seemed almost deceptively... cool. How we’d bantered about my dad’s Nikon 7, which I was wearing like an accessory around my neck. How the two of us spent a fun fifteen minutes furtively snapping artsy shots of Masha and Eli flirting.

But then, I wrote about discovering that Glasswell’s coolness had only been an act.

I wrote the entire shameful scene in which Glasswell showed his true colors.

Here’s the thing I can’t get over, Di:

Ialmostmade it out with my dignity intact.

It was eleven forty-five—probably three songs left in the DJ’s bank—when I stepped out of the gym for some air.

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