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Kisses

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I was eleven when I first kissed Gracie LeRue. She was just beginning to become a girl, as opposed to a kid, and she had developed a sort of preoccupation with love and boys. I was still young enough to think that girls were icky, but she wouldn't stop talking about how great it would be to fall in love.

I, of course, would rather have spent my time playing, swimming in the lake on the outskirts of the town and swinging from the branches surrounding the tree-house that had been built by our grandparents generation when they were children, and maintained lovingly by each generation of kids since.

"It will be perfect, Hart. He'll look into my eyes, and I'll pucker my lips-" she demonstrated by pressing her lips together in a way that was supposed to be inviting.

"Who will?" I asked.

"The boy I'm going to kiss," she said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

I sighed, and rolled my eyes. "Can't we just go swimming, like we usually do?"

"That's so childish, Hart, splashing around in the water like that." Then she launched into another explanation of the way boys and girls were supposed to act, according to Meg, who was fifteen and lived down the street.

I grabbed her shoulders suddenly and pressed my lips to hers, wanting to make her shut up about it. I tried to do the things that she had been talking about. She cried out, shocked, but relaxed into my touch. The kiss was sloppy, and awkward, and lasted too long. I pulled away, and looked into her eyes in the way I hoped she wanted me to.

Her eyes went wide, and I noticed for the first time that they were the right shade of blue to actually appear violet, with bits of gray that made them look like crystals.

"Your eyes look like amethyst," I said. I had always liked geology, and kept a collection of rocks under my bed at home.

Her eyes narrowed. "You stole my first kiss, Hart!" she accused, ignoring my observation.

I shrugged. "It's only a kiss. Can we go swimming now?"

She looked pointedly away, but the small smile that played on her lips told me she wasn't angry.

_

My father and I moved away from the little idyllic town, and from Gracie, not long after that, and I spent the next six years in a nearby city, learning that the safe, innocent environment I had grown up in was essentially a lie. I went to a private all-boys' school, St. Joseph's, and learned quickly about crime, sex, and deception. I learned the language, a harsh slang over-saturated with swearing and bragging. I learned how to carry myself with

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