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1992
They’re in Shauna’s room even though Shanua’s room is smaller and not as nice as Jackie’s is and Shauna’s parents keep yelling at each other downstairs even though they know Jackie’s over.
But Jackie always wants to come to Shauna’s house. Says it’s just better.
And they’re sitting on Shauna’s bed. Jackie’s knees curled into her chest, gazing out the window. Shauna knows Jackie’s pretending she’s a girl in a music video, because she told Shauna that’s what she’s always doing, when she looks out the window. And now Shauna always does that too — doesn’t even mean to.
Meanwhile, right now, Shauna fiddles with the radio on her bedside. Her usual station is coming out staticky and that makes her heart beat faster. ‘Cause her radio’s old and borrowed from her dad’s stuff in the attic and Jackie’s one in her bedroom is shiny and white and new and has a spot for a CD player and for cassette tapes and everything at Jackie’s house is nicer than it is at Shauna’s which makes sense because everything in Jackie’s life is nicer than it is in Shauna’s.
Shauna huffs an angry exhale and moves the dial again, hoping that maybe she can will the static away, and she knows it’s not the radio’s fault that it’s coming through staticky, but it feels like it, and if it’s not the radio’s fault then it’s hers, probably, and she can hear her parents shouting downstairs, and they’re probably gonna get divorced, she thinks. The whole separation thing two years ago that they said was just for a little while and then last year dad came home, well that all still feels flimsy and wrong and like somebody put the wrong video in the tape player. And dad’s probably gonna be gone for real this time, for good, and Jackie’s gonna ask about that soon, and everyone else will too and her face feels really red and the radio won’t work and—
Shauna exhales again. Comes out just this little whisper of air. Turns the FM dial until it lands on something that sounds sorta okay—old like, 60s music, or something.
Jackie looks up from where she’s been fiddling with the bottom fringe of Shauna’s curtain. Smiles. “This song’s pretty.”
Shauna shrugs. Jackie’s teeth are so white. “I guess.”
Jackie looks down and Shauna keeps looking at her. Jackie’s running her fingers over the friendship bracelets that they made years ago with a kit Jackie’s mom got her for her birthday. Thick pink plastic beads that are kinda bumpy, the shape reminds Shauna of when her mom cooks peas and they get a little dried out and geometric. Two white oval beads in the middle. Purple lettering. A J and an S. A purple flower charm between them, a wooden one, dangling over Jackie’s wristbone.
Shauna thumbs her own bracelet. Identical. The elastic feels loose and overstretched, in this way that makes her wanna bite her lip. She thinks about it falling off by accident, and then her heart speeds up again. She guesses it’s just one of those days when her insides just feel a little bit wrong.
Shauna looks at Jackie again—like, she was already looking at Jackie, but she notices again, that she’s still looking at Jackie. Says, “What’s wrong?”
Jackie’s eyebrows turn into a little furrow. She smiles. Her fake smile. Shauna knows the difference. “What? Nothing.”
“You’re just all quiet.”
“Well … I don’t know. I didn’t have anything to say. Do I always have to have something to say?”
Shauna bites her lip in. “No.”
She feels like Jackie’s angry, but then Jackie just laughs, hops off the bed, hair bouncing all caramel and swirling.
She’s running her fingers over Shauna’s shelves—the magazine spines and the old books and the trinkets and the shoeboxes covered in magazine collages and all of it collecting dust because Shauna hasn’t cleaned her room in like, a thousand years, but Jackie doesn’t seem to care.
“I mean if I did have something to say I’d totally say it. You know that, right?”
“Sure?”
“I mean, I don’t even care what Lucy Powers said, you know? Like what does she know, about me?”
Shauna raises an eyebrow. Feels her bad mood slipping away, how it always does, give her enough time around Jackie.
“Jackie. Do you wanna talk about what Lucy Powers said?”
Jackie thumbs her fingers over Shauna’s tiny plastic rabbit figurine from the toy store that she’s had forever. With one ear broken off and the paint on the top hat all chipped. “Literally no, Shauna.”
Shauna exhales the air from her cheeks. “Okay.”
“It’s just like!” Jackie says, plopping down on the ground, cross legged, the bunny still in her fist. “ Lots of people haven’t kissed someone and it’s not even a big deal to not have kissed someone yet by the ninth grade literally obviously, and it’s like? What is she some kind of kissing oracle? That she can just tell who has and hasn’t kissed and it’s so totally bogus and nobody even believes her, probably, because I mean, who even believes Lucy Powers, right? She’s a bitch and she just likes attention and she doesn’t even have any proof of it about me, if it was true — not saying it is . I mean it is true but she doesn’t know that. I don’t even care, obviously. Because it’s stupid. But it’s also like — I mean do I look like I’ve never kissed anyone? Do I just look like a … a kissless loser?”
