Once Upon a Kiss Read online

  Terri’s false-eyelashed eyes widened so much you could no longer see the cornflower-blue eye shadow that was her trademark. “You’ve turned into a total rebel—I love it!”

  “The rebelling wasn’t exactly planned.” I looked up from a pair of fuchsia ribbed cotton leggings. “Hey, if I dropped out of school, could I get a job here?”

  “I wish,” she replied. “But not selling out does not make one rich. I can barely afford my rent on my apartment in Koreatown as it is.” I loved Terri’s apartment. It was a huge loft with high ceilings. She said that the smell of kimchi—Korean cabbage salad—wafting in her windows in the summer got annoying, but I loved kimchi and didn’t think I’d ever get sick of it.

  She walked out from behind the counter and over to the New Arrivals rack. “How do you walk in those without breaking your neck?” I asked, pointing to the five-inch black patent leather pumps on her feet.

  “They’re great, right? My friend who works in the Costume Department on General Hospital snagged them for me.” As she reached into her pocket and started feeling around for something, I opened my purse and took out a pack of gum and handed it to her.

  “What would I do without you?” she asked as she shoved two pieces of Trident cinnamon in her mouth. “You’re, like, psychic.” She flipped through the rack and pulled out a robin’s-egg-blue Lycra minidress with black piping.

  “It’s gorgeous,” I gasped.

  “I knew you’d like it,” she replied, handing it to me.

  “But it’s a size fourteen,” I said, disappointed, as I looked at the tag.

  “Yeah, unfortunately that was the only size they had left,” she said, “which is why you can have it for the low, low price of twelve ninety-nine. That’s half off. And because you’ve had such a sucky week, I’ll throw in the tailoring for free.”

  I hugged her. If there was anything I loved more than Lycra in neon colors, it was a bargain. “You’re the best,” I said as I ran into the dressing room to put it on. Seeing that I was a size six, I was swimming in it, so I was glad I had stopped at the candy store and gotten some Fun Dip, because this was going to take a while.

  I had made my way through the grape powder and was completely engrossed in Terri’s story about her latest waiter-but-really-he’s-a-musician-who’s-thisclose-away-from-his-big-break boyfriend when the door to the shop opened.

  “Hello?” a guy’s voice called out. “I was wondering if you had the new Super Mario Bros. . . . Oh wait. This isn’t the video store.”

  Uh-oh. I recognized that voice. It belonged to Brad Bundy. As I heard his footsteps coming toward us, I tried to slide my head down into my neck like a turtle so he wouldn’t know it was me and took the Fun Dip stick out of my mouth. “Nope. It’s next door,” I mumbled.

  “Zoe? Is that you?” Brad asked when he saw me. His Izod shirt was peach, one of the many colors in his Easter egg–like palette of polo shirts.

  So much for that plan.

  I unfolded myself. “Yup. Yeah, it is.”

  “Nice dress,” he said. “The pins are a cool touch. Is that one of those New Wave things?”

  “Uh, no. It’s one of those tailoring things,” I replied.

  Brad looked at Terri and smiled. He really did look like a golden retriever when he did that. But a really dumb one. Like one that was inbred. “I’m Brad.”

  “Ohhh, so you’re Brad.”

  He looked confused. “Didn’t I just say that?”

  Terri looked at me. “You weren’t kidding about the dull tool in the shed thing,” she whispered. As she went back to pinning the dress, she wobbled on her heels and pricked my arm with a pin. As I opened my mouth to say “Ow” I began to choke on the Fun Dip stick.

  “Omigod, honey, I’m so sorry!” she cried.

  “Zoe, are you okay?” Brad asked.

  I tried to say “No, because I’m choking” but all I could get out was a glug-glug-glug as I choked some more.

  “Do you need me to do some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?” he asked. “I’m a lifeguard, so I know how to do that CPR stuff without killing people. Whoa—you’re turning blue. Or is it the grape powder?”

