Kissing Lily

Meeting Lily

The rest of the day went by in a blur. All everyone talked about was the new girl. Despite her being the topic of every conversation, I never actually saw anyone speak to her. You had to give the girl credit for keeping her head up. If it were me, I probably would have played sick and spent the day in the nurse’s office.

When school let out, I shoved my books in my locker, and headed outside. The school had three school buses, but most of the students either drove or rode with friends.

I had a car, a little piece of freedom all my own that my dad let me buy for $500 from one of his work friends. My friends and I lovingly called it a boat, but in actuality in was a dark blue, gas guzzling, 1983 Buick Park Avenue. It had blue velvet seats, it was clean, and the previous owner had taken good care of it. The first day of ownership, I had spent a good hour applying bumper stickers to the back. I was just so excited to finally have a car of my own, and I had a lot to say. My favorite sticker said, “I just do what the little voices tell me to do.”

“Bye Bree,” Adam called as I got into my boat, “Be careful when you back that thing up.”

On top of driving a huge car, I was a less than average driver. The benefit of my boat was that it was built like a tank, and could take a licking and keep on ticking. A negative was that it had a huge backend and I sucked at going in reverse.

“Just make sure you stay out of my way,” I smiled at Adam as I closed the door.

Adam Bryson lived up the street, and was also unpopular. He drove a motorcycle, wore black leather, and always had greasy hair. He was intimidating if you didn’t know him, but after sharing a school bus seat with him throughout elementary and junior high I found myself secretly attracted to him. He too was different, and didn’t fit into the cookie cutter mold at our school. He had a brother two years older than us, who I had kissed once at the lake over the summer, and my mom always speculated that I would end up marrying one of the two Bryson brothers.

The rule at our school is that the buses have to leave first, before students are allowed to leave their parking spaces. I waited impatiently for the buses to pull out, and what seemed like forever later they left the lot. Adam zipped out of his space, getting his beloved motorcycle as far away from my boat as possible.

I put it in reverse, turned around to look, and am thankful that I did. At that very moment, the new girl was walking behind my car. I had been so close to taking my foot off the brake.

I put my car back in park, and watched as she headed on foot out of the parking lot. Once again, I put my car in reverse and backed out. I pulled to the exit, where the new girl was waiting to cross the street, and rolled down my window.

“New girl, can I give you a ride somewhere?” I tried to sound friendly. Inside I was praying, please don’t say no, please don’t say no.

She studied me for a moment, as if she was debating on if I had plans to kidnap her and burn her at the stake.

“Sure,” she finally smiled at me. She went around to the passenger side, opened the door, slid in, closed the door, and started putting on her seatbelt.

“Where do you live?” I asked her.

“County road 2640,” she answered.

That’s another thing about living out in the middle of nowhere. In the city, streets were called streets, roads, avenues, or even circles. In the city streets could be named after people or after trees, like Oak Street, but out here the streets were labeled with numbers. Every road was called a “county road” and had a number. The houses were spaced out, and there could be miles in between neighbors.

“I live on 2640 too,” I told her as I drove, “I’m Bree by the way, Bree Woodson.”

“Lily Davis,” she said, “Thanks for the ride. I was going to walk over to the library and wait for my dad to get off, but now I can call him and tell him I got a ride.”

I could smell her perfume. She smelled like lavender and Pantene. I suddenly found myself nervous, not sure what to say.

“You’re welcome,” I told her, “You can play with the radio if you want. I should warn you now that I’m not a very good driver, so if you want music you’ll have to do it as I’ve learned the hard way not to take my hands off the wheel or my eyes off the road.”

“That’s cool. Better safe than sorry,” she said.

She leaned forward and started playing with the radio buttons. I tried to keep my eyes on the road, but it was hard to keep my eyes off of her curls as she fumbled with the stations. I found myself wanting to reach out, and pull one of her curls down to see if it would spring back up in place.

She stopped it on a 90s grunge song sung by a guy who ended up committing suicide, and I felt relieved when she sat back and I was no longer distracted by her hair.

“I’m right up here,” she said as I turned on to 2640.

There were only two houses on this street, and since one of them was mine, I knew which one was hers. I pulled up in her driveway, and looked up at the old Victorian home that had been vacant for as long as I could remember.

“Thanks for the ride Bree,” she said as she opened the door and got out.

“Do you want to come over for dinner tonight?” I didn’t realize the words were out of my mouth until I had already said them.

She bent down in the door opening, “I’d love too.”

“Great,” I could feel my cheeks turning red, “I’m about a half of a mile up, the only other house, can’t miss me. Dinner’s at 7:00.”

She said goodbye, closed the door, and made her way up to her house.

As I drove to my house, I could still smell her in the air. I had invited the new girl over to dinner. Amy and Joelle were going to freak!