“What was your first kiss like?” I asked. The answer suddenly felt urgent.
He didn’t speak for several long seconds, and when he did, it came out on a soft exhalation. “I don’t know. I haven’t kissed anyone yet.”
* * *
THE RUMOR AT Deer Park High was that Ms. George was a witch. The ninth-grade English teacher was an older, unmarried woman whose thinning rust-colored hair was so brittle looking, I was tempted to try to snap off a piece. She dressed in flowing layers of black and ocher that hid her tiny body, with pointy-toed high-heeled boots that laced up around her skinny calves. And she had this resin bracelet with a dead beetle encased inside that she assured us was real. She was strict and tough and a little bit scary. I loved her.
On the first day of class, she handed out pastel-colored workbooks that were to serve as our journals. She told us journals were sacred, that she wouldn’t judge their contents. Our first assignment was to write about our most memorable experience from the summer. Delilah looked at me and mouthed the words Charlie shirtless. Holding back a giggle, I opened the pale yellow book and began to describe the jumping rock.
Writing in the journal quickly became my favorite part of ninth grade—sometimes Ms. George gave us a theme to explore; other times she left it up to us. It felt good to give shape and order to my thoughts, and I liked using words to paint pictures of the lake and the bush. I wrote a full page about Sue’s pierogies, but I also imagined terrifying tales of vengeful ghosts and medical experiments gone wrong.
Four weeks into the school year, Ms. George asked me to stay after class. Once the other students had filed out, she told me I had a natural talent for creative writing and encouraged me to enter a short-story competition being held across the school board. Finalists would attend a three-day writers’ workshop at a local college during March break.
“Polish up one of your horror narratives, dear,” she said, then shooed me out the door.
I took the journal to the cottage Thanksgiving weekend so Sam could help me decide which idea to work on. We sat on my bed with the Hudson’s Bay blanket pulled over our legs, Sam flipping through the pages and my eyes stuck to him like a tongue to a metal pole in winter. Ever since Sam had told me he hadn’t kissed anyone, I couldn’t stop thinking about how I wanted to put my mouth on his before someone else got there.
“These are really good, Percy,” he said. His face turned serious, and he gave me a there, there pat on my leg. “You’re such a sweet, pretty girl on the outside, but really you’re a total freak.” I grabbed the workbook from his hands and swatted him with it, but my brain had jammed on the word pretty.
“I mean it as a compliment,” he laughed, holding his hands up to shield himself. I raised my arm to whack him again, but he grabbed my wrist and yanked me forward so that I tumbled on top of him. We both went still. My eyes moved to the little crease in his bottom lip. But then I heard footsteps coming upstairs and I scrambled off him. Mom appeared in the doorway, frowning behind her oversized red frames.
“Everything okay up here, Persephone?”
“I think you should go with the brain blood one,” Sam croaked after she left.
* * *
MOM AND DAD said we could spend March break in Barry’s Bay if I didn’t get into the workshop, and for a second I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t bother entering. I floated the idea to Delilah as we were walking home from school, and she pinched my arm.
“You’ve got better things to worry about than the Summer Boys,” she said.
I clutched her arm. “Who are you and what have you done with Delilah Mason?” I wailed.
She poked her tongue out. “I’m serious. Boys are for fun. Lots of fun. But don’t let one stand in the way of your greatness.”
It took every ounce of my self-control not to double over with laughter. But that was that.
I worked on the story throughout the fall. It was about an idyllic-seeming suburb where the smartest, most attractive teenagers were sent away to an elite academy. Except that the school was actually a nightmarish institution where their brain blood was harvested to formulate a youth-giving serum. Sam helped me work through the details over email. He poked holes in the plot and the science and then brainstormed solutions with me.
Once I finished, I mailed him a copy with a signed cover page and a dedication to him “for always knowing just the right amount of blood.” I called it “Young Blood.”
Five days later, he phoned the house after suppertime. “I’m going to stop thinking about what we can do over March break,” he said. “There’s no way you aren’t going to win.”