Jackie looks up at her with her big eyes and her pouty lip and her face all vulnerable and tiny and Shauna gets this urge, looking at her. Can’t even tell what the urge is for. It’s just, she’s so … Jackie right now and Shauna just wants to … you know?
Like, smush her face together between Shauna’s hands and shake her around for a bit. Kind of like that.
“Jackie Meredith Taylor,” Shauna says, clambering off the bed, and sitting on the carpet across from Jackie, knees pulled into her chest. “You do not look like a kissless loser. If anybody looks like a kissless loser it is not you. It’s the opposite of you. You’re a … a kissful winner.”
Jackie scrunches her nose. “You’re a bad liar, Shipman.”
“Not lying!”
“But I — I am a kissless loser. Or, I mean, I’m kissless. And doesn’t that kinda equal loserdom?”
Shauna tilts her head. “But I thought you — I mean, last month. At that party? You and Sadecki and the seven minutes in heaven thing? I mean, you did your seven minutes. I counted.”
“We did minutes,” Jackie confirms, nodding a little, craning her neck down. “Um. But they were talking minutes? He wanted to — but I just, like, freaked a little. A lot. It’s freaky in there. I mean, it’s one thing to like, like someone? Like, ‘doodle their name in your notebook’ like them. Another thing when he’s like, right in your face with his teeth and his nose and you can see every single one of all of his little pores and isn’t that creepy? To have someone just be right there? I mean, some guy all … in the flesh.”
Shauna shrugs. “I dunno. I can think of less creepy things.”
Jackie rolls her eyes. “Right, well, what else could I expect from the playground kiss queen. ”
“Hey!” Shauna laughs, backhands Jackie lightly on the knee. “You make me sound like some kind of kiss slut.”
“Well,” Jackie says, tilting her head. “I mean, I wouldn’t use that term exactly? But you were the kissing dynamo of the fifth grade. You hit like, every boy in the class that one recess.”
“Yeah, and since then I’ve kissed exactly one person and it was literally Jason Thurston and he smelled like Cheetos the whole time. ”
“But at least you kissed him! And it was at that one pool party so everyone saw! They know you’re not a leper.”
Shauna can’t not roll her eyes. “Jackie. You are not a leper. Everyone likes you.”
“All the girls maybe! But, but I want guys to be able to — and for girls to see that guys are able to — you know?”
Shauna rolls her eyes again, but the kind where it’s not fond anymore. She feels the bad mood, creeping back in, these tendrils of annoyance plucking at her skin, nagging at her. “Okay, no, not doing this.”
“What this? There’s no this.”
“I’m not going to play into the compliment fishing thing when you obviously know that you’re so pretty and everyone is obsessed with you and all the boys in our grade wanna kiss you and all the girls in our grade wanna be you and every single person knows about every other person being obsessed with you! It’s common freaking knowledge, Jackie!”
Jackie sniffs in a little. “Thanks.”
Shauna huffs out an angry sigh. “You’re welcome.”
“Um, and don’t yell at me again for asking but—”
“That wasn’t yelling.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“Fine. I’m sorry.”
“Thanks,” Jackie says, and looks around the room. Fidgets with the rabbit in her hands again.
“... Are you gonna say the thing you were gonna say before?”
Jackie bites her lip. “Well. I just, I know you say that. That people like me. Even that they like like me.”
“They do. I mean, generally, yes. And also, specifically yes, ‘cause Jeff Sadecki is basically in love with you. He told everybody. And he is so gonna ask you to Fall Formal. I’d bet five dollars he asks you to Fall Formal.”
“Well that’s just the thing! What if he does and then— what if it’s not good? Me? What if I’m — I mean, people like me, sure. But maybe it’s a from afar kind of liking. Maybe they get close up, and, and it’ll be like me and Jeff in the closet? And they’ll see all my pores and my nose and my teeth and my hair right there and they’ll, we’ll, you know, kiss. And I’m crappy at it. And then everyone stops liking me. I mean, what if I’m just no good up close, Shauna?”
Shauna leans down, to make Jackie look her in the eye. Jackie catches her gaze back, and they both straighten their postures, soften their eyes, looking at each other. “Hey. I see you up close every single day. And I’m still the biggest Jackie Taylor fan anybody’s ever heard of.”
