Read Online Becky's Kiss by Nicholas Fisher - Free Book Online

eyelashes, sleek bangs, and a big red hair ribbon, she thought she saw a flash of blond and baseball cap.
    “No, Becky. This way,” he said in her other ear.
    She spun furiously and almost fell down. In fact, some big guy from behind caught her by the backpack, righted her, and gently guided her to the left, never breaking stride and continuing without a hitch to brag to his friend about the keg party he was planning this weekend in the woods behind the quarry.
    Becky was five feet from her locker now. People passed behind her and all the sound seemed to fade and wash out to the edges.
    There, taped right below her number 157 and drawn on a sheet of loose-leaf, was the picture of a big heart, real Valentine stuff six months too early. Her own heart pounded and her face burned. She walked up closer, and in her head, Danny’s voice said,
    “I see you everywhere, Becky. I see you in the reflections on the water, in the trees, in the wind. I see you in the sun and I see you in my dreams. Mostly though…Becky Michigan, I see you right here.”
    In her mind, she could picture him pointing to his heart, and she almost burst into tears. She walked forward and took a closer look. There was an inscription below the two big curves coming down to a point, and in her own head she knew that it would be Danny’s careful printing, each letter worked in perfect parallel and spacing from the others, claiming, ‘I see you right here.’
    Becky took the paper from the bottom edge and looked closer at the writing. Simply, it said, ‘This is Mrs. Washington bending over.’
    Becky’s lower lip fell and her face went ashy and crestfallen. Mrs. Washington was the fat librarian who had prattled on earlier this week during orientation about the continuing relevance of shelf texts as opposed to electronic articles you could find on Google. And this note was nothing more than some random joke that happened to find locker 157. There was never any Danny in her head, pointing to his heart, and she was no more than…random.
    Head down, shoulders slumped, she went to the cafeteria, and it smelled like old fat and bleach. Oh well. Dream boys or not, voices in her head or just hopeful echoes, she had to move on, as disappointing as that seemed, considering how nice that boy’s tone had sounded in her imagination just now. Becky almost laughed at herself. So she wanted strange whispers, mysteries, and disappearing acts? Well, no, not really. She was just tired of being random and boring and plain all her life.
    She got in line. In her ‘well planned’ exit out the door this morning, she’d forgotten to check the fridge for her lunch, and now she had to buy. She made a half-hearted effort to see the steam table, and it looked like a choice of Sloppy Joe’s or tacos. Not her thing. And sandwich-bar bread was always stale, at least in any school Becky had ever attended. She exited the line, thinking maybe she would adopt a new vegetarian lifestyle, always allowing for hot dogs and Chicken McNuggets, of course.
    Becky looked around at the seating choices. All week she’d had B lunch, but Thursday put her here in the A-group, noisy and jam-packed, mostly boys sitting with boys and girls sitting with girls. There was a group in the back doing little rap battles, a collection of quieter kids studying to the right along with the ear-bud zombies staring off into space, and a busted table in the middle of the room by the trash cans temporarily surrounded by passing boys playing keep-away with someone’s hat. There was friendly shoving, girls kneeing up on the benches and shouting in each other’s faces, a couple of long-hairs tapping quarters on the tables, and some upper classman trying to make a smaller kid eat something gross…a zoo, just like her old school.
    So.
    It was either the study-kids or the one empty table by the trash cans next to the concrete support beam that had a poster of Frederick Douglass on it. It was an old science desk at the