I get home on the latish side, but Abbi’s sleep schedule is so erratic (she tends to fall asleep on the couch at seven p.m., then complain about being unable to sleep at midnight) that I don’t feel bad about knocking on her bedroom door. She grunts, which I assume is Abbi for Please come in.
She’s lying on her side with her back to the door and she rolls over to face me, groaning. In her hand is her constant companion, a dog-eared copy of What to Expect When You’re Expecting. “Are you here because you’ve magically found a cure for constant heartburn? Because otherwise I don’t want to see anyone right now. I want to sit around, alone, and think about how uncomfortable I am while this stupid book scares the hell out of me.”
I gesture to myself. “Do I look like Larry the Cable Guy in a Prilosec commercial? I’m here for advice.”
Abbi narrows her eyes and rests the book on her stomach. “About what?”
“About kissing.”
Abbi sits upright faster than I’ve seen her move in months and the book tumbles to the floor. “Who are you kissing?” she shouts.
“Keep it down!” I whisper.
She rolls her eyes. “Please. No one else here cares that much what you do with your lips. Unless you learn how to operate a miter saw with your mouth, Dad isn’t paying attention.”
I sit down beside her on the fluffy floral comforter she’s had since we were little, back when I used to climb into her bed when I got nightmares after watching particularly scary episodes of Scooby-Doo.
“I just want to know what it feels like,” I say. “My one and only kiss was in kindergarten, and I don’t remember much.”
Abbi perks up. “Who are you planning on kissing? Derek?”
“No!” I practically shout, then lower my voice. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“Too bad.” She sighs. “He is much better-looking than he was when he used to ask me if I liked seafood and then open his mouth and say, ‘See? Food!’”
“Yeah, he rarely does that anymore,” I say, eager to change the subject. “So. Kissing. Locking lips. What’s it like?”
“First,” Abbi says, “tell me about this kindergarten kiss. How have we never talked about this?”
I sigh. “No.”
Abbi crosses her arms over her protruding belly. “Well then, sorry, I’m not spilling any of my kissing secrets.”
“Fine.” I scowl. “But you can’t tell anyone.”
“My lips are sealed. And so are hers,” Abbi says, pointing to her belly.
“It was … Derek.”
She squeals. “I knew it! I knew you had the hots for him!”
“This was in kindergarten!” I whisper-shout. “We were getting married under that big oak tree on the playground and we had one chaste, playground-appropriate peck on the lips. I don’t think that really counts.”
“Still, though.” Abbi looks vindicated. “Don’t you want to return to the scene of the crime?”
“No, I do not,” I say forcefully. “Derek is my best friend, and he always will be, the end. What I want is to kiss Noah Reed, and I want to be prepared. Teach me your ways.”
Abbi sighs. “I can’t just tell you what kissing is like.”
“Why not?” I ask, throwing my arms up in exasperation. “Google told me plenty, but things started getting pornographic, and I was afraid Mom and Dad would look at my search history, so I had to stop.”
“Please tell me you didn’t google ‘what does kissing feel like.’”
I stare at the framed photo on Abbi’s desk of her being crowned Miss Brentley and let my silence speak for itself.
“Ugh, okay, but only because you’re so ‘Are You There, God? It’s Me, Jolie’ and it’s bumming me out.”
“Fine. I’ll take your pity.”
Abbi scrunches up her face and looks at the ceiling, as if the right words are written there. “It’s hard to explain in words. It’s more of a feeling. Like … like the finale of the Brentley Fourth of July fireworks show. Or like the bubbles in a fountain Coke. Or like riding a bike down a hill, when your hair lifts up off your back and you’re half-exhilarated, half-terrified. I mean, that’s what it feels like when you’re kissing the right person.”
She sighs and leans back on the bed and I sit there, shocked. Who knew Abbi was sort of a poet? I guess all I had to do was get her to talk about making out.
“And you feel it,” Abbi says.
I nod. “See, that’s what I’m worried about, because there’s a chance I could end up with some numbness in my lips and I’m worried I won’t be able to feel…”
“No,” Abbi says meaningfully, raising her eyebrows. “You feel it everywhere.”
“Oh,” I say, and then I feel myself blush. “Oh.”
“Which brings me to the biggest point: You have to take your birth control every day if you want it to work.” She points to her belly again. “Because otherwise this happens.”
“I may not know much about kissing, but I do know that it doesn’t result in pregnancy. Mom told me that in one of her extensive ‘your body is your property’ sex-positivity talks.”
“All I’m saying is that one thing leads to another.” Abbi shrugs.
I shake my head. If I’m freaking out this much over a kiss, I won’t be ready for sex until I’m, like, forty-five.
I pull out my notebook and write down what Abbi just told me. Fireworks. Soda bubbles. Bike riding. Everywhere.
“Um, what are you doing?” Abbi leans over to look. “Are you taking notes?”
I look up at her. “Yeah?”
“Okay,” Abbi says. “I guess that’s the most important thing for you to learn, besides the birth-control thing. You can’t study for this one. It’s not about facts, or preparation, or doing everything right.”
I slowly lower my notebook.
“It’s sort of like childbirth, or what I think childbirth is going to be like,” Abbi says, pointing to What to Expect When You’re Expecting. “You can read all the books and take all the notes you want, but at some point you just have to do it to find out what it’s like.”
I absentmindedly chew on my lip as I mull this over. “But I like reading books and taking notes.”
“No kidding,” Abbi says. “But that’s life, dude.”
I sigh and let my gaze drift around Abbi’s room. The trophies she still has from when she won pageants as a kid. Photos of her and her friends where she looks like a literal model. I walk across the room and pick up her prom queen sash, which has been looped over her closet doorknob ever since she won. Running my fingers over it, I think, Abbi has never had this problem. She’s never had to ask someone else to explain to her what kissing is like, and she’s definitely never googled it.
“Ugh,” Abbi says, groaning as she pushes herself off the bed. She shuffles over to me, then grabs the sash out of my hand and chucks it into the garbage can under her desk. “I can’t believe that thing was still there.”
“You’re throwing away your prom queen sash?” I ask, horrified. “But … you won it.”
She shrugs and, with difficulty, bends over to pick up her book. “Yeah, well, being prom queen isn’t my whole life. Thank God.”
I leave Abbi to her reading and head back to my room, where I pull my scrapbook out from under my bed and run my fingers over the pasted-in faces and straight, perfect smiles. Being beautiful didn’t solve all of Abbi’s problems, or make her life easy, I think as I stare at a picture of Cara Delevingne until her features start to blur. A sinking feeling hits my stomach as I begin to wonder, What if getting the surgery doesn’t fix everything? What if I wake up on June 3 alive, but still the same old me?