The Things You Kiss Goodbye by Leslie Connor Read Free Book Online

thought about Bampas, and his lifelong instructions for me:
Fili antio
. Kiss it goodbye. When I was little, if I cried or fussed because he’d denied me something, or gone back on a promise—or even if I’d gotten hurt somehow—he’d give me about a minute. Then, firmly and evenly he’d say,
“Fili antio.”
He’d present me his cheek. I was supposed to kiss him. Then I was to bury my pain or disappointment on the spot. Stop crying. Let it go.
    All of that flashed as I stood looking at Brady. He hadn’t meant to hurt me. Hell, he didn’t even know that he
had
hurt me. Should this really be a big deal?
    “I missed you after you took off,” he said, and he wrapped me in his arms, rocked me back and forth. Then he laughed in my ear. “And you saved my ass because I would have missed a pop quiz in math if we’d cut.” He hugged me tighter, kept his lips pressed to my head. Then he held me back and looked at me. He said, “Hey, there’s that party in the glider field tomorrow night.” His eyes were bright and flirty. Those parties were legendary but, of course, I’d never been to one. “I want you there with me,” he said.
    A party, and the words
I want you there with me
. Boy, did that sound good.
    “Okay,” I said. “We’ll make a plan.”
    Mangled fingers would heal. I made a choice.
Fili antio
. I kissed the incident goodbye.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
    HarperCollins Publishers
    ..................................................................
Ten
    B UMPER TO BUMPER , CARS LINED THE SIDE OF THE ROAD . I stepped out of the passenger’s side of Brady’s car. The gravel on the shoulder crunched under my feet in a satisfying sort of way.
    “Over to the left,” Brady said. “I think I see everybody.”
    Of course, “everybody” was his group of friends. We stepped onto a sea of long, yellow grass. The strands seem to lie down at our feet for as far as a person could run. I stole glimpses at the full moon over our heads. It was alternately bright, then lost, behind fast-moving clouds. So this was the famous glider field. I had never wanted to be anywhere more. Or maybe it was truer to say that I craved being out in thewild, and I felt crazy-glad to be at the first big party of the school year.
    It had taken two lies to get me there. First, my crushed fingers were obvious enough that Momma had noticed. Instantly, I’d known that my freedom was in jeopardy. But the way I had seen it, I had a whole art room full of possible hazards to pick from. Even though I wasn’t in a clay class, I’d chosen the mixing vat. “I was doing a favor for Mr. Terrazzi, mixing clay for the basics class,” I’d told her with a shrug. (Well, I had watched Big Bonnie Swenson do it from the corner of my eye.) “I should have taken the ring off before I went digging under thirty pounds of red clay.”
    “Ring? Oh! That’s right, your class ring! It came? Oh, where is it?” Mamma’s eyes were full of light. I liked the rare moments that she played girlfriend to me.
    I pulled the ring out of the neck of my shirt by the shoelace string. I drew the whole thing over my head, freed it from my long tail of hair, and handed it to her.
    Momma turned the ring over in her hand. “It’s a pretty stone. Ooh . . . the polish,” she said. “But this shoelace! So grubby!”
    Oops
.
    “Bettina,” she went on, “you should put your ring on the gold chain Bampas and I gave you for your birthday until you can wear it on your finger again.”
    “I should,” I agreed, but I knew that I wouldn’t.
    My second lie was to get out of a dinner with my family at my father’s restaurant; I was getting good mileage out of my spot on the cheer squad. Tonight, for example, we were having a pizza party and planning a pep rally. Right. My family dropped me off at Minio’s Pizzeria in the village where I tucked myself inside the entry next to the gumball machines, until Brady picked me up there ten minutes later.
    So I had made