  My legs gave out as I fell to the floor. I may have been choking to death, but I was still with it enough to know that I did not want Brad Bundy’s lips anywhere near mine.

  Which turned out to be the last thing I saw before everything went black.

  I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON.

  In fact, Jonah’s always teasing me that I could have three alarm clocks, a ringing telephone, and a fire alarm go off, and I’d still sleep through it. But that morning, when the sound of thumping bass began to rattle my bed, and I reached up to wipe away the sweat on the side of my neck only to have my hand get caught in a bunch of hair, I shot up in bed so fast that I smacked the back of my head on my headboard.

  “Owww!” I cried. I had told my mother the sharp edges on the newly installed Lucite headboard could take out someone’s eye, but when I turned around to give it a dirty look, it wasn’t Lucite. It was smooth blond wood. In fact, when I looked around the room, there wasn’t an ounce of Lucite to be seen. Not the desk. Not the chair. Not the dresser. Not the shelf that held my TV and my boom box. In fact, my TV wasn’t even there. Instead there was a flat screen attached to the wall. And instead of a boom box, there was a stand with what looked like speakers, with a little pink thing attached to the top of it.

  I had to be seeing things. For the past few months, I had been getting headaches when I read for long periods of time (interestingly, they seemed to correspond with any books I had to read for English class, like Great Expectations or Madame Bovary). Apparently something had happened during the night where my eyes just went completely, like a battery going dead. “Ethan! Get in here! Now!” I bellowed. I wasn’t sure how someone with his lack of coordination and inability to do anything quietly, including breathing, would have been able to come in while I was sleeping and switch out my furniture, but he had to be behind it. Third on his To Do list, behind becoming rich and popular, was annoying me whenever and however possible.

  As I hauled myself to my feet and threw on a robe, I realized that it wasn’t just my eyes that were weird—it was my entire body, especially my head. It felt like a combination of swimming through Jell-O and eating too much raw brownie mix. (Raw brownie mix equals one of Jonah’s and my favorite snack foods.) Maybe I had food poisoning. I tried to remember what I had had for dinner the night before but couldn’t, which was another clue that something weird was going on: when it came to food, I had this bizarre gift for being able to remember every meal I had eaten going all the way back to when I was six years old. (My sixth birthday party: Domino’s pizza with extra cheese, pepperoni, and olives. Carvel birthday cake in the shape of Snoopy.) The last thing I remembered was standing in front of the mirror at Terri’s with a Fun Dip stick in my mouth.

  “Dude, what is your problem?” Ethan asked from my doorway. “I know you don’t like Lil Wayne, but you need to chill.”

  Okay, at least he looked the same. Other than the fact that instead of that gross Pac-Man T-shirt that he wore almost every day, he was wearing one that had a picture of an apple with a little bite taken out of it. “Nerdy Wayne?” I asked, confused.

  As the sound of a horn came from the pocket of his jeans, he reached in and took out a silver thing that was the size of a business card and started pushing buttons on it.

  “What is that, and what are you doing?” I asked, even more confused.

  “I’m texting Martin. Why are you acting so weird?”

  “Text?” I jumped as a ding came from the silver thing. “Ahh!” What was that? A pager? I knew from a PSA I had seen on TV that drug dealers carried them, but I didn’t know a real person who did.

  “What is your deal?” Ethan demanded. “Have you already started in on the Red Bulls?”

  “Wha
t’s a Red Bull? And do you not notice anything different about this room?!” I demanded. “Or me?!”

  “Other than the zit on your chin? Nope.” He took the silver thing and aimed it at my face. A second later a clicking sound could be heard, like a camera.

  “Instagram, here you come,” he cackled as he ran out of the room.

  If my head hadn’t been hurting before, it definitely was now. Text, bells, whistles, silver things—what was going on?! I walked over to my phone to call Jonah to ask him if he knew what I had for dinner the night before, but it wasn’t there. All I could find was a thing that looked like Ethan’s silver thing, but this one was pink. As I pushed the button on the bottom, the screen filled with all these little pictures—a little bubble like the kind that was in comics that said Messages; the date that said Calendar underneath it; a picture of a sunflower that said Photos; a lens that said Camera. As I touched the screen and a bunch of different little pictures showed up, the sound of a chime could be heard.

