The Kiss Off Read online

  I wasn’t buying it.

  He sighed and leaned back in his seat and scowled at the screen, sucking on the straw of his soda.

  A couple of minutes later, I felt something on my hand. It was Cam’s! Cam was freaking holding my hand! I didn’t know what to do. Did I let him? I hated myself for it but I kind of wanted to let him. Should I move it away, should I throw all my popcorn in his lap and make the biggest scene ever? I mean he was dating someone else and he was freaking holding my hand?

  While all this was running through my head, I sat there with his hand on top of mine, sort of curling around it, intertwining with my fingers. Then he turned my hand over and held it properly and next thing I knew I was sitting in the movie theater holding hands with Cam. This used to lead to making out in the cinema. Back then. God, what was he going to do next?

  He leaned over to me and went to say something in my ear. I was so confused, and this time I was prepared to listen.

  He went “I-”

  “Sssshhhhh!” the Old Biddy behind us said, who couldn’t hear the movie over all the noise she was making, shaking her box of Milk Duds. Cam pulled away and was staring at the screen for a full five minutes before he tried it again. All he got out was “Poppy, I-” before the Old Biddy shushed him again! She didn’t have any problem hearing over the slurping noises down the other end as Mads and Dev sucked each other’s faces off. So I never found out what he wanted to say. He was with Nikki but he was holding my hand. What did that mean? When the movie finished it was all like nothing had happened, and when the boys were gone, even in Mads’s giddy state, she and Vanya were all apologetic that I had to sit next to him. I forgave them, but I didn’t tell them about the hand-holding. I don’t know why.

  At least it was over.

  ***

  Chapter Eight

  Dev sat with us at lunch for most of the next week, holding Mads’s hand and occasionally smooching. As cute as it was, Vanya and I conferred and voted for them to tone down the PDA at lunch or he was banned from eating with us, I mean, we were sitting right there.

  By Thursday, Drew and Cam and some other boys came over and stole him away because they were sick of being a man down on the basketball courts and they were being completely owned by Ravi’s team without him.

  Mads watched him go with a happy smile. Once he was embroiled in the game, she squealed and wriggled around on the spot with joy. “I just love him so much,” she sighed. Vanya and I exchanged glances, but said nothing.

  “So tell me again,” Vanya said, turning to me. “Your final guest list is…”

  “Well you two, of course,” I started, pressing a random button on my cell so that the screen lit up. “Dev and Drew, and Ravi said he wanted to come, so I invited him too.”

  Mads frowned. “Is that sending the wrong message?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, come on, a super-cute rock star invites you and some friends to his show and you turn up with mostly boys? What’s that say to him, huh? Especially since he’s footing the bill.”

  “I’m not into him, Mads,” I said, my face heating up. “I’m just going because of my song, you remember how they’re playing my song, right?”

  “Yeah yeah, your song, whatever. If he wasn’t into you there’s no way he would have written his number on your arm like that. That was straight out, one-hundred per cent flirtation.”

  “I think she’s right, Poppy,” Vanya said. “It was some pretty solid flirting.”

  “He needed to give me his number somehow,” I countered. “He didn’t have any paper.”

  “Did he even look for paper?” Mads said. “And besides – the only reason he gave you his number was so that he could pay for you and your friends to get into a club for free. Flirting.”

  “So that I could come and approve of their arrangement of my song,” I said. “Business. Not flirting.”

  “You are so blind.” Mads shook her head and leaned back on her elbows, lying on the grass. She narrowed her eyes at me. “Or you’re just being deliberately annoying.”

  I wasn’t blind. I thought he maybe could have been flirting with me, but I wasn’t sure exactly why. He didn’t look like a sophomore, I would have guessed he was a senior. And a rock star who played at the hottest local clubs. Why would he be interested in me? The girl whose most embarrassing moment in her life happened the very first time she met him? Was it because he saw my underpants the first time we met? Could that have had anything to do with it? I gotta admit, it was a unique introduction.

