He leaned forward into her lips, bringing his hands up to cup either side of her face. His rough fingertips grazed the ends of her hair and her earlobes lightly before he moved his hands down, squeezing both of her arms firmly just before the kiss ended, her pink lip balm making a smacking sound as their lips parted. “Don’t like her. Sorry if it seemed that way.”
She blushed so much that her cheeks turned bright red, still refusing to make eye contact with him and instead picking a spot on the nearby fire escape to stare at. She brought her hand up, twirling the ends of her hair nervously before responding. “Oh,” she said finally, her voice small and sheepish.
“Listen,” he smiled, touching his hand to hers. “I really do gotta go cram a bit more before that test, but maybe after we could get a bite to eat? I hear good things about that Deli down on Fifth but never go there.”
“Um, yeah.” She nodded, finding it hard to catch her breath again. “Yes. Absolutely.”
“’Kay.” He smiled. Reaching into his pocket and pulling out a pen, he gently scrawled his number onto the palm of her hand. “Give me a call in about three hours, and be hungry,” he laughed, before turning to walk out the other side of the alley.
“’Kay,” she said happily, waiting for him to leave the alley before letting out a squeal. She turned around the corner and started back the way she’d come, her heart beating faster than it ever had while running as she tried to figure out what she was going to tell Nancy and Julie and came up with a blank. She took a deep breath and rounded the corner to greet them, trying to hide the smile pasted across her lips.
The sidewalk was bare except for the small stones Lawrence had kicked up while he was leaving. “Guys?” she called out, raising a pierced eyebrow suspiciously. “Nancy?”
There was no answer and nobody on the street, period. Not even the sound of people close by. “Frig,” she huffed, shoving her hands down into the pockets of her sweater as she started to trudge down the sidewalk towards home.
Her scowl faded after only a few steps, the memory of the kiss coming back to her and making every inch of her skin tickle. His lips had been so smooth and warm, her face still scratchy from the patches of stubble that dotted his angular cheeks. She could almost feel his fingertips as they just barely touched the tips of her ears, wondering if he’d done that on purpose or not.
Her stomach growled, but she wouldn’t let herself get hungry before she went out with him... or maybe she should, so that she wouldn’t eat too much while she was out? She sighed, turning the corner by the courthouse and taking one hand out of her pocket, sliding it along the wire mesh fence that stood along the side of the road.
-tink!-
She stopped a moment, looping her fingers through the fence and turning to look past it and into the salvage yard. There were old tires and engine parts scattered everywhere, their rusted out frames casting weird shadows against the ground. She let out a long sigh, smiled, and then sighed again as she leaned her head forward against the fence. “Frig,” she said again, gripping the fence tighter and tighter until she felt the cold metal start to dig into her flesh.
-tink!-
Pushing back from the fence and backing up a pace, she looked down at herself. She grabbed at the sweater, tugging in out until she could see the entirety of the letter C printed across its torso. She almost gagged, then turned and started walking again. “I can’t believe this was what I was wearing for my first kiss,” she moaned, letting her head fall back and looking up at the sky. She almost laughed at the words, the concept itself still foreign to her. First kiss. She’d just had her first kiss.
-tink!-
She turned down the alley behind Claire’s Video, making a smooching sound towards a kitten as she did so. Suddenly, and without her even realizing she was doing it... she began to skip. Had she noticed what she was doing at all, she would have stopped immediately. Never before would she have thought of herself as the type of girl who skipped, even as a child. Yet she bounded down the dark, slimy alley as happily as if it were a yellow brick road, her short hair bobbing each time she landed.
-tink!-
-tink!-
She stopped, skidding to a halt just shy of a puddle as she finally noticed the sound. Furrowing her brow, she turned around with her mouth already open and her tongue forming a defiant curse.
Her head hit the wall before even the first syllable came. She was unconscious before her body even splashed into the puddle.
CHAPTER ONE:
WHERE THERE’S SMOKE
“Okay class, shall we pick up right from where we left off last time?” Professor Miles smiled, turning from the board to face his class.
He was greeted with twenty-three blank faces staring back at him, their eyes vacant and dead. Randy Owchar sat in the back row tapping his pen against his desk, making the only sound in the room.
“Oh, for God’s sake,” he sighed in his thick British accent, taking off his gold-rimmed glasses and rubbing the bridge of his nose before addressing them again. “We were discussing evolution. That little thing that gives us opposable thumbs and straight spines.