  “Ahh!” I yelped, dropping it. As I went to pick it up, it dinged again. “What is that thing?” I said aloud. I picked it up and looked at the screen. Stopping at Bucks. Will get u a mochaccino. B there in 15. flashed across the screen. In the top left-hand corner, the word Andrea could be seen. Who was Andrea? And what the heck was a mochawhatever?

  “Ethan!” I yelled.

  “What?” he yelled back from his room.

  “Can you come here, please!”

  “I was just there!”

  “I told you kids—I don’t like all this yelling in the house!” my father yelled from the bedroom.

  “Just come here!”

  “Just because you’re older doesn’t mean you can order me around!”

  “Yes, it does!”

  “Your father isn’t going to say it again!” my mother yelled from downstairs. “Enough with the yelling!” She sighed. “I can’t deal with this. Rain, can you go deal with this?”

  A moment later the sound of footsteps could be heard on the stairs, followed by a head of very long brown dreadlocks on a very short woman in my doorway.

  “Hey, Zoe!” chirped the woman.

  “Hey . . .” Since I didn’t know her name—or who the heck she was and what she was doing in our house at 7:45 a.m.—I nodded a few times.

  “May I enter your personal space?” she asked in a calm voice, like the one used by the woman who gave me a massage when we were on vacation in Hawaii over Christmas.

  “Huh?”

  “Can I come in your room?”

  “Oh. Sure. I guess so.”

  She came over and took both my hands in hers and looked at me. “What’s underneath the yelling?”

  “What?” I tried not to stare at the silver ring on her right nostril, but it was next to impossible.

  “Your mother sent me up here to ask you to stop yelling, but I’m wondering what’s underneath it.” She took her finger and gently poked me on my robe above my left boob. “What’s here?”

  “My tank top?” I said, baffled.

  “No. What are you feeling in your heart?”

  “Umm . . .”

  “One of the greatest insights that Rhiannon shared with me—”

  “Rhiannon.”

  “My psychic. I’ve told you about her before.”

  If she had, then it was psychically, because I had never seen this woman before in my life.

  “Anyways, Rhiannon once told me that anger and its manifestations—in this case, that would include yelling—are depression turned inward.” She looked at me, waiting for a response.

  “Wow. That’s, uh, deep,” I finally said.

  “Right?” she agreed. “Rhiannon is so deep that sometimes I have trouble understanding her.”

  Why did that not surprise me?

  “But wait—no—that’s not right,” she said. “What she said is depression is anger turned inward.”

  “Oh. Right. Well, that makes more sense,” I said quickly. Actually, none of it made sense, but I was desperate to get her out of my room so I could get back to figuring out what the heck had happened while I was sleeping.

  “I know you need to get back to figuring out an outfit, but I just wanted to say that if you ever want to talk—you know, really talk—that I’m here for you,” she said. “I know that technically I’m just your parents’ personal assistant, but I wouldn’t mind putting that psychology degree I got at Sarah Lawrence to good use.”

  Since when did my parents have an assistant? And for what? To try to recruit people to be in their videos?

  “Great. I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

  She put out her arms. “You really look like you need a hug,” she said. “Would it be okay if I gave you one?”

  Before I could respond she gathered me in her arms and smothered me. For someone so little, she was really strong. “It’s okay to let your heart chakra open, Zoe,” she said.

  I would have responded, but I was too busy holding my breath in order to block out the overwhelming scent of patchouli that was assaulting my nostrils.

  “Being graced with the gift of popularity like you have is a prime opportunity to spread the message of cohesion rather than exclusion,” she went on.

  I knew it was wrong to make the connection that dreadlocks equals a love for Bob Marley and pot, but she had to be smoking something.

