Lips Touch: Three Times(4)
Author: Laini Taylor

"Wonder what his name is," she murmured after he was gone.

"Beautiful Boy, capital B, capital B," said Cactus with a sigh. "But, you know, Mr. Boy to the likes of us."

"Yeah," said Kizzy wistfully. "Welcome to Saint Pock Mark’s Finishing School for Cannibals, Mr. Boy."

She went to her class wondering how long it would be before some leggy girl was sitting on his lap, snapping his old-man suspenders and tossing her silky hair. Probably by lunchtime. Jenny Glass was temporarily between boys; she’d be the lucky one. It was the natural order, Kizzy thought with a flash of bitterness at the life and h*ps and hair and ankles she had been dealt. Like attracts like, beauty finds beauty, and freaks look on from the smoking section, aching.

But lunchtime brought an upset to the natural order.

Kizzy met Cactus and Evie in the usual place, behind a low wall at a corner of the quad where some sort of steam billowed from a vent to disguise their cigarette smoke. They slouched there and drank Cokes and ate flat sandwiches they’d brought from home, and they could see through the cafeteria window to the corner tables. Mick Crespain’s lap was vacant, and usually Kizzy’s imagination would have slid her phantom right into place there, br**sts resting on knuckles and all, but not today. Mr. Boy had stolen her phantom out of Mick Crespain’s lap. She wondered if he had stolen Sarah Ferris out of Mick Crespain’s lap too. She furtively lit a cigarette and looked around, wondering where he was.

He was much closer than she had expected. He was standing on the other side of the low wall, looking at her. Their eyes met and Kizzy instantly blushed to beet. His gaze was like physical touch, like a grabbed hand, interlaced fingers, a squeeze. Like it went through her eyes and entered her bloodstream. Her face felt molten hot.

"Hello," he said.

"Hello, Mr. Boy," she heard Cactus, behind her, say with a chuckle.

He didn’t look away from Kizzy, who began to feel acutely uncomfortable. He was just looking at her. She felt entirely purple with blushing. "Hi," she murmured.

"Those things’ll kill you," he said, shifting his eyes to her cigarette. His voice was low and a little raspy.

"Yeah, well … maybe," Kizzy said, looking at it too. Her heart beat fast against her ribs as she fumbled up something to say. "But at least I’ll die looking older than my age, wrinkly and dry with a gross phlegmy cough."

He laughed. "When you put it like that, I’m surprised anyone doesn’t smoke."

She was relieved to have said something, anything, instead of just staring at him and stammering. Making him laugh was a bonus, which made her blush deepen. "Me too," she said. "Plus, people are always, like, buy American. And what’s more American than cigarettes?"

He cocked his head to one side and raised an eyebrow. When his hair shifted, Kizzy saw the glint of small gold hoops in both his ears. "You know," she explained, babbling, "tobacco plantations? Delightful American traditions like slavery?"

"Uh huh," he said uncertainly.

"Nothing to do with me, though. Only slaves my people ever kept were their own children."

He gave her a bemused look and held out his hand. "May I?"

"What? This?" With a quizzical look, Kizzy handed him her cigarette and watched as he raised it to his red, red lips and took a long suck. Her insides shivered a little, watching his lips close over her own lipstick prints. It was the closest she had ever come to a kiss. It was a kiss by proxy. She reached for the cigarette as he handed it back. "Do … do you want one?" she asked.

"No thanks. I’ll just share yours."

Kizzy could hear Evie and Cactus stifling giggles. She glanced back at them and saw their eyes were merry and astonished. She turned back to the beautiful boy, more beautiful than she had even first realized when he walked past. His face, his bones, were perfect as a statue’s, like he was some Greek god’s loving, handmade paean to mortal beauty. Mr. Boy was art. Plus, those tilted eyes gave him a sly, vulpine look that Kizzy liked. A lot.

Her hand trembling a little, she lifted the cigarette back to her lips and tried to seem nonchalant, but her eyes went back to his red lips as her own closed over the moistness of the filter. Exhaling, she handed him back the cigarette and pressed her lips together. Then she thought she probably looked like she was trying to kiss herself, so she hastily unpressed them.

"I’m Jack Husk, by the way," he said, holding out his hand.

"Kizzy," she said, reaching for it. His hand closed over hers and he squeezed gently, then trailed away, his fingertips light on her skin. Then, right then, Kizzy decided this had to be some beautiful boys’ evil club initiation: to tease a freak girl and kill her heart. It was the only explanation. She hardened herself as well as she could toward Jack Husk’s startling beauty and said, "So, like, who are you?"

He shrugged. "Husk comma Jack. Age seventeen. Nonsmoker."

"Yeah, right."

"No, really. You just corrupted virgin lungs."

Words like "virgin" had a way of hanging in the air, but Kizzy did her best to ignore it. "Seriously, who are you? I mean, did you just move here or something?"

"My uncle died. I came to take care of his Christmas tree farm until after the holidays."

"Oh. Out on the Isherwood road?"

"Yeah."

"I live right by it. I didn’t know the old guy died. Sorry. He must’ve been, what, like, eighty or something?"

"Actually, he was only thirty-five, but he’d smoked since he was sixteen."

Kizzy gave him a wry smile. "Right."

Jack Husk smiled too. He passed back the cigarette and said, "Really. You should quit. Cigarettes make people taste … yellow."

Taste? Kizzy’s mind did a cartwheel. Taste? Was this Jack Husk thinking about tasting her? Great God Almighty, she did not want to taste yellow if that happened, whatever yellow tasted like. She bit her lip. She didn’t want to seem to be doing his bidding either, especially since this was all certainly some cruel prank, like in Carrie, sure to conclude with pig blood at prom. Defiantly she took a last drag of her cig and dropped it, crushing it under her heel. "So how do nonsmokers taste?" she asked, trying to appear unruffled.

"Like licorice," said Jack Husk promptly, the left half of his red lips pulling into an asymmetrical grin.

Kizzy could think of nothing to say but, "Huh. I like licorice."

"I guess you should taste a nonsmoker, then," he said, looking into her eyes in that way that made Kizzy feel he was slipping in through them to her blood and heating up her veins from the insides.