Her List of Kisses

Chapter 17- Sharp Knives and Tearful Letters

My brain becomes a copious catalogue of knowledge in one particular field: the Mayville Runners.

After only seven days post-Will, I can tell you the team's meeting location and times, the individual names of each of the runners, the track record of the Captain, and the history of their success in the local, national and regional races. I can tell you the number of students in the club, their tactical advances, and how many times they have appeared in the local paper.

Most importantly, I can tell you what I’ve known all along. There is a race on Saturday that is important in the following three ways: 1) it runs at the equivalent times to the usual piano lessons run by my mother, 2) the race is against my own school and two others in the park about a twenty minute drive from my house, and 3) it may be the last time I ever see Will, should I choose to go.

Should I choose to go?

No.

Yes.

Never!

Totally.

Maybe?

Taking a pen from the stationary set lying on my bedside table, I reach up to my calendar to mark the date. Then I hesitate, and the pen hovers a millimetre from the paper, unable to touch it but unable to pull away.

Eventually I do, though. Pull away, I mean. In order to rid myself of the urge to think about it, I open the top drawer of my bedside chest and throw the pen inside. And then I scream, very quickly and quietly, for I am so afraid that even my vocal chords are too terrified to vibrate.

There is a knife in the drawer.

For a moment I freak out so badly that a temporary paralysis takes hold of my limbs, but then I go on to remember the day I forgot the anniversary of Mark’s death, and the memories keep on coming. I stabbed the list! I recall this with a shuddering exhale and, sitting there on my bed, I pull the makeshift dagger from the diary cover and lay it down facing away from me.

That done, I stare at the diary cover. It stares back.

Unable to help myself from flicking to the end, I peel back the flap and stare at the mess of words and crosses that make up the list I wrote with Kate when I was thirteen.

Nine out of thirteen kisses have been crossed off. Four remain, never to be completed:

5) A kiss that lasts so long we have to break away for breath

10) Kisses on the private parts

12) A kiss on a date

13) A kiss from someone that I am in love with

Only now do I recognise the irony of their being thirteen kisses on the list. An unlucky number, as proven by the disastrous ending to our weeklong (official) relationship, and also how old I was when everything in my life went wrong. Additionally, and again somewhat ironically, the four kisses left might just be the four I longed to experience the most.

I can only imagine partaking in those intimacies with one person. And that person is literally going to run away from me if I’m not there to meet him at the finish line.

I groan in frustration and twist my hands into my hair. My scalp is sore and red from all the times I’ve been doing this of late. I don’t know what to do now.

So I cry.

I cry until my tear ducts are empty and my throat is sore, until my head hurts and my nose is running too, until my eyes are swollen and my chest heaves from the lack of oxygen. I cry for every day of the past four years without my brother, for the past six days without the boy I fell for, for what I’ve put everyone dear to me through, for the unfairness of life and my conscience and my heart.