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“Never had much reason to trust you, Kid,” I told him.
“Yeah, I know. But you can trust me on this one, Liddy.” Then Kid Harding got this soft look in his eyes, leaned into me, and whispered against my lips. “I kiss way better than Gabe Howard.”
Kid’s eyes darkened as the rough pad of his thumb slid slowly across my bottom lip. When he leaned in to kiss me I leaned in too. And that kiss was soft and sweet and oh so slow. Everything fell away until there was just me and Kid and that long, exploring kiss. My body was on fire and my belly quivered someplace low and deep. Kid shifted me and I felt him grow hard against my thigh. When he shifted again, higher this time, I opened my legs and felt that hardness against my bikini bottom. Omg… I let out a small moan of amazement at how good it all felt.
Then…WHOMP! Kid’s head twisted hard to his left shoulder as the punch that came out of nowhere cracked his cheekbone. Romeo stood over us with his eyes full of rage and his fist closed hard. The next thing I knew Kid had pulled me up and shoved me behind him.
“I’m gonna give you that one punch, Romeo, because if I were you, I’d do the same. But now it’s time for you to walk away.” Kid said calmly, but his body was coiled with a kind of suppressed violence that sent shockwaves through the crowd that had begun to form.
“Why the fuck should I do that?” Romeo’s eyes were narrow and the bit of foam that had formed on the corner of his mouth gave him the appearance of a rabid dog.
“Because I don’t like you. Not even a little fucking bit.” Kid snarled out. “And I don’t like you putting your hands all over Liddy.”
“Yeah, well as far as that trailer trash slut goes, you can have her.” Romeo sneered to an audible gasp from the crowd who mostly weretrailer trashjust like me.
“Walk away.” Kid’s voice was barely above a whisper. “Walk away before I kill you.”
When Romeo’s response was to give Kid a cowardly and vicious kick to the balls, Kid deftly avoided that move. His strong hand shot out and grabbed Romeo by the throat. Romeo made a surprisingly quick recovery and rammed his fist into Kid’s stomach. In a move straight out of WWF, Kid responded by picking Romeo up high off the ground and dropping him like a sack of potatoes.
Then it was on.
Years of pent-up rage and rivalry between the uptown kids and the park kids burst wide open and ended up in a full-fledged brawl. One hundred and fifty graduating seniors going at it hard. Bottles and rocks were thrown, noses were broken, hair was pulled, and windshields were cracked. The police came out in riot gear, and the news of thePatriot High Punch-Outhit the local and national news the next day. CNN did a television special onHow the inequities of economic disparity affect social interactions among teenagers.
Aunt Betty and Deke Harding were called in to meet with the superintendent of schools, the school committee, and the mayor. Kid, Romeo, and I were all expelled from school. Betty raised holy hell at that. But evidently, according to those in power, my choosing to go hot and heavy with Kid Harding had been the precipitating factor in the whole mess.
Whatever the hell that meant.
Except for the whole humiliating thing of having had my teenage hormones cause a riot, I was doing okay until a week later when that heart-wrenching notification came in the form of registered mail. Now it was just past midnight on the day I had received the letter (aka the consequences of my actions). Aunt Betty had fallen asleep an hour earlier, blissfully unaware of my very bad news. I turned off the rerun of Ninety-Day Fiancé and covered her gently with an old blanket. Wide awake, I grabbed the pack of smokes from her purse and two bottles of wine from the cupboard. Then I went to sit under the stars to drown myself in my miseries.
I had just taken the last sip of that first bottle of wine and was trying hard to resist howling at the moon when I heard the crack of twigs and saw a shadow move behind the big oak tree. Or I had thought I had anyway. My senses had been comfortably numbed, but the possibility of becoming the victim of a serial killer brought my senses regretfully back into sharp focus.
“I didn’t know you smoked.” Kid plopped down next to me.
“Yeah, me either.” I sighed in relief. Kid Harding was pretty high on the list of people I didn’t want to see just now, but he wasn’t slasher high.
“So how you doing?” Kid grabbed the pack of smokes sitting on the picnic table next to me and lit up. “Heard that fucker Romeo’s been going around town saying that you two are back together. That true?’
“Ha ha ha…you trying to be funny?” I snorted out. “Not that I don’t enjoy being called a trailer trash piece of shit in front of half a million of my peers, but I’m thinkin’ Romeo and me might be wayyyyy over.”
“Sorry if I had anything to do with that.” I heard that undeniable note of triumph in his voice.
I twisted off the cap of the second bottle of wine, took a gulp, and handed it over to Kid. “You don’t sound sorry.”
“Romeo is an asshole, and even if he wasn’t, he’s not even close to being good enough for you, Liddy.” Then Kid got close enough so his thigh touched mine, and said with sincerity. “I’m real, real sorry about the rest of it though.”
“You are?” I grabbed the wine bottle away from him, and Kid pulled out his weed and started to roll a fat joint.
“Damn right I am. I don’t give two shits about that whole cap and gown thing. But you worked hard for the right to walk across that stage and have Principal Ass Clown shake your hand and give you that diploma.”
“Don’t worry about it.” I shrugged “It’s not like you forced me to make out with you and start a town war.”
“I feel like shit about everything except for that. It’s about time those upscale dicks got their asses handed to them. But as I said, I feel bad about how it all came down on you.”
“It’s okay.” My drunken self leaned into him. “I doubt that I would have made it through the first year anyway.”
“First-year?”
“St. Mary’s gave me an art scholarship.” I sighed against his shirt. “I guess since I’ve been expelled I don’t qualify for it anymore.”
