The Kiss Off Read online

  ***

  Later that week, I was walking slowly down Randlewood Avenue with Mads and Vanya, a stack of ‘Found’ posters in my arm. Vanya was holding a roll of tape and we paused at each lamppost we came to. I held a poster with a photo of the dog on it against the post and Vanya taped it up. Mads supervised. We had been putting these things up for a couple of weeks now - mostly Rory and I were charged with the job and even though we’d been doing it forever Mom still wouldn’t let us stop. For some reason they kept getting torn down, so we had to repaper the entire neighbourhood. Mom told Rory to drop them into all the mailboxes for two blocks around us, but I doubted he had done it. He had really grown attached to the dog. He was teaching it to sit and everything. And it was working – he would sit when Rory told him to, and every fifth time you told him to stay, he would not come over and slobber all over you. It was an improvement. Mom and Dad had a hell of a time washing the stink off of him - they had been doing it in the bathtub but moved the whole operation out to the backyard when he started shaking soap suds out of his fur and all over them and the room. Mom didn’t seem to have such a grudge against him now that he didn’t smell so dead and she could tell him to sit when she walked by and he wouldn’t jump her. He was even allowed in the house more now. But we weren’t keeping him, Mom had made that clear. Dad didn’t seem to mind either way. It was probably a good thing he was going though, as much as he had grown on me and hadn’t humped my leg since that first day, Rory had dubbed him Poo Bum and the stupid dog had learnt it was his name so now any time you wanted him to come, you had to call ‘Poo’. It was a travesty.

  “What I don’t get is why Mrs. Fyffe is so swoony over that Mr. Darcy guy,” Mads said as she watched me hold a poster against a pole. “I mean he’s a bit of an ass, don’t you think? Completely full of himself.”

  “Mmm, maybe he’s proud,” Vanya suggested.

  “What’s he got to be proud of? All I know is Fyffe must have a thing for arrogant jack asses.”

  “Finish the book, Mads,” Vanya sighed.

  “Or at least watch the movie,” I said. “I watched the movie last week – it’s insanely long, but I don’t know, you have to love Darcy,” I shared a smile with Vanya.

  Mads turned to me, appalled. “Oh jeez. You too?” She shook her head in disgust. “Well I’m not interested in arrogant jack asses. I like adorable, sweet boys who love me, like Dev.”

  “Dev loves you?” I said doubtfully.

  Mads nodded, smiling blissfully. She twirled on the spot in happiness.

  “So you two are back together?”

  “I called him last night and then I went over and we talked and I cried and he forgave me.”

  “Wow,” I said. “Congratulations Mads.”

  “I plan to spend every night this week with him to make up for being a drunken skeez.”

  “How are you going to write the essay if you spend every night with Dev and you don’t even know what the book’s about?” Vanya said. “You know it’s due next week, right?” My stomach flippity-flopped. That had come up quickly.

  “Relax, I’ve got it covered,” Mads said. “It’s simple really. It’s due Friday… So Van, can I come over on Thursday?”

  Van was hitting Mads as we turned the corner and I was laughing at them which could be how I ran straight into someone. Our foreheads clanked together and I fell a step backward, holding my head.

  “Ow! Sorry,” I said. “I should have been…” I stopped talking when I saw who I had collided with. Nikki was rubbing her forehead, too.

  “Hi Poppy,” she said. “It’s fine, I always knew what a klutz you were.” The hint of a smile played at her lips.

  “Excuse me?” Mads stepped in front of me. She clearly couldn’t see the smile. Nikki shuffled back as Mads stepped right up in her face. “You don’t get to call her a klutz.”

  “Mads, don’t,” I said. But she wasn’t listening.

  “Hey,” Mads said, sniffing. “What’s that disgusting stench? Wait, I think I know it,” she focussed her gaze squarely on Nikki. “It’s eau de skank.”

  Nikki narrowed her eyes, and gave a tight ruby-red smile. “What was that? I think I hear the pot calling the kettle whore.”

