Chapter One
Nora
Today is the annual Keep Florida Wild! Ecology Festival, and the air in the Edinburgh High School gym reeks of tofu and onions. Between the Vegan Club’s taco stand, a February heat wave, and the broken air conditioner, I admit these aren’t ideal conditions to rescue the planet. Or find true love.
But I’m still going to try.
Every year, I’ve set up my kissing booth and raised money for an endangered animal that gets ignored by mainstream media. Four years in a row, I’ve had a line of horny high school guys willing to pay for a chance to lock lips with yours truly.
I’m pretty good at raising money. Not so much at finding true love.
My grandmother started me on this path, telling me over and over the story of how she met my grandfather at a kissing booth. He walked up, paid his quarter, they kissed, and boom! Thunder rumbled, lightning struck, and the earth shook.
They got married two weeks later and were inseparable for forty-three years.
If you hear a story like that enough—and you’re obsessed with the laws that govern the universe like I am—eventually you come up with a working scientific theory, a testable hypothesis.
For each person in the world, there is exactly one other person who, at first kiss, causes an immediate and intense reaction.
It’s like the chemistry experiment last year when we mixed sugar with sulfuric acid. Instantly, there was smoke and fizz everywhere.
Or, for the nonscientific types out there, true love at first kiss.
And that’s why I sit here, charging five bucks a kiss to SAVE THE GOPHER TORTOISE!
I glance down the line and sigh. I’ve kissed a lot of these guys already. That’s fine. As long as I’m doing good in the world and there are a few new customers (the kid who just moved here from Texas, and that uber attractive German exchange student), I’m not giving up.
I’m a scientist, after all. I leave no stone unturned.
I’m also prepared, as always. I have germ destroying breath spray. I’ll gargle with extra-strength Listerine when it’s over. My vaccinations are up to date, so I’ve minimized the risks. I’m ready to find love in the most sanitary of ways.
Except that next in line is Keaton Drake, so in this case, I know the result.
We kissed at the 80s dance freshman year. Slow dancing to a Madonna song, his hands roaming lower and lower, he gazed at me and our lips touched and…nothing.
He lifts his eyebrows. “Hey, Nora.”
Inside, I cringe. I really don’t want to kiss him, but it’s not like I can pick and choose who gets in line. “Keaton.” I nod and reach for the five he’s holding.
Think of the gopher tortoises.
“What’s with the hair?” he asks.
I fight the urge to smooth it down—it’s super curly, which is only made worse by how humid it is in here. Not a good mix. “Just time for a change.” Two weeks ago, I found out I was accepted to my dream college. Even if it’s a dream that likely won’t come true, I wanted to do something big to mark the occasion. Pierce my nose. Get a tattoo. All of which would have given my mother a heart attack. So I decided to let my hair down, after years of wearing it up.
I’m not a huge fan of change, so it feels like a big deal.
Keaton winks. “Pretty sexy.”
I hand over the breath spray.
“What’s this for?”
“I like to keep things hygienic.”
He sprays, and then slowly pushes back his mop of blond hair. He’s an athlete, football and baseball, and he thinks he’s a sex god.
I lean forward, across the table; he leans in, and his lips touch mine. There’s a firmness to this kiss that tells me he’s had some experience since he paid his five dollars last year. Just the right amount of moisture. Good for him.
Still, no reaction whatsoever. Not that it matters since, according to my hypothesis, it’s only the first kiss that counts.
He smiles. It’s not the worst smile. Too bad.
“Thanks, Nor. I hope you save the turtles.”
“Tortoises. They’re tortoises. Here, take a brochure.”
Next is a very skinny freshman. I don’t know his name, but his lips are so chapped I almost offer him my lip balm.
He’s followed by Paul Betts who kisses like my mouth is a stone wall and his is a battering ram. Every year.
Then Michael Lovejoy, a really good guy who’s jaw-droppingly handsome. Too bad kissing him is like kissing my brother, if I had one.
Between customers, I see Abby checking out my booth. We’ve been friends for a long time, though we don’t hang out like we used to. According to what I see online, she’s jump-started her social life this year without me. I have no idea how she manages to party while taking five AP classes and making the finals in the state Science Olympiad. She seems to have it figured out, though.
“How’s it going over there?” I ask.
“Nora…” She rolls her eyes. “You’re going to get the plague.”
I shrug. “Anything for science.”
She takes a dollar from a kid in exchange for a manatee-shaped cookie. Save the Manatees. Everyone knows about manatees, which is great, but they’ve got plenty of help. I’m surprised she didn’t come up with something more original.
The last bell is about to ring, and my line has fizzled out, just like every kiss. The guy from Texas was a no-show. The exchange student was like a hyper puppy. I kept waiting for him to have an accident on the floor.
Nothing today, but that’s okay. I’ve got time.
“Ms. Reid.” Mr. Chaffee, faculty sponsor of the Eco-Fest, stops by my booth, shaking his head. “I believe kissing booths went out of style sometime in the last century.” He picks up one of my brochures and smirks. “I get that you want to save the…gopher tortoise? But I can think of at least a dozen noninvasive ways to raise money for a cause.”
