The Kiss Off Read online

  We walked back to my place. Ty held the dog on the lead on one side of him and I walked beside them on the other, trying to match his stride. He had long legs so walked quite fast, and I trotted a little to keep up but then ended up a stride ahead of him so I slowed down and was behind him again. When I finally fell into step beside him, I completely forgot what to do with my arms as I walked. They felt so stupid swinging wildly back and forth. I was starting to come across like a soldier on parade. How come he just seemed to know what to do with his hands when he walked? I used to know. I gripped the straps of my backpack nice and casually, hoping he couldn’t tell my fingers were clenched around it like in a death grip. This was humiliating.

  I could hear The Pest before I could even see him. When we neared the house I rubbed my eyes, assuming I was hallucinating because I saw Rory and his pervy mates in the street on skateboards and BMXs. Since when did they participate in activities that weren’t TV related? What was all this sunlight going to do to their pasty, Vitamin D-deprived skin? Actually they didn’t have pasty skin. In all honesty they all looked quite healthy and probably had a multitude of interests that didn’t include game controllers or a computer screen. Except for The Pest. He actually was pasty and Vitamin D-deprived and only cared about the next simulated blood spurt or car crash or whatever else he played. He was going to grow up to be an extraordinarily worrisome young man. Or a game designer. Or both.

  “Hey, cool!” The Pest yelled, slowing his skateboard to a stop. “Whose dog?”

  “We don’t know, he’s lost.” I said. The dog stood happily next to Ty, wagging his shaggy tail and panting gently. The dog looked around at everyone as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Urgh, he stinks!” Rory said. “Do you think we can keep him?”

  “No!”

  Ty laughed. “I guess this is your place then?”

  “Unfortunately,” I muttered.

  “Hi Poppy.” Dorkus waved at me from his bike. I grimaced.

  “You’re a good boy,” Rory was on his knees, patting the dog roughly on his head. The dog lay down and rolled onto his back, kicking his long legs with ecstasy as Rory rubbed his belly.

  “I better go,” Ty said, and held the twine out to me. I looked at it. I sure as hell wasn’t taking it.

  “Why do you have twine in your bag, anyway?” I said.

  He shrugged, took my hand and placed the twine in my palm. His hand was big and warm, and a little rough. His fingers were callused. He closed my hand over the twine and said: “Always good to be prepared.”

  His pocket played a guitar solo and he fished out his cell phone. “Hello? Yeah. You’re there already?”

  I wondered if it was his girlfriend.

  “I’m coming. Dude, chill. I’m nearly there.”

  Probably wasn’t.

  “Yeah, alright. Bye.” He gave the dog a pat on his belly. “Is this okay?” Ty said to me. “Leaving the dog, I mean. I know you don’t want him.”

  “We can have him!” Rory said.

  I ignored him. “Are you sure you can’t take him? I mean he attacked me once already.”

  “I know,” Ty said, backing away as if he was in a hurry. Or retreating before I convinced him to take the dog. Chicken. “I know, sorry I can’t help.”

  “Don’t worry about it – we’ll look after him!”

  “Rory, shut up,” I said.

  “I’m really sorry. I’ve gotta go. Nice meeting you!”

  “Hey – no – wait!”

  And just like that he jogged away. Crossing my arms, I eyed off the dog as the boys lavished it with attention, unaware of its more unseemly tendencies. I didn’t want to keep it here. But what was I supposed to do, shoo it away and let it get hit by a car? Get rabies and eat someone’s toddler?

  “Come on, dog,” I said, picking up the twine and giving it a pull. “We’re going inside.”

  ***

  Chapter Five

  To put an end to the flood of texts, I was just setting up a conference call with Mads and Van in my room to relive the whole messy event when I heard the front door open downstairs. I stiffened. I hadn’t seen the dog in a while. Not since Dad got home and listened to my story and looked at the dog and said “hmm” and then “wait until your mother gets home” before heading into the kitchen to start dinner. Not long after that I prised the dog’s tongue off Bex’s face and told her not to play with it, then got it a bowl of water and left Rory and his pervy pals in charge of entertainment. He seemed pretty harmless, really. Aside from the leg-humping and the slobber all over the five-year-old’s face, he’d walked on a lead pretty well and sat on his tail on the kitchen floor, panting at me. He was actually kind of cute.

