"Yeah. Maybe she left the gum on purpose."
"Fine. Whatever, I'll help you."
I threw my arm around her shoulder and pulled her closer. "You're the best."
Maria pulled away quickly. "What can I say, I'm too damn good for you."
"You are!"
Chapter 7 - Maria
It's the school dance soon. And it's all they can talk about. The halls are alive with dance chatter. They're all OMGing over pictures in magazines of horrendous and way too revealing pastel pink dresses, they're LOLing all day about who's going to ask who out. My sister already has her dress picked out, she and Mom went shopping for it last week, although I'm pretty sure as we get closer to the date, she'll probably change her mind several times and want something else, which my mom will probably buy her.
It's pathetic. It's the epitome of absolutely everything I'm against and that's why I'm not going. But I'm hit by a sudden sharp pang when I started to wonder who Mike would take to the dance. He's probably hoping to find mystery mint kisser so he can ask her out. How ironic. How totally and utterly ironic this all is, and not ironic in a cool way. That I, mystery mint kisser myself, is tracking down this mystery girl for him. It seems like a bad plot line from a movie.
I put some of my books into my locker and that's when I had a moment of total madness. Another one. I had to tell him! I had to end this charade before it completely backfired and was blown out of all reasonable proportions. It was teetering on the brink right now - that's for sure. Maybe I could tell him it was a joke, that I meant it in some kind of postmodern ironic way. That it was a dare. That someone spiked my drink with something that completely lowers your inhibitions and that causes you to go temporarily insane. That I was insane?
But just thinking about opening my mouth and trying to get those words out, has me frozen in fear. The thought scares the living shit out of me. Especially when I think about the time we came close to kissing once. If that was anything to go by, the news that it was me would tank like a lead balloon.
It was a few years ago, we were all playing spin the bottle one night at a party. Mike was there and a part of me was desperate for the chance to kiss him, but also desperate not to see him kiss someone else. I kissed Brett first, it was short and quick, he tried to slip me tongue and I flicked it and everyone laughed. And then one of my sister's cronies, one of the blondes from her pack, Mindy, kissed Mike. Mindy, yes her name is Mindy. It sounds like the kind of name a manicurist might have, Mindy the Manicurist. I had to turn away, I couldn't watch it, she and Mike landed up going out for a few months after that- not one of his finest moments in my opinion.
And then he spun it and the bottle went straight for me. My heart decided to beat as fast as a pneumatic pump and my skin decided to tingle like it was on fire. He smiled at me. He leaned over and just as our lips were about to touch he pulled away. And then he said something that's basically haunted me till this day. "It would be like kissing my sister." He doesn't even have a sister.
Fuck. It was so humiliating. Perhaps one of the most humiliating moments of my life, and I remember hoping that no one had seen the look of disappointment that had flashed across my face. So I had to play along. I'm always forced to 'play along'. So I agreed.
"Like kissing my brother," I said quickly back and made some cringing movements and shuddered.
So...NO, I couldn't tell him. Because even though the kiss had been good, great, amazing and - what had he said - "mind-blowing," the second he found out it was me, he might just throw up. Incest after all.
The day was strange. It was as if time operated differently somehow , the hours seemed like days and the minutes like hours. And I was on the ever important lookout for gum. I was actually curious to see if anyone chewed it. I was hoping that maybe the Goth girl who si convinced she's a vampire chewed it, and then I could go back to Mike and present him with the truth and maybe he would drop this stupid mission. I was even hoping that one of the gay guys chewed it, that would also put an end to this thing. I was hating this day more and more as it was going by and desperate for some kind of distraction, luckily Brett caught up to me in the hall.
"Hey. What's up? You look all mopey today?"
"Maybe I am mopey. Maybe this is my new look?"
"Yeah, you going for the whole dark-twisty-mopey-Indie thing?"
"Perhaps."
"It doesn't suit you."
"Thanks. I'll bear that in mind." We turned down the corridor and headed towards math class, my worst subject. Worst teacher too. She's some kind of crazed math genius who wears mismatching shoes and even her slippers once.
"So did Mike tell you what happened?"
Did Mike tell me what had happened, HA? Was that the understatement of the century. It was all Mike had told me about since it had happened
"Yup."
"Who do you think it is?"
I shrugged, still trying to look casual, like this conversation meant nothing to me, like it didn't actually hold the weight of my entire world.
"Probably some vacuous blonde."
"And probably hot," Brett said. "Why does he always get the hot ones and I get stuck with no
