Edna in the Desert by Maddy Lederman

Author:Maddy Lederman [Lederman, Maddy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Literary Romance
Publisher: eLectio Publishing
Published: 2013-03-13T16:00:00+00:00

14

THE KISS

Later that day on the porch, Edna was feeling calm and very much like a woman. When she’d first heard that boys put their tongues in girls’ mouths, she didn’t believe it. She knew about sex, but somehow the part about tongues was even more disgusting. She was eleven. She thought she was being punk’d by these idiots at a party.

Edna knew everyone was kissing this summer, and if she hadn’t been sent away, she would have been too, but it wouldn’t have been anything like real kissing. Real kissing was way more fun than playing a game where you go into a closet and let boys do things to you. Edna was horrified when she found out that according to the rules of these games it could be any boy, even snot-nosed Jason Sinclair. Edna had watched him pick his nose all year. She refused to play and felt betrayed when Brit ended up in the closet with him. They’d always agreed: Jason was disgusting. In the last few years, Edna’s society had become polluted with these games in which boys pressed their lips against girls’ faces and flicked their tongues in and out. It was a waste of time, and she didn’t see why she should kiss anyone she didn’t even like. Feeling Johnny’s tongue made her understand way more about sex than any of that, even more than the pornos she’d seen. No one even kissed in the pornos. Johnny’s tongue made Edna understand a lot.

She was drunk from the kiss for the rest of the ride back to the cabin that day and scrambling for a way they could spend more time together.

“It’s Grandpa’s birthday coming up. We’re going to make him a party on Saturday. You’re invited,” she threw off, as if she’d meant to mention it earlier. She congratulated herself for coming up with an idea and managing to get it out before he drove away for another week.

“This Saturday? I can’t—”

“Not this Saturday. Next Saturday.”

It wasn’t a good idea to hang around Edna, but he figured they wouldn’t be alone at a party for Zeke.

“OK. I’ll be there.”

Edna would have made the party on any Saturday. She had no idea of the date, either of that day or of the next Saturday, or of her grandfather’s birthday, but she would work it all out if Johnny was coming. She would legally change Grandpa’s birthday if she had to.

The party idea must have escaped from the place where Edna stored annoying junk from Shimmer after the explosion in her brain. Nothing on Shimmer was real, the rules were all notions that Jill made up and passed off as if they were upper-class gospel. This particular notion was that if a woman liked a man, she shouldn’t ask him out directly, but it was all right to host a party and invite him. Shimmer warned that you should be sure you liked the man a lot, since throwing a party required effort, especially, Edna thought, if you took all the advice on Shimmer about how to throw one.

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