Wednesday. Twelve more days. In language arts I told Jared that we couldn’t have our kissing session because I had to walk Reggie after school.
“Where do you take him?”
“Central Park.”
“Ideal.” He grinned wickedly. “I was worried about Rule Number Two.”
So we agreed to meet under the clock in the lobby after school, and I spent the rest of the day being excited and terrified about my first real kissing experience. I hardly thought about the end of the spell . . . hardly.
“Who are you looking for?” Jared asked in the train on the way home.
“Nobody.” I turned to face him.
“I guess I like Rule Number One best,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“You’ll see.”
On the walk home, he told me about his brother’s first kiss. “In the second grade Brad had a crush on this girl named Tina Delphina. She—”
“That was really her name?”
“You interrupted.”
I giggled.
“Yes. That was her name, and she had pigtails and he loved her. On Valentine’s Day he decided to kiss her. They were in the school playground and she was talking to her friends. He ran to her, meaning to kiss her cheek. He didn’t know about kissing on the lips. Just as he got near her, she turned— Maybe this is the wrong story to tell right now.”
“You can’t stop now. Tell.”
“All right. She turned. He didn’t know she was chewing bubble gum. And while she turned, she blew a bubble.” Jared started laughing, and I was laughing already. “So he kissed the bubble, and it burst and he had . . .” He was laughing so hard, he had to stop talking. “. . . and he had her bubble gum all over his mouth.”
“You’re making it up,” I gasped between laughs. We were crossing Amsterdam Avenue. My house was a block away.
He shook his head, tears streaming. “No. It’s true. When he pulled away . . . Brad can’t stop laughing when he tells this part. When he pulled away . . .” Jared tried to catch his breath. “. . . a long pink strand stretched between them. They were connected by this long pink strand till he got about five feet away from her, and then it broke.”
“Then what happened?” We walked into my building.
“I don’t know. But Brad hates gum to this day.”
Upstairs, Jared was good with Reggie. He didn’t mind when Reggie went wild, jumping on him and licking his face all over.
“My sister hates it when he does that,” I said. “You can rinse your mouth before we go.”
“It’s okay. We’ll have a three-way saliva exchange.”
Please, please let him keep liking me after graduation.
“Rule Number One Hundred,” I said. “Always kiss your girlfriend’s dog.”
“Right.”
Were there always so many people in the park? Bikers, strollers, dog walkers, skaters, joggers, toddlers. A clown walking on stilts. People were sprawled across every patch of grass we passed. Jared started whistling.
“We need to be near something I can tie Reggie to.” I had brought rope to attach to his leash so he could roam around after I tied him up.
“I’m looking.” He went back to whistling.
“What’s over there?” I pointed at a rocky hill.
We climbed it. As Nina would have said, points for privacy, points for a small tree to tie Reggie to, and points off for everything else. Dirt and rock, no grass. And we faced the ugly brick side of a park building.
“Is this okay?” Jared asked, kicking away a jagged piece of beer bottle.
I was still wearing my Claverford uniform, which was going to get filthy and gritty. “Perfect,” I said.
“At least we don’t have to get dirty.” Jared opened his backpack and pulled out a sheet, which he spread on the ground.
I tied Reggie to the tree. He sniffed along the building wall. Jared sat on the sheet and leaned back on his elbow. He patted the spot next to him.
I sat. My heart was beating too fast.
He tugged at my arm to bring me down to him. I lay next to him on the sheet. My hair swung over part of my face. He pushed it away and tucked it behind my ear. I felt hollow with expectation.
And Reggie landed between us, barking and growling. Jared jumped up.
“Reggie! It’s okay, boy.” I rubbed his ears, which he loves. “Nobody was hurting me.” He licked my face and wagged his tail. “It’s safe now.”
Jared came toward us and Reggie growled again.
“Bad! That’s bad! Bad boy!”
Reggie’s tail went down, and he licked my face again.
“Now he knows better,” I told Jared. “He won’t do it again.”
“You’re sure?” He took a step.
Reggie growled.
I stood up and walked about four feet from the sheet. Reggie followed me, tail halfway down, wagging madly, completely apologetic.
“He’s jealous.” Jared sat on the sheet again. “And I am too.”
“Down, Reggie. Stay.” I went back to the sheet. “He won’t move.” I stretched out next to Jared, my back to Reggie.
He started growling again. I turned around. He hadn’t moved, but he was growling furiously.
Jared giggled. “Romantic music.”
“He sounds like a small locomotive.”
“Well, we’re doing Rule Number Four.”
“What’s that?”
“Having fun.” He kissed my nose. A light kiss.
The pitch of Reggie’s growl deepened.
“Is he still lying there?” I asked.
“Uh-huh.” He kissed me softly on the lips.
I kissed him back. The next kiss was longer. I forgot about Reggie. I forgot about popularity.
By the time we stopped, Reggie was asleep. We must have kissed for more than an hour. We had smiled at each other and laughed, but some of the kisses felt very serious. I had pushed my fingers through his hair. I had even smoothed out his eyebrow.
Jared stopped first. He looked at his watch. “It’s five thirty.” He kissed me again.
“Mom’s home.” I sat up. “I better go.”
He sat up too. “Me too, I guess.”
We kissed. We stood up and kissed. Reggie woke up and started growling again. We folded the sheet, and every time we brought the edges toward each other, we kissed. When we finished, Jared put the sheet away, and I untied Reggie from the tree. He seemed to be all right as long as we weren’t kissing, but I made him heel while we walked out of the park.
“So, what are the Rules?” I asked.
“Well, you know what Four is.”
“I forgot.”
“Okay. Here goes. I told you, Number One is my favorite. It’s take your time.”
“We did that.”
“Two is you have to have a romantic setting. I don’t know if we made it on that.”
“Not everybody gets to have a dog growling in the background.”
We waited for the light on Central Park West.
“True. Three is the kissers should like each other. I ace that one.”
“Me too.”
We crossed the street.
“Number Four I told you—it should be fun and not too scary. Five is you can kiss with your mouth open or shut.”
“That’s not a rule, that’s a choice.”
“Go argue with my brother. Six is—”
“You said there were five Rules.”
He blushed. “I didn’t want to tell you about Six till we were through.”
“What is it?”
“Anybody can stop anytime. No hard feelings. I would have told it to you if anything seemed wrong.”
“You didn’t mention Number Seven either.”
“There isn’t a Seven.”
“Yes, there is. Sit, Reggie.” I kissed Jared, a short one on the lips. “Sixty-sixth Street is a kissing zone.” We were at the corner of Sixty-sixth and Broadway, by the subway entrance where he was going to leave me.
“That’s a good rule. Tell Reggie to stay.”
I did, and we had one more long one. And I smiled all the way home.