The Kissing Diary Read online

  “Other mothers wear sneakers,” Rosie told her often.

  “Sneakers are for the gym,” her mother always replied.

  Rosie’s mother never left home without putting on lipstick. She carefully applied it in the car mirror before driving them to school that morning. Jimmy complained, “The crossing guard isn’t going to care if you’re wearing lipstick or not.”

  “I care,” said his mother, blotting her lips on a tissue.

  Rosie sniffed the air. “What am I smelling?”

  “Jimmy, are you wearing cologne, honey?” said Mrs. Goldglitt.

  Jimmy didn’t answer, which made Rosie smile. She suspected that her brother had a crush of his own! Rosie had seen him hanging around Linda Reeves at the ice cream shop, looking kind of awkward. “Is Linda in your math class?” she asked him sweetly.

  “None of your business,” Jimmy replied.

  “Be nice,” said Mrs. Goldglitt, pulling out of the driveway with a lurch.

  Homeroom started badly with a substitute teacher, who crucified the names as she read the attendance sheet. “Rosie Goldglatt, is that it? Or is it Goldglitt, or maybe Goldgitt?”

  Tony Baskin said, “Goldtwit,” which made a bunch of his friends laugh. Mary Katz joined them, warbling like a bird, saying, “Goldtwitter, Goldtwitter.” Lauren agreed later that it wasn’t the least bit funny.

  Rosie looked daggers at the girl, a wasted gesture, as she couldn’t catch her eye. She hated Mary Katz with every cell in her body. She hated her straight blond hair with its streaky highlights and her turned-up nose and her millionaire clothes. She hated her high-pitched laugh, which most people said was cute. She hated that Mary’s mother let her wear black kohl eyeliner. But what Rosie hated most of all was that Mary Katz seemed to hate her back.

  In English, Rosie signed her name on a quiz with a cute little rose at the end of it. Dressing up Goldglitt made her feel a little better. Lauren had given her a gold jelly pen that jazzed up the page when she signed her name, but it couldn’t disguise the ugliness.

  Why couldn’t her parents have given her one of the popular names, like Jennifer or Jessica or Megan, for heaven’s sake? Didn’t parents know that they were building a personality when they named a baby? Rosie sighed, only half listening to the teacher babble on about Greek myths. What on earth were the Hoods thinking when they named their daughter Robin? That she would steal from the rich and give to the poor? How dumb was that, saddling their baby with a joke? Lauren’s parents were brilliant. They gave their baby a popular name, which was just how Lauren turned out. Everybody liked her, even if she wasn’t part of the inner circle. Rosie couldn’t imagine what her own parents were thinking. Rosie Goldglitt, ninety-year-old spinster?

  By the end of the day, Rosie started feeling better. She met Lauren by her locker, and neither of them had much homework. They walked home slowly in the afternoon sunshine, wondering whose house to visit. Lauren’s house had tons of junk food, but Rosie’s house had a new computer game. After some debate, Cheez Doodles won.

  They were rounding the corner in Lauren’s direction when they heard a noise coming from the enormous rosebush at the far end of the school grounds.

  “What’s that?” Rosie whispered, stopping to listen. Lauren joined her, and when the large shrub shivered and shook, the girls jumped back.

  “What are we doing?” Rosie hissed. “It could be a crazy person with a knife or something!”

  A branch snapped and a hand emerged from the bottom. Rosie and Lauren screamed so loudly that the hand coming from the bush disappeared. They heard a screech that didn’t belong to a girl.

  A boy jumped out, wide-eyed as if he’d seen a ghost, holding on to a tennis ball for dear life. “What’s the matter?” he yelled, looking around for what he must have thought was a murderer at least. At the sight of the girls, he took one step back, catching his foot on the root of the tree behind him. Robbie Romano, Rosie’s biggest crush ever, fell over backward.

  “We heard you in the bushes and it scared us,” said Lauren, holding out a hand, which Robbie didn’t take. Rosie was envious. Her friend could actually talk to Robbie without stumbling on her words.

  He scrambled to his feet and said, “I was looking for my tennis ball, and I heard you guys screaming! I ripped my hand off in that thorny rosebush!”

  “Are you okay?” Rosie stammered. “We’re sorry we scared you!”

  “Scared me?” His voice was shrill. “Don’t make me laugh! I should have known it was you! Rosie Goldtwit! Or is it Rosie half-wit?” He practically spat out the names and walked away, shaking his head.

