Chapter Twelve
ELLIE
19 years earlier
The summer between ninth and tenth grade flew by. Steff stayed at our house until the beginning of August and then she went back to California. This visit was her graduation present; she just finished high school.
And even though Lee had promised to continue to write to me, I stopped getting letters once again and the phone calls stopped coming in. So, after Steff left, my weekends became free, and I filled them up as much as possible to take my mind off the fact that Lee probably started dating someone out in California again.
My friends, Mallorie, Amy, Kim and I all started hanging out at this new teen center on the weekends. It was a fun place to be with loud music, video games, pool tables and a TV in the lobby where we could watch movies. There was also a kitchen that cooks and serves snacks.
Since we had been going for a few weeks, we started meeting some of the other kids from another local high school that went often. There was Jimmy, Nick, David and Krysten. We all became pretty close and would even have sleepovers at each other’s houses during the week.
Amy really liked David and started talking to him more frequently. They hung out together every chance they got, and I think Krysten got a little jealous because she and David used to be a thing. But she didn’t let it stop us from hanging out as a big group.
As summer was nearing an end, Krysten planned a big “End of Summer”
party at her house. Everyone came and we danced and watched a little bit of the movie “IT”. When the girls got spooked, Krysten switched off the TV and said, “Let’s play truth or dare”.
David was first, “I’ll pick truth.”
“Is it true that you like Amy?”
Mallorie asked.
“Yes.”
David said, looking at Amy. Amy turned red and smiled.
“Okay, Krysten, truth or dare?”
David asked.
“Dare.”
“I dare you to take your shirt off and flash the next car that drives by.”
Amy said laughing and Krysten ran outside and pulled up her shirt, then ran back in laughing so hard that she fell on the floor.
“Okay, okay, Mallorie, truth or dare?”
Krysten asked.
“Truth.”
“Ugh, you’re boring. Okay Is it true that … you still sleep with a stuffed animal?”
Kim asked.
“What?! No. That was a dumb question.”
Mallorie said, annoyed.
“Nick.”
David turned to Nick.
“Yes?”
Nick asked, eyebrows raised.
“Truth or dare?”
“Dare all the way!”
he laughed.
“I dare you … to kiss Ellie.”
David pointed at Nick then at me.
Nick looked at me, questioning, then he asked, “Can I do my dare but in private?”
“Um”
the group looked at each other and everyone nodded, “Yeah, I guess we’ll allow that.”
David said.
Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me to the other room where we could still see the group, but it was dark enough that we were hidden in the shadows. He asked me “Can I kiss you? I didn’t want to do this in front of the whole group because … I actually really want to kiss you, not just for the dare.”
I looked at him and squinted, trying to decide if he was being serious or not. He had been flirting with me the last few days, but I wasn’t sure if that was just his personality or if he actually liked me. I decided he was being honest.
“Yes, you can kiss me.”
I smiled.
He smiled.
He kissed me.
It was a quick kiss, close mouthed. But then his hand came up to hold my chin and he kissed me harder until his lips released mine and I opened my eyes to see him smiling at me.
He didn’t know it then, but that was my first kiss.
After that night, Nick and I became an us and we were pretty inseparable for four months with many nights of us laying out on the hill at the plaza, making out for hours under the stars while the rest of our group walked around.
We were an us until he couldn’t see me for weeks on end because of his baseball schedule. We were an us until he didn’t want to take me to our homecoming dances because we went to “rival schools”
and that’s “not allowed”.
I broke up with Nick.
He punched a wall.
I felt bad.
When it was closer to Christmas, and it was coming up on two years since the time that I had met Lee, I started feeling nostalgic or maybe it was just feeling bored. Since I broke up with Nick, I didn’t have much going on outside of school hours, so I decided to call Lee to say hi and maybe catch up on life from the last few months. It was too bad for me, because he wasn’t home.