Read Kissing in America for Free Online

you too , but the words caught in my throat. I touched the typewritten pages again.
    Out the window the snow came down harder.
    â€œI can’t talk about this kind of stuff with anyone else,” he said.
    Obviously Gia would never talk about writing and books. It was probably a big deal when she read the entire J. Crew catalog.
    â€œThe guys on the team are not exactly into reading,” he said.
    â€œI’m shocked.”
    He shook his head. “They already think I’m weird.”
    â€œYou are weird.”
    He smiled. “So are you.”
    â€œExactly. Welcome to the club.”
    My dad used to tell me: All good writers are weird. Proudly weird.
    I always sort of wondered what he meant. I knew it was kind of strange to lie in bed at night and grasp thoughts and feelings and memories and corral them into lines and verses. Was that why I’d stopped writing, too? Because it was a strange thing to do, without my dad here to encourage me, and to share that strangeness with me?
    Will’s strangeness, and his mysterious and elusive thing, somehow made me like him even more. In December, I’d mustered the guts to ask him where he went on his solo lunches—any good delis he knew of? He hadn’t answered. “I need a lot of time alone” was all he’d said. He was always forgetting to charge his flip phone, and he used a pay-as-you-go plan that kept running out of minutes. Gia had yelled at him one time when she picked him up from tutoring: Why don’t you get a new goddamn phone?
    I glanced out the window at the snow.
    â€œWe better go or we’ll be stuck here all night,” he said.
    I felt a buzzing beneath my skin. We gathered our things and walked down the winding staircase toward the main floor. Girls stared at him as we walked by, as they always did, though he didn’t notice, or ignored it. “How long does it takeyou to get home?” he asked.
    â€œOver an hour usually. Today will be longer, if the trains are running.”
    â€œLet me give you a ride. I’ve got my mom’s van. It’s parked around the corner.”
    My mom told me once that if a guy ever asked me into his van, he was probably a serial killer, and I should only say yes if I wanted parts of me scattered across the tristate area.
    â€œSure,” I said, and got in.

Mad love
    W ill’s van wasn’t a typical choice for serial killers: a giant chocolate cupcake rotated on its roof, and the words “Sugarland Bakery” curled down its side.
    As we drove, we passed broken-down cars and kids throwing snowballs; traffic crawled along. A woman pointed at our roof and squealed, “Cupcakes!” A kid shouted, “Yummy yummy yeah yeah yeah !”
    Will sighed. “The guys on the team refuse to ride with me in this thing.”
    â€œI like it. Every car should have a cupcake on its roof.”
    He turned the heat on high, and I took off my coat but kept Will’s scarf on. Everything felt different, being alone with him in the van, in the seat beside him where a girlfriend would sit. I missed seeing you. We talked about Mrs. Peech and whether her bad breath had improved (it hadn’t), and Edna St. Vincent Millay—how she’d traveled around the country and read poems to packed theaters and giant crowds, like a rock star—and we talked about our fathers.
    He told me how over Christmas his dad sent him lots ofgifts—a watch, a wallet, a tie he’d never wear, and a check for $600 to buy a new phone. His mother couldn’t watch him unwrap them without muttering “Jerkface” and “guilt money.”
    â€œWhat kind of phone did you get?”
    â€œI never got it. I gave the check to my mom.” He said his mom’s bakery was in trouble—they were losing money and she had to lay off most of the staff. He’d spent the whole break working there, in between meeting with the swim team to practice.