“Go ahead,” I said to Annette, speaking loudly to be heard over the music. “Give me your bag, I’ll put it away for you.”
She passed me her handbag, then went over to her friend. I felt my way down the hallway and opened the bedroom door. I flicked on the light. There was a pile of clothing and handbags on the mahogany bed. Suddenly, something shifted. I almost screamed, then realized that it was a boy from my year making out with some girl. He had his hands up her shirt and she was pulling on his hair.
He dragged his lips from hers and glared at me. “Do you mind?”
“Sorry!” I quickly shut off the light, threw Annette’s handbag onto the bed and left.
In the disco room, I found Annette chatting with a boy from the school newspaper. They were standing by a long counter that must have been a minibar. Annette made me a gin and tonic from the bottles on the bar, heavy on the tonic. The music was as loud as the machines at the factory. Annette pulled me onto the floor and we started to dance. It was my first time dancing to this kind of music, but I found I had a natural feel for it. A circle of people joined us, and after a while, Annette drifted off somewhere. Spinning around under the disco ball, I felt like a real American teenager.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. Curt. I wondered if he’d been watching me for a while. He took me by the hand and pulled me into the hallway.
“I want to show you something,” he said.
He led me to what must have been his bedroom. When he opened the door, a cloud of sweet smoke met us. A group of people were sitting in a circle on the floor around a large cluster of candles. It was much quieter here.
“You guys need to open the window,” he said.
“It is open,” Sheryl said, from her seat on the floor. I thought she looked surprised to see me, as did a few other people, but no one said anything.
Curt led me to a gap in the circle where we could sit down. One of the boys sitting there was someone I’d kissed a while back. The boy’s face lit up when he saw me, but Curt noticed as well and he seemed to deliberately place himself in between the two of us.
They were passing around a huge Chinese water pipe. It was about two feet high and I could see I’d need both hands to wrap around the diameter of the shaft. From the smell, I knew they weren’t smoking tobacco.
Annette popped her head in the door. “Kimberly, are you in here?”
“Hey,” I said.
Annette realized what was going on. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. You want to come in?” I was filled with curiosity and recklessness this evening. Other kids had the choice of giving in to temptation in the moment or waiting for the next opportunity. For me, there was no later. If I didn’t try this now, I might never get the chance again.
Annette made a face. “Yuck. No, thanks. I’ll see you.” And she closed the door again.
“That water pipe’s Chinese,” I whispered to Curt.
“I know.”
“Where did you get it?”
“I swiped it from my dad’s office. One of his authors in China sent it to him as a gift. Poor guy probably didn’t know what we use bons for here. My dad’s got so much stuff in there, I don’t think he ever missed it.”
When the water pipe came to me, I ran my finger over its intricate carvings. Everyone was looking at me from under their eyelashes, probably to watch the newcomer cough and not know how to take a hit. But I had seen plenty of men smoking water pipes in cafés in Hong Kong.
I put my mouth inside the wide shaft, so tightly that I created an airtight seal, held a lighter to the small metal bowl attached to the main shaft and inhaled through my mouth. I could hear the water bubbling as the smoke was pulled through it and then up into my mouth. I was prepared for the burn of the smoke and I held it in my lungs while I passed the pipe to Curt.
He was laughing. “You’re a natural. You should give up being a brain and become a pothead, like me.”
The pipe came around several times and I smoked and exhaled until I felt I had blown the memory of Matt into the distance. I lay back across the floor, my head spinning. I didn’t know where everyone else had gone, or perhaps they were still in the room. The prickle of the carpet against the back of my hair was extremely pleasant.
“You’ve never had a real kiss until you’ve been kissed stoned,” Curt said.
“All right,” I said, already having a great deal of fun turning my head from side to side.
Slowly, I felt Curt lean over me and capture my head in between his large hands. I felt his hair brush my face. Instead of giving me a quick kiss on the lips as I’d expected, he started by kissing my neck, the tender places underneath the jaw and behind the ear. My world was filled with the touch of his mouth, the scent of his hair. He started gently sucking on my earlobe.
“Mmmmm,” I murmured. “Does this still fall under ‘kissing’?”
In answer, he kissed me full on the lips, leisurely, as if he were savoring every moment. His kiss was soft and fulclass="underline" like a butterfly, it fluttered against the closed door of my heart and then was still.
Over the years, Uncle Bob’s leg had started bothering him more, and we saw him at the factory only now and then. Aunt Paula had taken over most of his duties. To keep up face, because it is so important for the man to appear to be the breadwinner, Aunt Paula told everyone he was working from home. At the factory, though, his office had become in practice Aunt Paula’s office.
All of our mail still went through Aunt Paula since that was the official address the school had for me. The first time she brought me one of my score reports, I knew she was hoping my scores would be low.
“I’m sure you did well, such a clever girl,” she said with seeming kindness. “Why don’t you open it?”
Fortunately, Ma happened to be in the bathroom then and I said, “I want to wait for Ma. I’ll do it later.”
Even though I was dying to open the envelope too, I turned and busied myself with some blouses until Aunt Paula reluctantly walked away. When Ma finally returned, I tore the envelope open and removed the thin piece of paper inside.
“Well, what did you get?” Ma asked.
Strangely enough, I couldn’t find my results. I held the small square of paper up to the light. “I don’t know. They must have made a mistake. There isn’t anything here. It just has the scores that are possible on the test.”
Suddenly, I heard Aunt Paula’s voice. She must have followed Ma back to our work area. “That’s ridiculous. Give it to me.”
She snatched the sheet of paper from my hand and stared at it. Slowly, a rash of red rose up her neck. “Stupid girl, those ARE your scores!”
“Oh.” I took the letter from her. I slowly realized I must have gotten perfect scores on the test. I hadn’t been able to find my results because my scores were a duplicate of the top scores possible.
I was still confused by the whole thing, and I said honestly, “I’m sorry I made your eyes red, Aunt Paula.”
Both she and Ma breathed in sharply.
“What!” Aunt Paula gave a shrill laugh. “Why would I be jealous because my niece does so well? What type of human being do you think I am?”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I, um…” I had made such a blunder I had to anesthetize my face.
“You crazy girl! I’m very proud of you!” She clasped her arm around my shoulders so hard it hurt.
“We’re both very proud,” Ma said, her eyes aglow.
TWELVE
When senior year began, Curt and I fooled around more, much more. People began to whisper we were going out. The more we told them we were just friends, the more convinced they were that something was going on. Although I knew it wasn’t true, I enjoyed having other people think this.
Once, I heard Sheryl hiss behind me: “What in the world can he possibly see in her? Look at her clothes!”
With my newfound confidence, I turned around and smiled. She stopped short, startled I had overheard her.