“That’s different,” Jackie says. “We’re not kissing, Shipman.”
Shauna leans back against the bed, lets her knees droop to the side. “Okay, good point. But literally, you’re gonna be fine, when it happens. It’s like falling off a log.”
“Huh,” Jackie says, thinking. “Maybe that’s not a bad idea, actually?”
“Falling off a log?”
“ No,” Jackie says. “I mean, us. Like, kissing. You know, for practice?”
Shauna pulls her knees back into her chest. “What?”
Jackie blinks at her. Her eyes have never looked so big. “I mean, people do it all the time. You know Taissa, from my soccer team? Well one day I walked into the locker room and her and — well they were — well, she told me that’s how her and Van Palmer learned to kiss. You just like, practice. It’s not real.”
Shauna takes that in. “Um. I guess, yeah it just — I don’t know. I still feel like it would be … weird? I mean, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t it be weird?”
“Oh,” Jackie says. Looks down. “You’re right. It so would be. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“No, I’m sorry, I—”
“No it’s okay!” Jackie says. “It was stupid.”
Shauna swirls her tongue under the edges of her teeth, folding the muscle, thinking. “Well. No. Not stupid. I mean, maybe despite my run as the fifth grade kiss queen, some newer practice also couldn’t hurt. ”
“That’s all I mean!” Jackie says. “It can only help us. See, ‘cause then we’ll know how, right? So when the time comes, like, when it’s real, someone we actually wanna go all liplock with? We can feel good about it! Not ruin the experience by being all worried that we don’t know what to do with ourselves.”
Shauna runs her hands over the ends of her hair. “You’ve really thought this through, huh?”
“What? No! I just thought of this,” Jackie says.
“Okay,” Shauna says.
“It’s a really normal thing. It doesn’t like, make you a lesbian or anything. I mean, obviously not. It’s just like — this is a safe place for us, right? We can work out all the bugs, and nobody else would ever even have to know. ‘Cause it’s just you and me.”
“Yeah,” Shauna says. She feels really aware of her mouth, as she talks. Of her lips moving. Of her teeth in their places, of metal bits of her braces stuck to them. “That’s a good point. Just you and me.”
“Plus, ” Jackie says with a smirk. “I know I’d be way better than Cheeto Breath.”
Shauna raises an eyebrow. “Oh, so now miss I-don’t-know-how-to-kiss is so confident huh? You don’t know, Cheeto Breath could blow you way out of the water.”
“You take that back!” Jackie laughs.
“Make me!” Shauna laughs back.
They only can laugh for so long though. Because then it dies down, and the room is silent, and they’re sitting on Shauna’s old faded rug that she loves, that she thinks isn’t a real Persian carpet but her mom said no one would know the difference, and she’s sitting on it with Jackie and they’re sitting so close to each other, like they always do. There’s just a few inches, to close the gap, between their mouths.
Feels so far away, though. From where Shauna’s sitting, feels like an impossible gulf.
She looks at Jackie’s mouth. She’s gonna be touching Jackie’s mouth. In just a few minutes. Just a few seconds maybe. She’s gonna know what it feels like. Her mouth, on Jackie’s.
She scrunches her hands over the stitches of the rug, feels them give way, the threads spilling in the direction her fingers move them, snapping back to place as she leaves them behind.
“Uh, okay,” Shauna says. “So how do we like, do this? ”
“Well,” Jackie says, setting the plastic rabbit down on the rug between them. “I think, it would probably go something like this?”
She leans in slow. Shauna tilts her head. Meets Jackie’s mouth like she's been doing it her whole life.
Jackie’s lips are soft. Shauna thinks about that immediately. Softer than anybody’s lips Shauna’s ever kissed. All the boys were a little chapped, she realizes now. But Jackie’s just smooth. Her lips are a little sticky, from the vanilla lipgloss she wears, whatever was left of it by the end of the day. She tastes sweet. Smells sweeter, too. Not just from the lipgloss, but from the everything about her.
It’s like, she just smells like Jackie. Shauna couldn’t name the scent, but she knows it better than any other. The smell of Jackie’s hair and Jackie’s sheets and when you walk through the door of Jackie’s house, for their whole lives. And now that scent is so close, is wrapping around her.
Shauna can’t tell what she’s supposed to do with her hands — what she’s allowed to do with her hands.