  But when a set of keys jingled and I heard the front door open, all hell broke loose. I was most definitely not the only one to hear the door open.

  There was a guttural bark, then the sound of claws scrabbling on the floorboards. There was a bump, a crash, another bark, and then a scream. It was my mom who screamed. Couldn’t really blame her. Something heavy hit the ground. I had an idea of what that was about.

  “Um, guys – I gotta go,” I said.

  “What?” Mads shrieked. “But you haven’t told us anything!”

  I disconnected and threw the phone on my bed before bolting out the door and down the stairs. Mads was going to kill me later, but I suspected she was going to have to get in line.

  When I got to the bottom of the stairs it was…yep. Just as I expected.

  Rory was standing over Mom who was twisted in a pathetic heap on the floor. Guess that was what I’d looked like. Rory’s friends stood in a pack in the living room doorway, gaping, their faces alternating between horror and delight, like they couldn’t decide which emotion to go with. Rory tried to pull the dog off Mom but he wouldn’t budge. I stepped around the cracked photo frame that was lying on the floor from the dog’s exuberant and unsteady gallop down the corridor, picked up the vase from the side table and pulled out the daisies and weeds Bex had picked as a present for Mom a couple of days ago, before dumping the water on the dog and my mom. The dog on my mom. He got off her and scurried down the hallway, as far from me and my torture device of uncomfortable wetness as he could get, running straight past Dad who strolled out of the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron with an amused expression on his face.

  Mom didn’t even bother counting to ten. “What the hell is that thing doing here? Whose is it? Where did it come from? Why is there a dog in my house?”

  An hour later we sat around the dinner table in silence. Silence except for the dog in the backyard that was alternating between barking and howling because it had been locked outside, alone. Mom was in a filthy mood he’d disappeared into the study and I could hear she’d unfolded the treadmill and was giving it a good workout, but not even after a long run and hot shower did she seem any happier.

  “Right after work tomorrow, I’m taking that thing to the pound,” Mom said. Rory’s shoulders slumped.

  “But Mo-om!”

  Mom looked pointedly at Rory. “No buts. He’s not our dog. He’s probably lost and I bet his owners are worried sick about him.”

  “He doesn’t have a collar or anything, I bet he doesn’t have a family,” Rory said.

  “He does seem like a stray, Mom,” I said. “I mean I tried to get him to stop and wait, and lie down, he couldn’t even sit. He has like, no training,”

  “Well we’ll find that out when we take him to the pound tomorrow,” Mom said. Dad walked in with a steaming bowl of vegetables in his oven mitted hands.

  “No buts, Rory!”

  “We could be his family,” Bex said.

  “Becka-”

  “Yeah, we could! He could be our dog!”

  “Rory-”

  The phone started ringing and Dad headed back to the kitchen as Mom started dishing out the vegetables. She gave Rory an extra big helping of broccoli.

  “Poppy, can you go and get the chicken while your da
d’s on the phone?”

  I pushed out my chair and followed Dad into the kitchen where I could hear him talking as he walked toward the study for some quiet. But that was all I could hear. I mean, sure, I could hear Mom talking to Rory and telling him how we couldn’t keep the dog, but I couldn’t hear the dog. There was no barking, no howling, no nothing. When I walked into the kitchen, I saw the roast chicken sitting on a serving platter, ready for the dining table. On the bench behind the platter, were two big shaggy paws, and a head leaning forward, eyeing off our dinner. His black nose was shiny and wet and twitching as he sniffed it all up, took in the scent of our dinner.

  What was supposed to be our dinner.

  What I hoped was still our dinner.

  I pointed my finger at the dog, and stood perfectly still. “No!” I said. He opened his mouth and stuck half the chicken inside, closing his jaws around it.

  “No, stop it!” I yelled as we both ran forward. “Let go, let go you mongrel!” The mutt pushed off the bench and as I ran around to the left, the dog ran around to the right. I heard chairs in the dining room scrape back and I chased the dog around and around the kitchen counter. The next thing I knew, Mom, Rory and Bex were crowding in the doorway, yelling.