  “What about Cam?” Vanya said. I blinked, and found my gaze had wandered over to the basketball courts, watching as Cam shot the ball and missed. I shifted my gaze back to Vanya. Her eyes were already on me.

  “What about Cam?”

  “Well he’s Dev’s other friend, isn’t he? He invited Drew and Cam to the movies, so maybe you should invite Cam to the show as well. For Dev.”

  “You’re kidding, aren’t you Van,” I said.

  She shrugged.

  “Um – no, there’s no way I’d ever invite Cam. For one thing, Dev is going with Mads, he doesn’t need Cam,” I said. “And another thing, Cam will want to bring Nikki. I’m not inviting them to go out with me. End of story. You’re a crazy person.”

  “You’re right, you’re right,” Van said. “I was just asking.”

  “It’s too late to change the guest list, anyway. I’ve already sent it to Ty,” I said. And I had, I’d sent it that morning, and he hadn’t replied. I felt funny about that, was Mads right and he didn’t like that I was going with two girls and three boys? Did it look like a triple date? Or maybe, had I gotten some of the numbers wrong and he didn’t get the message at all? No, it would be fine. We were going to the Hill in three nights and I couldn’t wait to hear my song.

  “You and Ty would be so cute together,” Mads said. “And wouldn’t it be cool if Vanya got with Drew or Ravi?”

  “Ugh, Mads!” Vanya said.

  “How perfect would that be? All three of us with boyfriends, we could go on group dates, go to every Academy of Lies show, hang out backstage…”

  “Why is everything always about boys with you?” Vanya asked.

  “Why isn’t everything about boys with you?” Mads said.

  “Maybe I don’t want a boyfriend. Maybe I like being independent, and not needy and having to make all this spare time for someone else,” Van said. “What with hockey and violin and AV club and studying – you’ve both heard of studying, right?”

  We looked at her blankly.

  “Studying...” she said again. We gave her nothing. “Whatever. What I’m saying is I barely have enough time for you guys if you haven’t noticed, let alone a boy.”

  “Okay okay, excuse me for wanting you to be happy,” Mads said, raising her hands in surrender.

  “You don’t want me to be happy, you want you to be happy,” Vanya said. “With your double dates and stuff.”

  “I’m sorry, jeez!” Mads said. “God, I just thought it would be nice.”

  “It’s okay,” Vanya said. She scrunched up her empty sandwich bag and Lays packet and stuffed them in her brown paper bag, turning her attention to me.

  “I’m really looking forward to the show though, Poppy. And I am psyched to see what they’ve done to The Kiss Off. And on second thought,” she said with a smile. “Perhaps you were right about not inviting Cam along for this.”

  “Yeah,” I smiled. “Damn straight.”

  ***

  It felt like Saturday was taking forever to come, like the world had slowed down. I wasn’t sure time hadn’t actually stopped completely. But finally, finally Saturday came.

  The place was buzzing when Mads, Dev, Drew, Ravi and I rocked up at The Hill around nine o’clock. The line was humongoid, but that made us even more excited because they were all there for the band! Like, the band that wanted to play my song had heaps of fans and heaps of people were going to hear it! Usually such a huge queue would be a pain in
the ass but it was uber-exciting tonight, because we got to sail right through it. Van was meeting us later, because she had to do something for her Nan first or something. I didn’t know the details, just that she was going to be late. Mads had spent the afternoon alternately curling and crimping sections of my hair and teasing it so that it had so much volume there probably wasn’t any volume left for the rest of the hair in the world, and I applied smoky black liner to my bottom eyelid but I had to get Mads to do my top lids because whenever I tried, I always messed it up, drawing all over my face like a little kid in her mom’s makeup stash. Not the look I was going for tonight.

  I added some glittery silver eye shadow and lip gloss, a red mini, old Kiss concert tee and leather jacket. I was good to go. Ty had finally texted me back and said that they were going on at ten, so I figured we had arrived in perfect time to scope out the place, and maybe I’d even get to talk to him before they went on. Not that I was interested.