But Jackie seems to know — Jackie brings her hands to Shauna’s face, fingers gentle at her jaw, at her cheeks, at her temples. Makes Shauna feel like Jackie’s got her. Like how when you see a little animal and you pick it up cupped between both hands and it’s just totally surrounded by you. That’s what it feels like Jackie’s doing to her.
So Shauna picks her own hands up — they feel shaky. Way shakier than they did at that pool party. Brings them to slowly rest on Jackie’s back. Just where her hair hits her shoulderblades.
Shauna kisses Jackie, pulls in a little deeper — has to stop herself from humming a little, from making a sound, because she wants to, just feels like the kind of thing her body needs to do, is make some little sounds about this. But it also feels like if she does, that’ll ruin it. That’s something you do for real kissing. Little moans and sighs or whatever, like in romance novels.
She’s not sure when they’re gonna stop. She could go like this for a while. Just Jackie’s lips pressing into hers, her thumbs brushing Shauna’s cheeks, over and over. Them pulling away, just a little, but it’s only so they can go right back. And Shauna moves her hands a little, her limbs starting to feel kind of not frozen. Brings her palm across Jackie’s back, feels the velvety fabric of her sweater swill forward, feels Jackie go closer into Shauna with the movement. Like she’s trying to nestle into her.
She wonders — should they be doing something about their tongues? Is that too much? Like, if it’s practice, shouldn’t they be trying everything? But to ask, she’d have to stop kissing Jackie, and she doesn’t wanna do that yet. She wants to keep doing this forever, maybe. Is that weird to think? Shauna doesn’t think so. It’s just so — it feels — feels — comfy . Feels like they could curl up in this moment and stay here. Feels like maybe Jackie would want to.
Jackie pulls back. Shauna tries not to feel weird about it, about suddenly not feeling Jackie touching her. But she does. She feels warm from the kiss, still, the touch clinging to her. But cold too. Cold already seeping in from the fact that it’s not the kiss anymore.
Jackie says, “Would you maybe wanna try it with—”
There’s a knock at the door behind them. It swings open. Shauna springs back from Jackie as fast as she can, sits on the bed.
“Shauns?” Mom says. She looks like she’s been crying, maybe. Her eyes have that red, scrubbed look to them. “I thought I’d order a pizza, for me and you girls. How’s that sound?”
“Sure,” Shauna says. “Yeah, that sounds great.”
“Well, come on downstairs and help me pick toppings, huh? We can even get a side. Maybe garlic bread? Or a salad? We could be wild and have both?”
“Sure, Mom,” Shauna says again. Her heart’s going so fast.
Mom looks between them. Takes in something about the vibe. Shauna’s not sure what. “You girls getting into trouble in here?”
“No trouble, Mrs. Shipman!” Jackie says, springing to her feet, and walking to the door. “And I would love some garlic bread.”
Shauna blinks after them, trying to get her bearings. One second ago she was kissing Jackie. And now they’re walking out of the room and then they’re gonna have dinner with her Mom and it’s gonna be a weird tense dinner ‘cause — yeah, Dad’s not there, his car’s gone from the view in Shauna’s window — and then Jackie will probably have to go straight home because it’s a school night and her parents are stupid strict about that and they’re not gonna get to talk about what just happened and—
And something happened, right? Didn’t something just happen?
Shauna follows them out of the room, still turning the thought over and over in her mind like a skipping stone.
1995
They’re in Shauna’s car. They’re always in Shauna’s car, even though Jackie can basically take her mom’s car whenever she wants because her mom never goes anywhere, and Jackie’s mom’s car is actually nice, it’s literally a Lexus. Not like Shauna’s car that she had to pay for half of with the money from her summer job at the library and which smells sort of old and mothy and they got with a jillion miles already on it and one of the seatbelts in the back doesn’t even work unless you hold it at just the right angle and think positive thoughts while you click it in.
But Jackie says Shauna’s car just feels nicer, to hang out in. So that’s what they always take.
Jackie settles herself into the passenger seat. Checks her reflection in the mirror that flips down from the sun visor.
Shauna says: “So, Paramus Park?”
Jackie scoffs. “ Paramus Park? No way. Garden State or bust. We’re not fucking around here, Shipman.”
“Paramus Park is closer.”
“Paramus Park is a lackluster, common mall you could find anywhere in America, and they don’t even have a good food court. Garden State is a beacon of hope to shoppers everywhere.”
“They paying you to say that?” Shauna asks, as they pull off from the curb.