  “Our dinner!” Bex said. Rory’s mouth dropped open, his eyes wide with wonder. He didn’t say anything, just grinned at the whole debacle in delight.

  “Jesus!” Mom yelled. “Sit! Drop. Down. Roll over. Stop!”

  “My chicken!” Dad said as he walked back into the kitchen, confronted with the chaos. The dog zoomed past me toward the back door. The door that was ajar which he had clearly come through in the first place. Using the half of the chicken that was sticking out of his mouth and his nose, the dog nudged the door open enough to scurry through and he was gone, away into the dark backyard.

  We all stood there in silence. In disbelieving silence.

  “First thing in the morning, people,” Mom said. “First thing in the morning that thing is going to the pound.”

  Dad stared at the windows at the darkness where his chicken was no doubt being devoured or buried for later. His shoulders slumped in disappointment and with a sigh, he walked over to the oven and turned it off. I hoped our dinner burnt the stupid dog’s tongue.

  Dad pulled his car keys from his pocket. “So how does pizza sound?”

  After pulling Dad’s blue soccer-mom-mobile into a space in front of Luigi’s Pizza, he handed me a couple of notes and I climbed out, heading toward the red neon signage which hung over the plate glass windows and door. It looked pretty busy in there tonight and I joined the short queue at the counter, perusing Soccer memorabilia on the walls, the framed red and black shirt and team logo for AC Milan.

  I stepped up to the counter and was greeted by a man with curly black hair and flour on his cheek. “Buonasera bella signorina,” he said with a smile. Not that I knew Italian, but I knew what ‘bella’ meant.

  I smiled back. “Hi, I’m here to pick up pizzas for Douglas.”

  “Si. Una momento.”

  As I stepped out of the way of the next customer, I bumped straight into someone.

  “Sorry!” I said. I spun around, cringing, hoping I hadn’t just spilled spaghetti Bolognese down someone’s shirt. “Sorry, I didn’t mean-”

  Whoa, it was him, it was that guy, from the bus and with the dog.

  “Hey, it’s you,” he said.

  “Yeah, and it’s you,” I said. “The laugher-and-bailer.”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, that sounds like me. I am sorry about that.”

  “Which bit?” I said. “The laughing or the bailing?”

  “Both? Though I did pull him off you, right? Eventually.” He grinned and even though he was like, the worst rescuer on the planet, there was something totally forgivable about him.

  I smiled.

  “Poppy, wasn’t it?” he said.

  “Yeah, hi,” I pushed a random twisted lock of hair out of my face. I couldn’t remember what I was wearing. What was I wearing, was I in sweat pants, looking like a dork? Oh my God was I wearing my pink fluffy slippers? I subtly glanced down at myself. It was okay, I was in my jeans and a grey hooded sweater with a Care Bear on the front, and my kicks. Not fantastic, but could have been worse. I had to believe it could have been worse. In case he hadn’t noticed it, I crossed my arms over my chest, hiding the embarrassment that was a Care Bear sweatshirt. Ty, however, looked great. His previously brushed hair was now a little scruffy, like he’d run his hands through it a couple of times, and some of it was hanging in his face while other bits stuck up straight in the air. He was wearing a biker jacket, green low V tee shirt and dark jeans and just…he looked good. Different to how he looked in his Mount Martha’s Uniform. And not a speck of Bolognese to be seen.

  “How did things go with the dog? You get him to the pound?” He glanced toward a table where a bunch of other boys sat, watching us. One of them had straight orange hair to his shoulders. He gave me a little wave. One of the others squinted at me for a moment, and then his eyes lit up and he leaned forward and started talking to the boys at the table. Weird.

  “That was so funny today, I told my boys all about it,” he said.

  “You did?”

  His smile disappeared as he caught the mortification on my face. I didn’t look back at the table. There was no way I was looking back at that table. That’s what the guy had been talking about, they all knew me as the victim of some mighty determined leg-humping.

