Page 21 of This Time It's Real
I guess this wouldn’t be a big deal to him. Actors like him must go around pretending to kiss people all the time. In fact, he’s probably filmed scenes way more intense than mere kissing, with professional cameras trained on his lips and a whole room of people watching him too.
But the closest I’ve ever gotten to kissing a boy was that time in seventh grade, when I turned around during a frog dissection the same time my lab partner did, and our lips came about an inch short of touching. He’d freaked out and bolted to the bathroom, spitting and rubbing his mouth the whole way as if he’d been poisoned, while I shriveled up in my seat and prayed for the floor to swallow me whole.
I was pretty glad to leave that school behind a few months after the unfortunate incident.
Anyway, it’s not like I can say any of this to Caz. He’ll probably laugh at me, or worse,feel sorryfor me. So I take out the tinted lip balm I always keep in my pocket and smear it around my mouth, trying not to think about how ridiculous I must look. I mean, the chances are that I now look more like a clown than someone who’s just come out of a hot make-out session. Do people evencome outof make-out sessions? Or do theyemerge, maybe, exit gracefully, like some kind of ethereal mermaid from the sea? No, that doesn’t sound quite right either . . .
Whatever.
“How’s this?” I ask Caz.
He inspects me for a second, his gaze thoughtful, and something shifts over him.Withinhim. Like a camera’s clicked on, and he’s sliding into a new role, a different character, the change so swift it alarms me.
Then he reaches for my ponytail. “Can I?”
I don’t really know what he means, but I smile. Nod. Resist the impulse to run.
And then Caz’s long fingers are running through my hair, tugging my ponytail loose, his movements so light and fast I barely register anything except a faint, pleasant tingling sensation over my scalp. It’s a small, casual gesture, but in the brief moment when his hands are still in my hair and his eyes are on me, I feel . . .something. Something like embarrassment, yet not like it at all.
Then the feeling’s gone. Caz moves away and turns toward the door, glancing back at me over his shoulder. “Are you ready?”
No. Not even remotely.
I know I can’t trust the boy standing before me—this pretty actor with his perfect hair and practiced charm and hordes of fans, the person everyone either wants or wants to be. But right now, I don’t have any better options.
“Of course,” I tell him, injecting as much enthusiasm into my voice as possible.
He seems to believe me, though, because he motions me forward and pushes the door wide open.
For one short, blissful second after we emerge from the janitor’s closet, no one notices us.
Students continue to pack the school halls, yelling out to their friends from opposite ends of the corridors, shoving aside people’s books and bags to get to their next class. Nobody spares our messed-up hair and swollen lips a second glance, and I wonder—foolishly, naively—if maybe this won’t be as big a deal as I’d thought.
Then, in the next second,everyonenotices.
The scene isn’t quite as dramatic as it would be in a movie. People don’t freeze in place or stumble down the stairs or drop their bags in shock. But there’s a noticeable dip in the volume, a pause, like a video buffering.
Whispers start fluttering around us.
Caz, to his credit, looks totally unperturbed. He’s wearing the smug, slightly sheepish expression of a guy who’s just been caught kissing a girl he likes and doesn’t mind the whole world finding out.
I, on the other hand, don’t know what to do with myself. My face feels all hot and itchy, and a few wisps of my hair have stuck to my lip balm. Now more than ever, I wish there was some sort of guide on what to do when you’re thrust from anonymity to the center of attention within two days’ time. It’s enough to give anyone whiplash.
“Oh my god,” someone standing to my left says, and it works like a trigger, setting off a round of audible reactions:
“Oh mygod.”
“Are you seeing this? That’s Caz Song and—”
“Ishethe one from that girl’s essay?”
“Tell Brenda. She’s going to freak, holy shit—”
I can sense more than a dozen pairs of eyes pinned on the back of my head as I walk with Caz to English, our shoulders close enough to touch.
“You good?” Caz whispers to me at the doorway, one hand resting against the frame behind my shoulder. A thousand times, in movies and music videos and real life, I’ve seen couples stand together like this. But for me, this is completely new.
Not that I can let it show.