“I just need something good for this date. Ergo, I need a wide selection, which Garden State has ! Besides, it’s so pretty there! With the marble? Ugh, to die for. And you know I’m always in a better mood when we’re someplace pretty. I literally can’t help it. I’m a Libra.”
Shauna rolls her eyes. “That’s not real, Jackie.”
“Spoken like a true Capricorn, Shauna.”
Shauna flips the radio on as they sit at a red light — some moody girl band. “Fine, I will go to Garden State. Even though this is just a regular date? And you already have a million dresses you could wear to said date?”
Jackie hugs her from the side, squeezing tight. “Thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you! You’re the best. The best best friend and the best designated wheel man and—”
“Do I have to be designated wheel man? You literally could drive sometimes.”
Jackie’s still hugged into her side. “I just feel my talents are better utilized as a passenger. You know, directions, feeding you fries, fixing the radio.”
She fiddles with the stations until something bright and poppy is streaming out the speakers.
“Okay but you’re paying for gas because if I’m driving all the way to Garden State for you then—”
"It's like five extra minutes."
"Five extra minutes of gas is still gas that I have to—"
Shauna’s cut off by someone loudly laying into their horn behind her.
“Oh my God we’re literally going you asshole!” Jackie exclaims, dislodges herself from Shauna’s arm.
“Yeah, asshole,” Shauna says, poking her head quickly out the window and back again, before rolling — slowly, because fuck that guy — through the green light.
“Oh my God you can’t yell it where they can hear you, Shauna! What if he’s like some crazy road rage freak?”
“Well if he is he’s a crazy road rage freak who now knows not to fucking mess with me,” Shauna says, through laughs.
“Oh yeah, you’re a fearsome force of the road.”
“Thank you!” Shauna says. “Not enough people acknowledge that about me.”
“Another reason why you’re great as designated wheel man and I’m great as Betsy’s first mate.”
Shauna leans into the dashboard a little, like she’s trying to listen to the car. “What’s that? Oh, yeah, sure I’ll tell her — Betsy said first mate has to pay for gas.”
“Fine,” Jackie says, and pats the roof of the car. “Anything for you, Bets.”
“Also?” Shauna says. “Just to say it again, you do not need to spend a bunch of money on a new dress just to impress Jeff.”
“I know that!” Jackie says. “I just wanna feel nice. Besides, next week is like, special.”
Shauna feels her voice catch in her throat. “Special like — how? Are you guys gonna — you know?”
“What? No,” Jackie says. “ So not ready for that. I mean, can you imagine? I would have needed to start freaking out about that weeks ago if we were gonna.”
“Oh,” Shauna says, trying to make herself breathe normally. “Then what’s so special?”
“It’s our anniversary. Duh.”
Shauna side-eyes her. “You got back together four months ago.”
“Ugh, that doesn’t count, ” Jackie says. “We were broken up for like, a minute.”
“Three weeks,” Shauna says. Tightens her hands on the steering wheel. Looks straight ahead.
“Whatever! Three weeks is a drop in the bucket when that bucket starts at literal freshman year. I mean our actual anniversary. Fall formal? ‘92? I wore that killer strapless dress with the orange flowers?”
“Oh,” Shauna says, remembering. “Right. But you guys didn’t even actually start dating for like, months after that. I mean, you barely talked the rest of that semester.”
“Yeah, but an awkward first date’s still a first date. Plus, first kiss? Definitely cements it as something.”
"Okay, yeah, I guess your first kiss with Jeff does merit an anniversary,” Shauna concedes.
Jackie reaches around in the bottom of her purse, scrounging for something. Finds a tin of Altoids, and pops one in her mouth. “Not just with Jeff. First kiss period .”
Shauna’s fingers stutter across the steering wheel. “What?”
“What? That was my first kiss. Me and Jeff at that fountain that wasn’t even on, outside that Knights of Columbus hall they rented out. Not exactly the most romantic kiss of all time? But, definitely a kiss.”
“Yeah, a kiss, Jackie. But not your first kiss,” Shauna says. She’s looking straight ahead. Focusing really hard on the red bumper of the sedan in front of her. She needs to stay calm. She’s not sure why she feels like her whole body is going tight and her thoughts are going too loud, but it is , and she needs it to not.
“I think I know when my first kiss was, Shauna.”
“Well clearly you don’t ,” Shauna says, louder than she means to.
“What is with you?” Jackie says.
Shauna doesn’t know how to answer that.
“Forget it,” Shauna says. “I must have misremembered.”