“Will you answer the phone?”
“What?”
“The phone.”
Oh. It was ringing. I picked it up, thinking it would be Mom calling from her cell, but instead it was Gideon. “Hey, wakeboarder,” he said.
“Hey, wakeboarder yourself.”
“Happy Halloween.”
“Same to you.”
“What are you doing right now?”
“Trying to peel my dad off the floor.”
“Ha-ha,” said Gideon. “You want to come to a party with me?”
“I’m supposed to go to this soccer party with Nora.”
“She told me you’d rather do something else.”
“She did?”
“She said something about muffins.”
I laughed. “Yeah. Is yours a costume party?”
“Of course.”
“What are you being?”
“A bad surgeon. But I need to get fake blood. I forgot to get fake blood.”
“Use ketchup.”
“Good idea. I’m going to squirt myself with ketchup and pick you up in half an hour.”
“I’m going out, Dad,” I said when I hung up. “Are you going to be okay?”
He didn’t answer. He was asleep.
Gideon kissed me before we even got to the party. I wasn’t ready. As we got into his hybrid, he leaned over and very simply put his lips on mine—not like he was lunging at me or anything, just impulsive and sweet.
He smelled like ketchup. He was wearing a white doctor’s coat and a stethoscope. There was a rubber severed hand sticking out of his pocket.
We kissed for a minute and then he said: “I’ve been wanting to do that for like, years.”
“I was way too young for you,” I said.
“You’re too young for me now,” he said. “But you’re older than you were.”
“Maybe it’s
“Maybe we should be quiet and kiss a little more,” he said, leaning in.
The thing about kissing Gideon was he was a lot more experienced than any other guy I’d kissed. I mean, there was no way he was still a virgin. He had traveled around the world for a year and then started at Evergreen College, which was full of people who still lived by the “make love, not war” slogans of the sixties. In other words, Gideon’s kissing was the kissing of a guy who knows exactly what this kind of thing can lead to, and who has long since been done with two-hour make-out sessions where everyone keeps their clothes on. The people he was used to kissing obviously had full and intimate knowledge of the nether regions and what to do if one encountered them.
It was a little slobbery for my taste, to be honest.
“You have to put the severed hand in the back,” I said after a minute or two. “It’s freaking me out.”
He threw it over his shoulder to the backseat, where it landed with a creepy squish. “I’ll kiss you some more later,” he said. “We’re late for the party.” He turned the key in the ignition.
“I’ve never kissed anyone who talked so much about kissing,” I told him.
Gideon laughed. “I like to be direct.”
“Okay,” I said. “But I warn you, I like to be evasive, inscrutable and generally send mixed messages.”
“I doubt it.”
“Human interaction is not my strong point,” I told him.
“Not seriously.”
“Seriously,” I said. Thinking: There is so much about me he doesn’t know.
Gideon put his hand on my leg. “What’s your strong point, then?” he asked.
“Goats,” I told him. “I am excellent with goats.”
The party was a college party.