  “Right. Absolutely,” I agreed. I had heard that it was best when dealing with crazy people to just agree with them until you could get to safety.

  She finally let go and smiled at me. I still couldn’t stop staring at the hoop. “Good. I’m glad we had this talk.”

  “Oh, me too.” I smiled back. What was going on here?!

  As soon as she was down the stairs, I ran over to Ethan’s room. Like mine, his was totally different as well. His Star Wars poster was still over his bed, but on the right wall there was one for a thing called Hunger Games. “I need to call Jonah,” I announced nervously.

  He looked up from the flat screen on his desk, which was similar to the one on mine. “Who’s Jonah?”

  “I don’t have time to fool around, Ethan,” I said, annoyed. “I’m in a hurry.”

  “Fine. But that doesn’t mean I know who Jonah is.”

  Usually I could tell when my brother was giving me a hard time, but the look on his face made it clear that he was serious, which freaked me out even more. “Where’s my phone?” I asked.

  “Um, in your hand?” he said slowly, in the tone actors on TV used when dealing with some crazy person who was about to be locked up. “What’s your deal, yo?”

  Okay, I needed a different way to handle this. For whatever reason, these people weren’t finding things to be the least bit weird around here. It was probably easier for everyone—not to mention a lot less time-consuming—if I just played along and acted like I thought everything was normal as well. “Of course it’s in my hand. I just . . . can’t remember his number for some reason.” Lie.

  “So look in your contacts.”

  “That’s what I was planning on doing.” Another lie. “But for some reason I can’t find it.”

  “What is your problem?” he harrumphed as he grabbed the pink thing from me. I watched as he clicked on the button marked Contacts, and a bunch of names came up. But it wasn’t just random names—it was a VIP list of all the most popular kids at Castle Heights.

  Why were all the popular kids’ names on there? It was as if I had woken up a totally different person. Which, of course, was not possible.

  Ethan held out the pink thing toward me. “I don’t know who this Jonah dude is that you’re talking about, but he’s not in your phone,” he said, just as it dinged again, with a different sound. We looked at the screen. Morning babe. How r ur lips today? Haha.

  At the top of the screen it said Brad. “Who’s Brad?”
I muttered.

  Ethan gave me a look. “Why are you acting like you have no idea who you are?” he asked.

  Um, maybe because I didn’t?

  Hellllooooo? U there? flashed across the screen.

  Ethan handed me the pink thing. “Go sext with your BF in your own room.”

  My head started throbbing even more as I walked back to my room. Once there, I stared at it, afraid that at any second it was going to come to life and start talking or something. When nothing else happened, I began pecking at the letters that were underneath the message. At least they were in the same order as the keys on a typewriter.

  Who is this? I typed. Nothing happened. Seeing a button that said Send, I tried that and jumped as a whoosh sound came from the phone.

  What do you mean who is this??? It’s your BOYFRIEND.

  Jonah, stop kidding around. I’m completely freaked out here.

  Who’s Jonah? the typer typed back.

  The pink thing made a weird noise as another message came through. Hey check this out—took this selfie yesterday. We look awesome, right?

  When I saw the picture that came through, I screamed.

  It was a photo of me. Not me me, with my asymetrical haircut—the one I had had the day before—but this me, the one with the long, layered hair I saw in the mirror, wearing a matchy pink dress and cardigan. But I wasn’t alone in the photo. I was full-on kissing a guy tonsil hockey–style. A guy who just happened to be none other than Brad Bundy, Andrea Manson’s boyfriend!

  “Rain, I thought I told you to get the kids to stop yelling,” my mother yelled downstairs before she stuck her head in my room. “Zoe, what is the matter?!”

  I looked up. “What happened to your hair? Where’s your perm?” I demanded.

  “What perm?” she asked, confused. “Perms are so . . . eighties.”

  “And what are you doing with cornrows?”

  “Honey, what are you talking about? I’ve had these ever since the first Holla Your Way to Health DVD.”