  I decided that tonight was a stress-free zone and just about having fun. Vanya and I (and Mads, between face-sucking sessions with Dev) were going to dance our little socks off and scream and jump up and down and pretty much party like rock stars. Well, that was the plan. I felt so cool, then the chick with the nose ring at the door found my name on the list and ushered us past the rope and into the club, but I have to say, the big black ‘Under 21’ stamp the bouncer stamped on the back of my hand was a bit of a downer. I eyed off the fluorescent yellow wrist bands that the over 21s were given, and how they could just flash them at the bar and be served. They had to pay and all, but they didn’t have to produce an ID, real or fake.

  We descended from street level into the club – I know, ‘the Hill’ is actually underground. Genius, right? – And Mads linked her arm through mine, leaving the boys to follow us. The club was dark except for white dots of light that zoomed around the open room, illuminating people for a second before moving on to someone new. I smiled, looking down at myself. I found my jacket was peppered with light, like snowflakes. We looked around the huge room, there were a dozen or so tall tables around the edges at which clubbers stood with their drinks, yelling in each other’s ears. Along three of the walls was a built-in sofa, the back of which must have been sturdy because girls were dancing on it, screaming and giggling. I smoothed down the back of my skirt. There was no way you were getting me up there.

  At the far end of the room was the stage. There was a drum kit, some amps and a microphone stand set up, but nothing else as yet. No Academy of Lies. Off to the side of the stage in this special raised platform booth was a DJ, and he was going off. It was like the whole room was all moving together, throbbing with the beat which I could feel in my heart and stomach and vibrating all over me.

  “What do you think? Grab a drink?” I asked. Mads nodded. We both looked around.

  “Where do we…there!” Mads pointed over to the other side of the dark club, where there was a bar with fluoro lighting along the length of it and a mirror behind shelves containing what looked like hundreds of bottles of alcohol. We grabbed each other’s hand and I took a deep breath before stepping onto the dance floor to squeeze our way through to the bar. We squeezed past a waitress with a tray of shots held high, she looked stiff and tense as she tried to manoeuvre slowly and carefully through the throng of bouncy clubbers. As I stepped across the dance floor, my shoe gripped a little too well to a couple of sticky spots on the floor, where clearly drinks had been spilled already. It would be fun cleaning that up tomorrow.

  “Wait,” Mads yelled at me in the crowd and she bent down to the floor for a second. She came back up, squealing and jumping up and down. In her hand, she held a golden ticket – someone’s discarded yellow wrist band. She immediately fastened it around her wrist, licked her fingers and started scrubbing the black ink from the back of her hand. It wasn’t coming off, just smudging a little so she slid the wrist band onto her other wrist, looked at me and wiggled her eyebrows with a smile.

  “It’s party time!”

  We got to the bar and there was a small huddle of older people clasping their martinis and cocktails tightly.

  “What can I get you?” The bartender asked.

  “Oh, um-”

  “I’ll have a Bacardi.” Mads said nonchalantly, flashing her wrist band. I stared at her, but she ignored me.

  “What flavor?” The bartender asked. He didn’t even blink an eye.

  Mads said “You choose for me” And then she winked. Winked!

  I pinched her. “What are you doing?” I turned around, looking for Dev, but we seemed to have lost the boys.

  I hissed in her ear as the bartender turned around to make her drink. “What about Dev?”

  “What about Dev?” Mads asked. “Oh please, like I- like he’d even go there,” she said, motioning to the bartender. “Call the cops!” She turned back around and flashed him a toothy smile as she handed him her money and picked up her glass.

  “Thanks,” she practically purred and stepped back from the bar and the crowd of people forming.

  “I’ll have the same,” I told him, though I didn’t have anything to flash. Any second now he was going to want to see my hand or wrist and I’d be busted. But he didn’t ask, didn’t look. He just turned around and made another rum and raspberry for a minor. Score!

  When I reached Mads, her drink was half gone.

  “Hey – this is really yum!” she said.

  I took a sip of my drink. Oh wow, yeah. It was good. “Yeah.”