  Oh no she didn’t.

  “I saw you at the Academy gig that time, making out and grinding on a boy you didn’t come with.” Vanya and I stepped forward, we could tell where this was heading. Bitch was about to get slapped.

  “That’s it!” As Mads lunged forward, we grabbed an arm each and held her in place. Nikki stepped back again, out of Mads’s reach.

  “Maddie, stop it!” Vanya said.

  “Jeez Mads, it’s not worth it.”

  “Come ‘ere!” Mads yelled, jerking us forward as she lunged again, hands scrabbling at thin air. Nikki folded her arms and shook her head. “Poppy, you better put your dog on a leash,” she said, walking a wide circle around us as she passed. “Or she might get put down.”

  Mads growled and I tightened my hold on her bicep.

  “See you around, skank!” Mads yelled. Nikki strode away, her head held high. Mads’s body loosened, and we let go of her arms as she glared at Nikki’s back. I remember thinking about it when I first met Nikki, how alike she and Mads were. Both boy crazy and…well, just a bit crazy in general. There was this one time at Myron’s when it was this thirteen year old boy’s birthday and we were all singing Happy Birthday and Nikki had climbed up on a neighboring table and sang to him Marilyn Monroe-style. When she winked and blew him a kiss at the end, I’d never seen anyone’s face go that red. She would have gotten in trouble if the patrons hadn’t liked it so much and the kid’s dad hadn’t slipped her a twenty for being such a good sport. During the summer I had been dying for Mads to get back so I could introduce them. They probably would have gotten along if things were different.

  “I honestly don’t know how you were friends with her,” Mads said. “What a bitch.”

  “She can’t be that bad a person if Poppy was friends with her,” Van said, crouching to pick up the posters and tape where we had thrown them onto the sidewalk. “Maybe she just made bad choices. You can’t help who you like.” I looked away, feeling weird, feeling guilty. Had I just been in the way of Cam and Nikki, the greatest love story ever known? Had I made too big a deal about this?

  “Oh, good one, Van,” Mads said sarcastically, giving her a slow clap. Vanya looked up at us, surprised.

  “What did I say?”

  “Were you or were you not justifying that skank and the cheater hooking up behind Poppy’s back?”

  I felt a stab of pain in my gut, like an invisible being had thrust a knife into me. Or at least I assume that’s how it felt. Just hearing those words brought it all back so vividly, like it was that night at the end of the summer all over again.

  “I’m not defending them, Mads.”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  “Well, it’s not what I meant.”

  “Stop it, shut up,” I said. “She wasn’t saying that, Mads. And what does it matter anymore, anyway?”

  Mads’s mouth gaped open. I could nearly see her tonsils. “What do you mean ‘what does it matter’?” she asked, outraged.

  “It was ages ago,” I said. “I’ve gotta let it go, you’ve got to let it go. It happened. I’m moving on. Sure, I don’t want to be friends anymore, but I don’t think attacking her in the street is going to solve anything, either.”

  “Yeah, that was a bit over the top, don’t you think, Mads?” Vanya said.

  “You’re moving on, are you?” Mads said. “You’re moving on. Okay, well I wasn’t going to tell you this, but Dev told me he was at the drug store with Cam one time and Cam was buying condoms. And he seemed to know what he was doing too, which ones he wanted to get. All experienced with the buying of the condoms.”

  I didn’t say anything, as my whole body oozed and shuddered, and my stomach spat lava against its walls. Maybe I needed an antacid.

  “The
y’re having sex, Poppy.”

  “I get it, Mads,” I said. I cleared my throat and stuck my chin in the air and continued walking. I stopped at the next light post and held up a poster. Vanya obediently taped it down.

  “It’s only natural, I guess,” Vanya said. “I mean it’s the next step, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “It is. He can do what he wants. I’ve moved on, I have Ty.”

  “Have you and Ty done it?” Mads asked.

  “What? Maddie!”

  “It’s a legitimate question, since it’s ‘only natural’ and everything,” she said. “So come on, have you?”

