Lucky Caller(40)

“It’s the truth.”

“Sidney—” Rose started.

“It’s the only way,” Sidney insisted, and Rose sighed. She turned to Hapless.

“Your … shoes … aren’t shiny.”

Jamie narrowed his eyes, looked toward Sidney. “Is that mean enough to make me not forget?”

“Nope.”

“They are the least shiny shoes I’ve ever seen,” Rose amended. “And they’re ugly.”

“That’s better.” Sidney looked to me. “Aurelie?”

“I don’t wanna be mean to him.”

“Then he’ll forget you.”

“Aurelie wouldn’t do that though,” I said. “She’d find a different way.”

“Nope.” Sidney was adamant. “It’s the only way.”

I looked at Jamie. He just shrugged and smiled a little in an It’s okay kind of way.

“What if I waited?” I said. “What if I was only mean at the very last minute?”

Sidney considered this for a moment. “It’s risky.”

“I’ll risk it.”

She shrugged. “Your choice.”



* * *



In the midst of the game—amid those autumn afternoons where we would meet for an hour or two after school, before my mom got home from work—came my birthday.

We never really had birthday parties with friends, only small, “just us” gatherings to celebrate, but I begged and begged my mom to at least let me invite Alexis over, and she relented. Alexis came with a silvery gift bag in hand containing a makeup set that I had no idea how to use and that Rose eventually co-opted. We used to try to do YouTube tutorials, and Rose’s looks always turned out way better than mine.

Jamie came by too, with Gram, carrying a big cake. I looked over at Mom in surprise—I knew she had a store-bought one in the fridge—but she just smiled at me.

The cake had poorly piped lettering on it that said Happy Birthday Nina, and some decorative swirls.

“Cut a slice,” Jamie said, and again I turned to my mom, the usual cutter of cakes. “No, you should do it,” he insisted.

I cut into the cake and pulled out a slice, and a cascade of M&M’s fell from the cake’s center. Everyone oohed at once and then laughed and clapped, and when I looked over at Jamie, he was beaming.

“We looked up how to make it,” he said. “The best kind of cake, right?”

I nodded. It was.

I didn’t notice Alexis looking between the two of us. I didn’t think of Alexis at all in that moment, in fact—just Jamie’s bright eyes and his broad smile. Gram encouraged us all to grab a plate, take a slice. The cake was delicious.

It was at a sleepover at Alexis’s house a couple weeks later—we were gathered in the family room watching some garbage slasher movie—when she turned to me and said, “It’s your turn to play Kiss Cam, Nina.”

I was a permanent bystander of Kiss Cam. An observer, but never a player. Alexis had never picked me, and I had never volunteered. Truthfully, I definitely wanted to kiss someone. Like, I wanted to know what it felt like, I wanted to be someone who had been kissed. But the actual idea of kissing a random person terrified more than it thrilled. “Right now?” I said.

“No, at school.” Alexis’s eyes lit up. “On the field trip.” The whole eighth-grade class was supposed to go to the Indianapolis Museum of Art the following week. “You’re gonna kiss Jamie.”

My stomach swooped with some strange mix of anxiety and excitement.

“Or…” Alexis looked thoroughly pleased with herself. “You get bonus points if you get him to kiss you.”

How did you get someone to kiss you? What were you supposed to do? I had to ask, and of course Alexis had an answer. She had an answer to everything. Whether it was necessarily true or helpful or correct was another story.

“Look at his lips,” she said. “Then at his eyes, then back to his lips. Like, back and forth.” She leaned in. “Here—practice.”

I looked at her eyes and her mouth and her eyes and her mouth, which split into a grin, and then let out a cackle.

“You’re gonna sprain your eyes. Don’t look that fast. You have to, like … linger. And, like, kind of lean into him.” She shook her head. “You know him, though. He’s your friend. Just say whatever will make him kiss you.”

“I don’t know what that is.”

“Make something up.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’ll be great,” she said with a smile. “Trust me.”



* * *



The day of the field trip arrived, and on the bus to the museum, Jamie sat up toward the front with some other guys. Alexis and I shared a seat closer to the back, and although I liked being her chosen person of the day, my stomach was roiling.

She knocked her shoulder into mine. “You ready?”

“I really don’t know if—”

“You’re the only one who hasn’t played. And it’s fun. You’re going to have so much fun.”

At the museum, we toured a new abstract exhibit and made our way through the textiles gallery. It was in the contemporary art wing that we were turned loose to complete some worksheets—and it was there that Alexis winked largely at me, gesturing to where Jamie had wandered down a small hallway.