  There went the day. The Cheez Doodles didn’t help Rosie’s mood at all. They left a cheesy taste in her mouth, which added to her feeling of dread. She left Lauren’s house early and walked home quickly, up the stairs, and into her bedroom, where she shut the door.

  Rosie opened up her pajama drawer and took out her diary, removing the string and the rubber band. Then she wrote:

  Monday afternoon

  Today was one of the worst days of my life. I finally got to talk to Robbie Romano, and I embarrassed him by saying I was sorry we scared him. What was I thinking? Then he called me Rosie Goldtwit AND Rosie Half-wit, and left me standing there feeling stupid. Lauren says that he’ll forget all about it soon. I know he won’t. My life is ruined. I’m signing this with sorrow,

  Rosie Goldglitt, Twit of the Century

  P.S. I snuck some coffee before school this morning, and when I was pouring it out in the sink, my mother came in, but she didn’t say anything.

  P.P.S. I hate hate hate my name.

  P.P.P.S. Coffee smells so good and tastes so bad.

  3

  Rosie Goldglitt Is So Mad She’d Like to Goldspit

  Rosie thought it was odd how the day after disaster struck, nothing had changed. She ate her usual bowl of cereal, cornflakes this time instead of Lucky Charms, and read the back of the box at the kitchen table. Jimmy managed to make her grouchier by pointing out a blemish on her chin. He should talk, with five pimples on his forehead to her one. As usual, the two of them sat in the car waiting for their mother to put on her lipstick. Jimmy grumbled, and Mrs. Goldglitt told him that daylight was best for applying makeup. Jimmy replied that the supermarket checkout girl would not drop dead if she wasn’t wearing lipstick. His mother told him not to be fresh. She pulled up to the school as he was laughing derisively, and he let himself out of the car. Rosie followed, straight into Robbie, who turned his back so quickly that she felt a gust of air. How could Rosie’s life possibly be the same when her heart was broken?

  Shortly after school ended, she was back at Lauren’s with her friends, eating vanilla wafers and drinking regular milk, which tasted like a milk shake compared to her mother’s skim. Rosie was utterly miserable. The day had gone from bad to worse. Robbie was no longer ignoring her. In order to be ignored, you had to be alive, didn’t you? Rosie was less than a speck on the planet. As far as Robbie was concerned, she didn’t exist.

  Sarah Singer and Summer Adams sat on the couch, urging Rosie to give them all the details.

  “Is it true he fell over backward?” Summer asked.

  “He took one look at her and fell head over heels,” said Sarah, clasping her hands to her chest.

  “Head over heels in hate,” said Rosie glumly. “He called me Goldtwit and Half-wit.”

  “Nasty!” said Sarah. “And he rhymed!”

  “Maybe you should try liking Eli,” suggested Summer. “Didn’t you have a crush on him in the fifth grade?”

  “Not anymore,” Rosie answered, wondering why Lauren wasn’t saying a word.

  “Picture him gone,” said Sarah. “My mom had a patient who wanted to go on a diet, and she hypnotized him into believing that cockroaches were crawling on his chocolate ice cream. He lost thirty pounds. Hey, I know what! Picture liquid Drano poured on your heart when you think about Robbie!”

  “My heart’s not a toilet!” Rosie protested. How perfect for
Sarah to suggest a cleaning product, with a neat-freak psychiatrist for a mother.

  Summer said in a worried voice, “Wouldn’t Drano kill her?” Everyone but Rosie burst out laughing.

  “My mother won’t even let me try coffee,” said Rosie, “so Drano’s out!” Lighten up, she said to herself, but happiness was hard to fake. She looked over at Lauren, sitting quietly on a pillow. “What do you think I should do?” she asked.

  Lauren hesitated. Then she took a deep breath and said, “I don’t think picturing Drano will work. But best friends speak the truth, and I have to say it. Forget about Robbie.”

  Tears sprang to Rosie’s eyes, and Sarah, the only twelve-year-old who carried tissues with her, gave Rosie one.

  “I know you like him.” Lauren grabbed Rosie’s hand. “But if you had spinach in your teeth, I’d tell you. He was mean all day, and you really didn’t do anything wrong, did you?”

  “No,” said Rosie, wiping her eyes.

  “But Rosie doesn’t like spinach, do you, Rosie?” said Summer, desperate to cheer her up. “She hates anything green.”

