Kissing in America Read Online Free PDF Page B

prickled. He walked over to my table and took out his essay. It was his AP lit assignment from over vacation. An essay about Edna St. Vincent Millay. The Millay topic had been my suggestion—I’d lent him a book of her poetry and a biography of her that had been my dad’s. I stared at the paper but I couldn’t absorb the words. Gia is gone echoed in my head.
    He leaned close to me; his knee touched mine. I shivered again. My hands went cold.
    â€œDo you need this?” He took off his maroon scarf and put it around my neck and shoulders. It smelled like him, like soap and sugar. I wished Annie could see me in the scarf. Even she had to admit that scarf lending was much better than touching a callus. Or a bunion.
    After a while, Mrs. Peech stood and picked up her bag. “I’m leaving early before the snow starts coming down hard. You two better get going, too—they’re predicting three inches.”
    Will put his hand on his essay. “Could we stay a few more minutes? It won’t take long.”
    â€œAll right.” She smiled at him. I think she loved him almost as much as I did. “Just a few minutes. Lock the door on your way out.”
    She left. Will and I were alone. I felt a sharp stab beneath my ribs. I picked up his essay. It was typewritten. “Where’d you get the typewriter?” I asked.
    â€œI found it. Someone left it on a stoop near the Strand with a Free sign on it. Carried it all the way back uptown.” I’d mentioned the Strand bookstore to him once before—he’d never been—and told him that my dad and I used to go there all the time, and now Annie and I loved to go there together.
    â€œYou liked the Strand?” I asked.
    â€œI want to move in there.” He took a book out of his messenger bag. “I found this there too. On the dollar cart.” Mansions and Manors of the Bronx . He flipped to page twenty-three, to a picture of our school. Brookhill Manor . “Look.” He pointed at a photo of our auditorium, which used to be a private theater. A woman dressed in white read on the stage. The caption: Poetess Edna St. Vincent Millay addresses the audience.
    â€œI can’t believe it. Our school is famous.” I paged through the other black-and-white photos. They showed our cafeteria when it was a ballroom, and our school’s roof: a spectacular garden covered the whole place, with a giant stone table, trees, fountains, and a view of the city. I’d heard rumors before that our school had an abandoned roof garden (or a forest, or a colony of escaped convicts, depending who was telling the story). People also said the moldings on the first floor were made of solid gold, which was proved wrong when Evan LeDuff chiseled a chunk off and plaster crumbled out.
    â€œI can’t believe it’s true,” I said. “What’s up there now?”
    He shrugged. “Who knows. Dead bodies maybe. Ghosts.”
    â€œI’ve always thought this building was haunted.” The pipes always clanked, the radiators hissed, the floorboards on the stage creaked. “Maybe Edna’s the ghost. If people called me a poetess, I’d come back and haunt the place too.”
    â€œPoetess,” he said, and stared at me. Then he took out a colorful flyer that had been tucked into the back page of the book, under the jacket flap. “I saw this in the Undead’s classroom today. You should enter it.”
    URBANWORDS: A CITY-WIDE POETRY CONTEST AND FESTIVAL. STUDENTS, SUBMIT YOUR POEMS BY JANUARY 31ST. WINNERS WILL BE ANNOUNCED IN JUNE.
    â€œI don’t have any poems to submit,” I said.
    â€œWrite one. I’ll proof it for you. It better have good punctuation.”
    â€œIt will be all punctuation. A blank page with question marks.”
    He stared at me a little strangely. Then he said, “I missed seeing you over the break.”
    My heart flipped. I wanted to say I missed seeing