  We clinked glasses. I was going to enjoy this, because I didn’t think I was going to get away with it again. At least Mads had the wrist band. Dev appeared shortly after and wrapped his hands around her waist, and he was soon followed by Drew and Ravi. Handing her their money, Mads got them a couple of beers and we hit the dance floor. The bartender didn’t even seem to be looking for her wrist band anymore, so it appeared we had a direct line to alcohol, an unexpected bonus of the evening.

  After a couple of drinks, Mads and the boys and I were feeling loose and were dancing like mental patients. Moshing to Madonna, and doing the sprinkler to LMFAO. We sang/screamed along to songs we knew, it was fun. We had a couple of random people join in, a couple of guys started dancing with us as we did the lawn mower and the shopping cart and that one guy was pretty badass at the robot, we were all cracking each other up. I never actually got their names. Hang on, that could have been what he said that time that I kept laughing and nodding at because I couldn’t hear him but I didn’t care.

  I spotted something that stopped me dead in my tracks, but I really shouldn’t have been that surprised.

  “What are they doing here?” I yelled into Mads’s ear, screwing up my eyes as they were assaulted by the sight of Nikki dancing, all up in Cam’s business, pressing herself so close to him that it looked like she was trying to merge them into one Cam-Nikki being. Canikki. His forehead was furrowed and he flinched when she threw her hair around and got him in the face, but he gave her a smile when she looked at him and kissed her back when she launched her mouth on his. Why did she have to do that?

  “Dev told them about it. Cam wanted to come,” Mads yelled back at me. I looked at Dev. He was smiling at me as he watched me talk to his girlfriend so I forced a smile back. Stupid Dev.

  I shook myself out, pretending it was a crazy dance move and got Canikki’s whole annoying presence out of my system, forgetting they even existed.

  After a while I was sweating so much I was sure I had drained the last ounce of water through my skin, that I left the dance floor in search of some aqua. Chugging from a bottle I bought at the bar, I collapsed into a couch along the edge of the dance floor. It was so hot in here, there were so many people. I pulled off my leather jacket and lay it across my lap, airing out my tee shirt. I caught sight of the doorway, as more and more people flooded into the club. I smiled nice and wide, my stomach fluttering and all my insides jiggling as I caught sight of a few Academy of Lies tee shirts. Here for their favorite band
playing my song, and Ty.

  Ah, Ty. He did like me, didn’t he? I rubbed at my forearm unconsciously, lost in thought as someone sat beside me and tapped me on my sticky shoulder. Ew. Gross for them. Turning in my seat, I discovered it was Cam. Alone.

  “You’ve been dancing up a storm.”

  “Did you just get here?” I said, pretending I hadn’t even noticed.

  “A little while ago, we were hanging at one of Nikki’s friends’ place first. You having fun?”

  “Yeah, I am. What are you even doing here?”

  “Dev invited me,” he said. “I didn’t even know you were going to be here.”

  “Oh.”

  “Actually that’s a lie,” he said. “I did know. Well, I kind of knew. I heard you talking to that guy the other day. At the bus stop, the one who wrote on your arm.”

  Well I knew that. “What, you were spying on me?”

  He rolled his eyes and looked away. “Don’t…”

  “Don’t what, Cam?” I asked. “What is it you don’t want me to do?” I don’t want to go away for a week and find you’ve hooked up with my friend, I thought. Just as I opened my mouth to say it, he spoke again.

  “Do we have to always be like this? Can’t we just have, I don’t know, a serious conversation? Can’t you be civil with me just this once?”

  “Why should I?” I said.

  “You know I didn’t mean to hurt you, I didn’t know I would hurt you. I’ve apologized already, what do you want from me?”

  I narrowed my eyes at him. He was such a jackass. I didn’t give him an answer, but he seemed determined to get one.

  “Well?” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Nothing! Sorry!” I swigged some water.

  “Okay. Well do you think we could act like adults for a change then?”

  I didn’t know what to say to that so I just sat there pouting and calling him names under my breath which neither of us could hear over the music.

  “About the song.”

  “The song.”

  “Yeah, you’re song. The Kiss Off. I’ve seen it, you know,” he said.