First Kiss
Frank sat slouched in the chair—legs extending into the narrow aisle between the desks and eyes filled with boredom he made no effort to conceal. Two years older than the other kids in the class, he exuded an aura of confidence and worldliness the teachers hated and Ellen greatly admired.
Certainly Mr. Beardsley, the math teacher, hadn’t been very happy the day he told him to “pay attention or get out.” There had been an audible collective gasp when Frank had stood up and said, “Get out sounds good to me” and then sauntered out of the classroom. Furious, the teacher had muttered cocky…and another word Ellen couldn’t quite hear under his breath as he followed Frank out into the hallway.
Ellen was an intelligent girl, but annoyingly argumentative which meant she wasn’t one of the teachers’ favorites either—or anyone else’s favorite for that matter.
“She’s nothing like her older sister,” Miss Firebaugh, the homeroom teacher remarked two weeks into the semester.
“Ellen’s so not cool,” the popular kids said
“Too smart for her own good,” her father complained.
Fortunately, an adolescent girl can survive without friends as long as she can read and Ellen did a lot of reading. For the past several months, all of the books she had chosen to read were romance novels—which explained why her attention was focused on Frank instead of the teacher.
Renegade, rake, rebel, rogue, she mused, searching through her new romance novel vocabulary for words to describe the defiant boy who had been held back twice and would probably never graduate from high school. Suddenly Frank glanced in Ellen’s direction and caught her staring at him. Blushing, she turned away, but a few minutes later, the girl sitting across the aisle handed her a note. When she unfolded the small scrap of white paper and read the words written on it, her heart began beating wildly: Meet me behind the school at four o’clock, Frank
At three-forty five, Ellen was waiting at the rendezvous point, where she spent the next twenty minutes alternately praying Frank wouldn’t show up and desperately hoping he would. When he finally came around the corner of the building, a mixture of relief and panic swept over her.
“I saw you looking at me in class,” he said, his eyes mocking her as they settled on what she knew were pathetically tiny breasts for a girl her age. He took a step towards her and instinctively she pressed closer to the building, the rough surface of the bricks digging into her back through her thin cotton blouse. Frank placed his palms against the building on either side of her head and leaned closer. When he saw the apprehension in her eyes, his expression softened.
“Have you ever kissed a boy before?” he asked.
Too flustered and embarrassed to reply, Ellen turned her head away. Frank hesitated briefly and then, holding her face gently with his hands, brought his lips to hers. After a few seconds he released her, winked and walked away grinning. Three days later, he was permanently suspended for fighting. Ellen never saw him again, but she cherished the memory of that first kiss for the rest of her life.