  “Yeah…sorry, it was just so funny and…I didn’t…sorry,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “You have to admit, it was pretty funny,” he said, testing a smile on his face before wiping it off again. I tried a tentative smile too and he smiled a little wider.

  “It probably was,” I said. “For you.”

  “Yeah. Freaking A.” He all-out grinned now. “So the dog, did you-”

  I flinched as one of the boys from the table watching us came over and punched Ty hard on the shoulder. Then he grinned at me.

  O-kay…

  “How come you didn’t tell me you know PoppyLongStocking?” he said to Ty.

  “I don’t,” Ty said. He frowned at us and then his eyes lit up. “Whoa, hey, yeah. You’re her.”

  “What?”

  “You’re her! You’re PoppyLongStocking.” Ty’s friend said.

  “You watch my channel?”

  “Dude, I’m a subscriber - SeBESTian.”

  “Oh,” I said, recognizing the name from comments on my videos over the year. “Yeah, hey.” I stuck out my hand for him to shake but he swatted it away and pulled me in for a hug, my arms pinned to my sides.

  “You are a genius writer,” Seb said, nodding at me. “Genius.”

  “Wow,” I said, crossing my arms in front of the Care Bears again. I didn’t know what to say. “Thanks.”

  “Pizzas for Douglas?” the guy at the counter said, smiling at me and holding up two pizza boxes.

  “That’s me,” I said, walking over and taking the boxes. “See you later.”

  “So long, PoppyLongStocking!” Seb said, waving. I smiled back at them and Ty had an amused smile on his face, watching me go. He didn’t say goodbye, but for some strange reason he saluted me. I walked back out to Dad and the car.

  “Who were they?” he asked as I handed him the boxes and climbed in. I slammed the door and he handed them back to me, starting the engine.

  “Just some guys I know,” I said.

  “Oh.” Dad didn’t ask any questions. We drove home to the tune of Billy Holiday, heading home to eat Pepperoni and Supreme pizza. And cold vegetables.

  ***

  Chapter Six

  I stood at the collection counter at Coffee Buzz with Vanya and Mads the next morning, squirting caramel around and around into my coffee.

  “So mystery boy has a name!” Mads said. She took a sip of her latte and then licked the foam from her lip. “Ty. I like it.”

  “Obviously I can’t ever
talk to him again though,” I said. “I mean, it was pretty much the most embarrassing moment of my life. Yes he got the dog off me and then he walked me home, which was nice.” They both smiled. “But it was awkward as hell and I think we should just leave it alone.”

  Mads’ body seemed to sag as I nipped any potential match-making in the bud. He’d been nice and all, and okay, he was kind of hot, but I didn’t need Mads getting any ideas in her head. Hopefully that would be the end of it.

  I changed the subject. “As we speak, my mom is probably dropping the dog off at the pound,” I said. “It’s a complete menace.”

  “Really?” Mads said. “A complete one?”

  I ignored her. “Did I tell you how it got onto the kitchen table and put the whole chicken in its mouth?”

  “Poppy-” Mads said.

  “And it was practically devouring Bex, slobbering all over her face.”

  “Poppy.”

  “And it smells like something feral, I can’t actually be sure it’s not a zombie-dog because it sure smells like it’s dead.”

  Mads whacked me. “Poppy.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “Don’t look now, but Am to the Cay is here and totally coming over,” Mads muttered under her breath. Vanya looked behind me, and then back at me.

  It was way too early for cryptic conversation. “Am to the…what are you talking about?”

  Mads looked appalled. “Do you seriously not know Pig Latin?”

  Vanya gave her head a quarter inch nod behind me. “Cam’s coming over and he looks pissed.” I turned around and saw Cam striding toward us, staring at me. Van was right. That was not a happy face over there. I turned my back to him again and sighed.

  “Poppy!” A voice called from across the street. We all looked over, everyone that was waiting at the bus stop looked across the street, it had been so loud. Mads’ mouth fell open, as Ty, in his Mount Martha’s suit waved at me with a big smile. He stepped into the street, a horn blasted and I shrieked as he jumped back onto the sidewalk, having nearly been collected by a delivery truck. He looked both ways and crossed more carefully this time, jogging over to me.