  “Have you and Dev?”

  Mads’s shoulders slumped. She could tell I was changing the topic, or at least diverting it, but she let me do it.

  “Not even. We haven’t been together at one time long enough. We keep breaking up. Just as everything seems great and I’m so into him, I’m a complete loser and do something to screw it up,” she said. “So no. We haven’t. I’m not going to screw things up this time though. We will. I promise. Now your turn. Have you, or have you not had sex with the almost-rock star?”

  “Stop!” someone shouted. “I don’t wanna hear this!” We all turned around, and half-hidden behind the last light post was the Pest, his face screwed up and hands covering his ears. His hands holding scrunched up pieces of paper. I looked at the last light post – the poster was gone.

  “Rory!” I yelled, running at him. As soon as I started, he bolted back down the street and I chased him all the way home. Saved by the Pest.

  ***

  I chased him back to the house and he slammed the front door in my face. I swore, fished out my keys and let myself in. By then, he was in his room, door closed behind him. I didn’t care. I threw the door open and it hit the wall with a bang, making his cheat code-filled notice board tilt to the side. Rory sat on the floor in front of his bed. Poo Bum was sidled up beside him, pressing his head into his friend, my brother. Rory stroked his fur and scratched him behind his ears. I watched the dog’s eyes flutter closed and he pressed his head toward Rory’s fingers.

  “Thanks a lot for tearing down the posters, butt head,” I said. “I’ve been wondering why they kept disappearing, why I had to keep putting them up over and over.” He didn’t look at me, just focussed on patting the dog. “Have you even been doing the mail box drops?”

  “No.”

  I figured. “Look, you heard Mom, we can’t keep him. Besides, his family is probably missing him like crazy.”

  “Do you think he has a family?”

  “Well, yeah. Don’t you?”

  “I thought maybe he was a street dog. Didn’t have a home.”

  “I guess it’s possible.”

  “Yeah, and maybe we could be his home, his family,” he said. “So can you stop putting up the posters for a while?”

  “Rory-”

  “Please, Poppy? Mom doesn’t want to send him to the pound, and if no one claims him then he’s ours. Just stop putting the posters up.”

  “You should talk to Mom, kid.”

  “I know,” he said sadly. He rubbed his face against Poo Bum’s face and the dog licked him on the cheek. It was quite sweet. I closed the door gently behind me and walked to my room where I picked up my guitar and flopped onto my bed. I strummed slowly, staring at the ceiling. We couldn’t let the dog go to the pound. We couldn’t. It had taken lots of chewed up socks and some of Mom’s favorite shoes, not to mention that time Dad told me about when he came home and there were feathers and stuffing all over their bedroom, but not a whole lot of the bedding left. It had been trashed. And peed on. There had been lots of peeing inside and those great steaming mounds of turd outside, not to mention leg humping and dinner stealing. It had taken time to get him out of those habits, for him to be comfortable with our family, and for us to be comfortable with him. There was no way he’d get re-homed at the pound, not a leg humping home-wrecker. And there was only one thing that happened to dogs that didn’t get re-homed.

  I started to write a song.

  ***

  I was on the computer later, taking a break from a solid five or so minutes of essay writing. I clicked straight over to YouTube and checked out my channel. The Kiss Off was getting crazy hits, which were overflowing to my other videos, my other songs. Everything that used to have maybe ten thousand hits which had been generated over the course of a year, now had a hundred thousand hits and growing. What else was new, in the sidebar were links to footage of Academy of Lies playing The Kiss Off at a handful of different gigs. And then a couple of their other songs too. My insides squirmed with excitement. They were getting a heap of exposure, if only with the cyber crowd. Wait a second, what was…I clicked on a link that had caught my eye, called PoppyLongStocking. It was a short camera-phone video of my…er…for lack of a better word, my ‘fans’ taking photos with me from the gig at FoxTail. I pressed my speed-dial immediately.