I smile confidently. After four years, I’ve thought this through. I point to my handmade sign that clearly states “NO TONGUE.” Bold and in all caps, though a few always try to slip through. Hazard of the experiment.
“Well I suppose that’s something.” He scratches his beard and squints at me. “Really, though. A kissing booth, of all things?”
Also something I’ve considered. I lift a shoulder. “It’s perfect. What hormone-crazed teen is going to say no to a kiss, even if he doesn’t care about gopher tortoises? And you never know, maybe one of them will turn out to be a keeper.”
His eyes widen. “Oh, so you have an ulterior motive?”
A flash of panic zips through me. “No. NO!” As much as I’d like to share my hypothesis with another scientist, I’m not stupid. He wouldn’t get it.
He chuckles. “Good. Because you’d have to kiss a lot of, uh, gopher tortoises, to find a prince in this lot.”
My stomach sinks. My hypothesis is controversial, I know. Some might say crazy, which is why I’ve mostly kept it to myself. I gather up my brochures and glance at him. “The most important thing is, I did just raise a lot of money to save a very adorable reptile species.”
“Yeah, you did, I guess. Speaking of…” He pulls a paper out of the folder in his hands and passes it to me. “I printed this out for you. These deadlines are coming up, so if you or your mom need any help, just ask me.”
“Thank you, Mr. C.” I bite my bottom lip, take the paper, and shove it inside the box with my brochures.
“Anytime,” he says and moves on.
Mr. Chaffee is a good guy and a great scientist. He’s also my favorite teacher, the one who pushed me toward clinical research, suggested I apply to Emory, and is now giving me scholarship information.
As he moves on to Abby’s booth, I wonder about him. He’s married with a few little kids, but is he happy? I think about this a lot, about people in general. People meet, go on a date, have that first kiss. Maybe it’s an okay kiss, but that’s all there is—no fizz, no smoke, no chemical reaction. Maybe that’s enough for some people, but I believe that’s the universe telling them they’re incompatible. That they’re inert compounds.
If more people paid attention to that first kiss, the world might be a better place. I’ve seen what it does, ending up with the wrong person. My parents, for example. Good at first, then boring, then mean, then ugly, and eventually just sad.
Speaking of the wrong person, I look up and lock eyes with Eli Costas, strolling toward me with a slight limp.
Immediately, my brain short-circuits and I forget what I’m doing.
Eli. Neighbor, best friend, part-time chauffeur. That hair, dark and wavy, sticking out in ways that invite you to run your fingers through it. The olive skin like a real-life Greek god, and eyes that look just like the blue oval in the watercolor sets Mom used to buy me when I was little. He’s tall, and a lacrosse maniac with an upper body to prove it. Your basic unrealistically attractive high school student usually only found in books or movies. The difference is, he’s real, and everyone wants him. Including me. It’s a battle I fight daily.
He flashes me a grin. One side of his mouth quirks up higher than the other, and a dimple cuts deep into his cheek. Holy cow.
As he moves into my airspace, I force myself to focus on counting the tortoise money. Five. Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Twenty-five. Forty. It always takes me a minute or two to get my bearings when it comes to Eli. To remind myself that nothing can happen between us.
It’s a sad story. Of all the kissing I’ve done in the name of science, he was the first. Spring break, eighth grade, Madison Dunn’s birthday party. My hypothesis was newly formed, and I had a huge crush on him. I was sure that he was the only human I’d ever need to kiss—that he was the lightning, the thunder, the sugar to my sulfuric acid. The night of the party, I decided to prove it.
I followed him into the garage, where he’d gone to get a Coke from the extra fridge. With total confidence, I kissed him—hard—on those full lips, right there in the glow of the refrigerator light.
It was horrible.
He’d just taken a giant swig of soda, which was probably why his lips were so cold. And then they were just…wet. Zero reaction.
When it was over, he moved in to try again, but I backed away. It was too late.
I shared my hypothesis with him, naively thinking he’d understand. He didn’t. He called me crazy, got mad, and wouldn’t talk to me. It was terrible. There was nothing I could do, though. I had to trust the result. I believed in my hypothesis. The universe had spoken loud and clear, and Eli became the first failed kiss of my experiment.
Eventually, we made up and went back to being best friends. It should also be noted that my rejection didn’t wreck him long term—he’s done more than fine with the ladies.
The problem is my crush on him still exists. Not helping is the fact that he’s only gotten hotter and funnier and easier to be with.
He sidles up behind me and I catch the slap-you-in-the-face man scent of soap and sweat and Eli. I’m intoxicated by that smell, and have been for a long time.
“I wonder how the gopher tortoises feel, being used like this?” he whispers, close to my ear, so that the little hairs inside stand at attention.
A shiver runs through me and I fumble the pile of cash. “I’m trying to count here?”
He laughs that deep Eli laugh, the one that has always made me feel so safe. I listen for it in the hallways at school. I miss it when we’re not together. I love that laugh.
To be completely honest, sometimes I wish we could go back in time to Madison’s garage and try again, but the scientist in me knows that’s not how it works. My hypothesis is clear: a reaction either happens, or it doesn’t.
And as much as Eli tempts me, I will not be one half of an inert compound.