Cages: Chapter One

Chapter One

That girl who thought her first kiss was the worst thing ever? 
April would give anything to be her again. 
That boy who trapped her in a parking lot to get it? 
April would do anything else he wanted if it meant she could go home to her mother again.

She only went out with Randy because he wouldn’t stop asking. And when some waffle cone batter spilled on her jeans the tenth time she tried to get rid of him by saying, “OK, lick that off my leg and I’ll go on a date with you.”

She figured it would be like when she dodged a boy in junior high by agreeing to go steady if he bought her a purple pony.  
“A real pony, not a toy. And it has to have been born purple, not dyed.”

But Randy was given a pony he could deliver. And that feeling as he hopped over the counter, got down on one knee and licked her leg? If that was dating, April decided it might be fun after all. 

And riding on his moped had been fun. Until he parked it and he said, “We’re not getting back on until you kiss me.”

Stupid breasts. April blamed them more than Randy for this. Before they arrived, boys like him had just left her alone.

She tried ignoring the uninvited lumps until a girl ran past April during P.E. class chanting “boing, boing, boing” with her hands cupped to her chest. Once her friend Amy explained what the girl meant, April decided it was time to get a bra.

April also decides to just kiss Randy so she can leave the parking lot. And maybe picturing the kiss between Pony Boy and Cherry in The Outsiders like she does at the bathroom mirror will help? 

She leans her face toward Randy, hoping real lips might give her tingles like the movie does. They don’t. April freezes with regret and fear as soon as their mouths touch.

“You kiss weird. It’s like you’ve been practicing on the back of your hand or something.”

How could he tell? April feels heat rushing up her neck and hopes for once it won’t turn her ears red.

“I’m just kidding.” Randy pokes her ribs with his elbow, flipping April’s shame to anger. First he forces me to kiss him, then makes fun of how I do it? I gave up a night with my mother for this?!

Weekends are the only times April can relax with her mother. Usually when Evelyn sees her in the living room she says, “If you have time to sit, you have time to dust.” Or, “Is your homework done?”

But on Saturday evenings, April is allowed to just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling while Evelyn reads. The only light comes from the desk lamp, the only sounds the turning of pages and a spoon clinking on her metal ice cream bowl.

Thinking of her mother gives April courage, so she stands up and demands they leave. Randy looks at his watch. 

“Yeah, we probably should. And I guess I can call that a kiss.”

April would kick him in the shin if she didn’t need him to drive.

Not until Randy parks the moped again does April remember that the last person on Earth she would want to see her on a date works at the theater.

“Hey, April,” says Seth, who will be sitting behind her in Driver’s Ed on Monday after watching Randy drape his arm around April.
 
“Two adults, please,” says Randy, grandly pulling a $20 from his wallet. “Don’t think she’ll pass for 12,” he adds with a laugh, giving April’s shoulders a squeeze and making her want to die. 

At their seats April slouches down to hide from anyone else she might know, which invites Randy to put his hand on her thigh after she props her knees against the seat in front of her.

“Be careful with Randy,” she hears Kim telling her at work before he came to pick her up. “Maybe don’t wear a skirt, you know?”

“Yeah, right,” said April, having no idea what she meant until Randy’s hand perched on her leg like a smug bird, but not asking any questions because she didn’t want Kim to find out yet that she wasn’t cool. 

Kim only talks to April because they go to different schools, so she doesn’t know to ignore April like all the other cool girls.

April also didn’t tell Kim that she doesn’t even own a skirt, because no one in her house wears them. Her mother used to, but all April sees her wear now are slacks to work, and jeans or shorts on the weekends. 

And her sister Hannah? She’s even less of a girl than April.

Hannah has one skirt she wore once after spending hours of red-faced misery at the mall shopping for her junior high graduation dance, finally settling on a long-sleeved white blouse and a long cotton skirt. 

When April went with her mother to pick Hannah up, she saw her sister “dancing” in a corner of the gym with another girl,. As she watched her long hair flipping from side to side as she hopped awkwardly from one foot to the other, April knew Hannah would never date a boy. 

Evelyn must have known the same, because later she asked Hannah if she had danced with any boys.

“No.”
“Do you like boys?”
“No.”

I don’t like boys either, April thinks as Randy’s hand begins moving down her thigh.

“Is this OK?”

She wishes she could say no and push his hand away but she doesn’t, and spends so much time tracking the hand’s distance from her underwear that when the lights come on, she can’t remember a thing about the movie. 

At least she wants to go home so badly that she has forgotten to care what Randy will think of her house, though he will only see it at night, when you can’t really tell how small and old it is, or see the jungle of weeds and blackberry bushes in the front yard.

Randy parks his moped behind her mother’s little Honda station wagon in the carport and April can see inside the kitchen, which has a glass door between two big windows. Her father is sitting on the wine barrel behind one of the windows where his transistor radio gets the best reception. 

“Is that your dad?” 

“Yeah,” April says as her father moves away from the window. She wishes he’d come outside to get her, but she knows he’s just giving them privacy. 

“Kiss me. Bet you won’t kiss me in front of him.”

Just wanting to go inside, April leans toward his cheek, but he turns his head.

“No. On the lips.”

April looks at the smirk on his mouth. Nope, I’m never doing that again. She turns and runs up the brick path to the kitchen door, calling over her shoulder, “Thanks for the movie.” 

She opens the door and breathes in her kitchen, vowing to never leave her house for a date again. 

“You’re home early,” her father says.

She wants to throw her arms around his stomach and bury her head in his chest, but she just nods and bounds up the stairs to her mother, who is sitting at her desk.

 

Chapter Two