“I would have brought you somewhere nicer,” he said, “but we don’t have enough time to go farther.”
“This is okay,” she said. She liked that earth spirits weren’t there to spy on her and tell Mama what she was doing.
“Are you too cold from the milkshake to eat outside?” he asked. “I have a blanket we can sit on.”
“I’d rather be outside,” she said.
“I thought you would.”
He took a blanket from the trunk. He spread it some distance from the car, and they sat facing the screen drinking their milkshakes. “So what are we watching?”
She looked at the crumbling white screen. “Nothing.”
“Come on, use your imagination. What kind of movie is it? Sci-fi? Horror?”
She wasn’t used to playing games like that, but she wanted to. “Love story,” she said.
“Really? You got me to watch a love story? You must be persuasive.”
“I am.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“It’s the best movie I ever saw,” she said.
He grinned. The funniest part was that her statement was true. She preferred the blank screen to the movies she and the boys had watched that summer long ago. When they turned on a movie, they mostly stopped talking and stared at the TV. She’d rather have played games or talked and joked with them.
Chris held up his milkshake for a toast. “Happy fifteen,” he said as they tapped cups. He kept his dark eyes on hers. “Can I confess something?” he asked.
“Okay.”
“Starlite is a famous make-out place.”
“Is it?” She didn’t know what else to say.
“That’s not why I brought you. It was just close, and I knew no one would be here. People come here at night mostly.”
He kept looking at her. Something other than the cold drink and chilly air made her feel quivery. She set down her drink and wrapped her arms around her body.
“You’re cold.” He moved closer and asked, “Is this okay?” as he circled his arm around her.
She thought of Reece, who often did that. And the night Jackie had taken her under his covers and made her chills go away.
“I was telling the truth when I said I didn’t bring you here to make out,” he said. “But would a kiss be okay?”
She couldn’t believe it was going to happen. But she didn’t know how to do it. She was too scared to answer.
He moved closer to face her. “Have you ever kissed anyone on those trips you take to Montana?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve probably never kissed anyone, then? I know you haven’t gone out with anyone around here.”
He smiled when she didn’t answer. “I guess you haven’t.” He looked at her lips. “I want to be your first kiss. More than anything.”
“You . . . do?” She felt peculiar. Her body was as light as air. Almost like flying. As if she had become the half of her that was a feathered spirit.
He looked in her eyes. “Can I give you a birthday kiss?”
“Yes,” she said.
He put his lips on hers.
At first it was strange to be touching lips. Only Mama had ever done that. But the way he did it was different. It lasted longer. And he held his mouth a little open. He tasted like cookies and cream.
He moved back and looked in her eyes again. His irises were like black glass. “Like it?”
“Yes.”
He took her face in his warm hands. “You’re so beautiful. Do you even know that?”
She hadn’t known, but now she believed she was.
He kissed her again. A stronger, longer kiss. It was easier than she’d imagined. Her body felt good, like when she was reading about lovers kissing in a book. Except much better because it was really happening. To her.
After the kiss, they held each other. It felt so good, but too soon he took his arms down. “I guess I’d better get you home,” he said. “I hope you don’t get in trouble.”
She realized she had to go right away. Probably the bus would pass her house soon. Jackie’s house was the stop after hers. She imagined him looking out the window at her gate and road as he passed. She wondered what he would be thinking, if he might be a little jealous.
They folded the blanket and put it in the car. Raven took a last look at the peculiar site of her first kiss.
“Does your mother watch the cameras for when you arrive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s hope she doesn’t.” He looked at her as he drove. “If it works out okay with her, do you want to go out again?”
“Yes,” she said, though she couldn’t imagine how it would happen again.
As they approached her house, she had him stop far enough from the gate that the cameras couldn’t catch her getting out of the car. They kissed before she got out. “Good luck,” he said. “See you tomorrow.”
He drove past the gate rather than turn around. It would have been better if he hadn’t passed the gate before she appeared in the cameras, but it was too late to fix that.
She pressed the code into the pad to open the gate and walked the winding lane to the log house. Once behind the protection of the gate, she usually felt like her true self, Daughter of Raven. But after being with Chris, she felt different. An exciting, happy kind of different.
Mama didn’t answer when she knocked. She was out with the earth spirits. That happened fairly often. Raven turned off the alarms she’d triggered.
The silence of the house comforted her. Mama didn’t know she was late.
Raven would make something special for dinner. Today was her birthday in the human world. Today she had been kissed. She felt more human than usual, as if the raven inside her was sleeping.
3
Raven and Chris became a thing, as the kids at school said. They sat together in the lunchroom, and Raven risked letting him drive her home again. They went for a walk in a park. Another day they went to a Mexican restaurant
