Kissing in America Read Online Free PDF

out on dates. She calls him her ‘acquaintance.’”
    â€œWhat do you think of him?” Will asked.
    â€œAnnie and I call him the Benign Fungus. He’s not awful. Just mildly annoying and might be hard to get rid of.”
    He laughed. “You should tell your mom that.”
    â€œI can’t tell her she’s going out with a fungus.” It felt good to laugh about it. It was either laugh or scream.
    â€œYou told me I sucked—you can tell her anything.” He paused. “You’re really honest. You’re one of the most honest people I’ve ever met, you know.”
    I glanced at my lap, thinking of all the ways I’d lied to him. I’d told him my dad died of a heart attack. I was lying to him even now, not telling him how I really felt about him. I’d been tutoring him for nine weeks. An eternity. Longer than he’d seen Vanessa Valari or Gia Lopez. It seemed forever.
    He finished his essay. He applied to colleges. I thought he’d stop coming to tutoring, but he signed up for next semester,too. The Undead had told him that he needed a good grade on his AP English test if he wanted to place out of freshman English in college. He said he needed help. I tried not to read more into it.
    I knew he wasn’t interested in me, but I couldn’t stop daydreaming.
    Will showed up for tutoring hour on time. He loped toward the window and tore off the bars with his bare hands. “I never loved Gia Lopez. I only want to reach the zenith with you,” he said as he grabbed a vine, enfolded her in his manly arms, and swung with his beloved out of the north tower and into his jungle love lair nestled in the trees of Van Cortlandt Park.

I dwell in possibility
    I n January, on the first day after winter break, the news coursed through our school within hours: a big modeling agency signed Gia. They’d flown her to Europe for a fashion shoot in a wilderness preserve. School had given her a leave of absence. She’d be back in three weeks.
    That Friday, at tutoring, I waited to see if Will would show up. I’d caught a glimpse of him at lunchtime as he wandered off by himself, but I hadn’t seen him since.
    Mrs. Peech sat at her desk marking papers. Outside, it began to snow. Aside from the two of us, the tutoring center was empty. Annie was at Science Club; all winter her project group met every afternoon.
    I shivered in the freezing room. Frost laced the windows and clung to the iron bars.
    I hoped he’d come. I’d woken up at six that morning and spent an hour getting ready. I’d tiptoed around the apartment—if I woke my mom, she’d squint at me and ask why I had on eyeliner and had straightened my hair, but I couldn’t tell her about Will. My mom’s concept of feminist freedomdidn’t include freedom in love. “I trust you,” she told me once. “I just don’t trust boys under eighteen. Or under thirty, actually.”
    Over break, I’d kept daydreaming and feeling so anxious about this endless hopeless crush that I called Lulu for advice. Lulu was kind of a second mom to me—she never judged or criticized, and I could tell her things I couldn’t tell my own mom. During the blurry weeks after my dad died, Lulu had stayed with us. She grocery shopped, she did the laundry, she sorted the mail, she cooked. Homemade mac and cheese. Lasagna. Pot roasts. Tortilla soup. She slept on our couch at night and opened our blinds every morning—she was probably the only reason my mom and I survived those black-hole days.
    Now she told me not to worry. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. It’s okay to have a big crush. When you’re around him, just be yourself,” she said. As if I knew who that was. Which self? Should I tell him I had stomach bugs and ask if he wanted to eat an entire pack of Chips Ahoy cookies with me in my twin bed?
    I looked up—Will appeared at the door. My neck