All We Left Behind by Ingrid Sundberg

from before the fog could stick. Before the whisper of hands could ruin.
    Kurt would be better. Kurt’s a clean slate. His hands are distant, pumping through the water, less intimate.
    â€œMarion.” Lilith snaps me back to the present, only she’s addressing the boys. “You have no idea,” she says, laughing. “I kiss Marion all the time.”
    What? That isn’t true! My neck warms and I pick up my pace, refusing to look back, like I didn’t hear.
    We’ve only kissed once. And it wasn’t a real kiss. Nothing’s a real kiss when you’re ten. We used to stay up late at night watching our favorite romance movies. Only wedidn’t watch them so much as fast-forward through all the boring stuff until we got to the kisses: slow, hard, tongues, lips. It was a fascination. Only one night Lilith locked her bedroom door and asked if she could kiss me instead.
    â€œYou know, so we can understand how to do it,” she explained. “Like practice.”
    I gripped my pillow, wanting to watch the movie and forget this.
    â€œI don’t know,” I said, because I didn’t. “You mean open our mouths and use our tongues?”
    â€œYeah.” Lilith nodded, sitting on the bed beside me. “It’ll be like a science experiment.”
    I didn’t move.
    â€œIt’ll be easy.” She nodded again. “We’ll just lean in and move our tongues around and see what happens.”
    â€œJust move our tongues around?”
    â€œLike they do in the movies.”
    â€œAnd we won’t tell anyone?”
    â€œOf course not!” Lilith’s eyes went wide.
    I pressed my hands into her pink bedspread. I wanted kissing to be special, but I wanted to be good at it too. And this was Lilith.
    If I could trust anybody, it would be her.
    â€œOkay,” I whispered, looking at the floor. “What do I do?”
    â€œClose your eyes!” she squealed, and I shut my lids.
    I felt the bed shift as she shuffled up next to me. It was quiet and I waited, but she didn’t do anything. I held mybreath and my body stiffened with the cold thought that she was playing a joke on me.
    But then her mouth hit mine. It was solid and dry and I couldn’t react before her lips opened up like a fish’s, globing wide and rubbery. I opened my mouth and we twisted our faces back and forth, jabbing our tongues at each other. She moaned like the ladies in the movies and gasped for air before pressing her hand against my chest and pinching me through my shirt. She pushed the fabric up and rubbed her hand over my front and I think she wanted me to touch her, too. She’d already started to grow in that area. I had nothing but flatness and skin.
    When she stopped kissing me we both sat at the end of her bed in the awkward quiet. I ran my toes against the zipper of my Disney princess sleeping bag on the floor. The metal felt jagged and grounding.
    â€œDid you feel anything?” she asked.
    I stiffened, not sure what she meant. “Did you?” Panic spread in my gut. I tried to think of a lie, something that wouldn’t hurt her feelings despite the slobbering and the moaning and whatever that was.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I guess it’s different with boys.”
    She got up and unlocked the door, as if nothing had happened. As if I wasn’t sitting at the edge of her bed with my shirt half off and my lips still bruised with the taste of her.
    A branch smacks my face and I wipe it away, hearing Lilith behind me.
    â€œOh, you know it’s true,” she says, and I peek back to see they’ve caught up. “We’re best friends,” she continues, catching my eye and taking my hand. “We share everything.”
    â€œYeah, right,” says Mark, the tallest, egging her on. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
    â€œI’m sorry,” I say, pretending I don’t know what this is about, trying to