  “There is a video of me on YouTube, where people are milling around staring and taking photos with me like I’m some sort of celebrity,” I told Van.

  “Can you call me later? I’m working on my Biology project and I’m kind of in the zone-”

  “Isn’t that freaking awesome?”

  “Completely freaking awesome, it is. But I’ll have to talk to you later bye.” And she hung up on me.

  My shoulders slumped at her lack of enthusiasm. I paused before calling Mads. We’d left it kind of weird, earlier. But before I came to a decision, it was as if our brains had synced up and my cell vibrated in my hand.

  “Turn on the radio to WKM-one!” Mads shrieked.

  I winced and held the phone away from my ear as I obeyed and turned on my stereo, searching for WKM1.

  “Do it! Do it! Are you listening? Are you hearing this?”

  “Okay, I’m doing it, hold on,” I stopped talking and listened to the familiar song. The song I had only heard acoustic and live. The real recorded song with a familiar voice. Ty’s voice - my boyfriend’s voice!

  “It’s on the freaking radio?!” I screamed and jumped up and down, spinning around in circles. Bex must have heard the commotion because she wandered in and started shaking her body from side to side, dancing with me. She put her hands above her head like she learned in her ballet lessons and turned in a careful circle. She didn’t fall down so she must have done it right.

  Mads was singing along at the top of her voice, and I joined in the ecstatic yell-singing, and Bex tried to sing too but mostly ended up yelling.

  “It’s their pick of the week, they said it’s going to be a chart topper for sure!” Mads said when the song had finished.

  “I can’t believe it,” I said. “I just can’t. I have to go, I’m going to go and see Ty!”

  “You know, you never answered my question about-”

  I hung up and flung open my closet, rifling through the clothes. I wasn’t wearing jeans and a sweater tonight, I wanted to wear something… I mean, he was on the radio. We were on the radio. We were celebrating.

  “Mo-om!” I yelled. There’s this little strappy black dress that would be perfect. With my knee-high boots which I only ever wore on special occasions because they squinched my toes up and hurt like crazy. But this was a special occasion. Now, where the hell was that dress?

  I stomped out of my room. “Mom, where are you?” I called.

  “I’m in here, love,” I followed her voice toward her bedroom. The door was ajar and I pushed it open to find her sitting up on the bed, reading a cookbook with Poo Bum lounging beside her, watching me.

  “Do you know where my little black dress is?”

  “You have a little black dress?”

  “You know the one, it has a bow on it.” Then my brain registered that she was holding a cookbook.

  “Mom, back away from the book,” I said jumping onto the bed, trying to snatch the book away. She swatted me with it.

  “I’m not that bad, Poppy,” she said. “Am I?”

&n
bsp; “My favorite was the burnt maple syrup sweet potato,” I said. “It was really gross, Mom.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me, but didn’t comment, turning back to her book. I laughed, leaned over and gave her a hug.

  “Wow,” Mom said. “What’s this for?”

  “Nothing, I’m just happy.”

  “Really.”

  “Yep, I won’t be around for you to poison tonight, by the way.”

  “Poison? Oh that’s nice,” Mom said, hitting me with the book again. Bex followed me into the room and I helped her climb up beside me.

  “How about you, Becka,” Mom said. “You like my cooking, don’t you honey?”

  Bex screwed up her nose and stuck out her tongue.

  “See? See?” I said.

  Mom sighed and I tried not to laugh.

  “So where is it you’re going that you need a little black dress?”

  “Nowhere,” I said with a sly smile. “Just out.”

  “Mm hmm,” Mom said, suspicious. “You do realize you’re still my daughter and technically you need my permission to go out. Or I could implant a tracking device. Give you a nice scar.”

  “Where’s my dress, Mom?”

  “Tell me what it looks like,” she said.

  “You know, it’s got straps, and it’s above the knee and it has that lacy bow around the waist?”

  “Oh,” Mom said. “You mean my little black dress.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, sitting up straight. “It’s not yours.” I thought for a moment. “Oh, wait a second…”