  “Speaking of green,” said Sarah, “Mary Katz ordered this gross-smelling green dish at Sal’s the other day.”

  “Nasty,” said Summer. “Just like her.” Summer didn’t like Mary any more than Rosie did. Mary had called her dumb in the third grade, which had morphed into Dumb and Dumber Summer for the whole year.

  “It was broccoli rabe, and it smelled disgusting,” said Sarah.

  “If we’re going to forget about anyone,” said Summer, “let’s forget about Mary. Besides, Rosie, you eat green! You ate lime Jell-O at my house the other day!”

  “Robbie eats Jell-O every day,” said Rosie. So much for forgetting about Robbie Romano.

  “My sister says, sometimes if you ignore the boy, he’ll come back,” said Lauren forgivingly.

  “Like a boomerang,” said Summer, which was no help at all, as Rosie envisioned Robbie whizzing through the air and knocking her over.

  “He can’t come back. I never had him in the first place,” Rosie said.

  “Like in The Wizard of Oz!” said Summer. “Dorothy says, ‘If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard, because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with!’ I love that show!” Summer wrinkled up her forehead. “Then again,” she said, “Robbie hasn’t ever been in your backyard, has he?”

  “He used to say hello and goodbye, which was way better than being hated!” Rosie reached for her eleventh vanilla wafer.

  “Ask your brother what he thinks,” said Lauren. “He’s a boy. While you’re at it, find out if I should ask Tommy Stone to the dance.”

  “Talk to Jimmy?” said Rosie doubtfully. Certainly she could ask him about Tommy Stone. Lauren’s crush was Robbie’s opposite. Perhaps that was why she and Lauren got along. Lauren liked boys who were outgoing and funny, although Rosie secretly thought that they were noisy show-offs. Take Tommy, for instance. When he walked into the cafeteria, you knew he had arrived. He made barfing noises standing over the sloppy joes until somebody laughed, usually one of the boys in his little trio, either Tony Baskin or Eddie Duval. Or he’d take Eddie’s baseball cap, jam it on Tony’s head, and say, “Much better! A fashion plus.” If someone dropped a plate and it landed with a clatter, Tommy was the first one to hoot and holler until everyone joined in. Rosie couldn’t see herself liking a hooter or a hollerer. She liked the quieter boys who surprised her with their funniness. The ones who didn’t try so hard to be noticed.

  Rosie reached for the cookie box and ate her twelfth vanilla wafer. She closed the box. Thirteen cookies would be a mistake. She had had enough bad luck.

  Lauren changed the subject. “Can you believe Mrs. Geller is ruining the weekend with a project?”

  Sarah sighed. “Build a castle. It sounds so messy. My mother’s going to freak. Why can’t we just draw one?”

  “I’m going to build mine out of sugar cubes,” said Summer.

  “I’m going to write a letter of protest,” Rosie said, shaking her head. Just a few hours before, in history class, the teacher had given them an assignment to build a medieval castle and label its parts. History wasn’t Rosie’s favorite subject, but she sat next to Robbie, so it was the highlight of the day. He mumbled so low that she could barely hear him, “She’s got one color missing in that Crayola box called a brain.” Rosie laughed so loudly that everyone looked. Everyone but Robbie, who cast his eyes at the ceiling, examined the floor, doodled in his notebook, or stared straight ahead. When Rosie bumped into him later in the hallway, his blank stare was so chilling that she didn’t exist.

  “Mrs. Geller ruined the weekend all right,” said Rosie, thinking that more than her weekend had been ruined.

  * * *

  The rest of the week wasn’t much better. Robbie continued ignoring Rosie. Rosie continued to mope. She never even bothered telling her mother about the history project due Monday morning. On Saturday, Rosie informed her that she needed art supplies to build a castle and label its parts.

  Mrs. Goldglitt fumed. “Now you’re telling me? How the heck do we build a castle? With clay? Popsicle sticks? Papier-mâché? I’m not an architect, for heaven’s sake.”

  “I’m going to be doing it,” Rosie said. “‘Be inventive,’” she read off the assignment sheet. “‘Use any material you like.’” Was it her fault she couldn’t drive a car to the art store? Was it her fault that Mrs. Geller didn’t give a flying fig about ruining her weekend?

  “You’re going to do it? With what?” said her mother, instructing Rosie to wipe off the table and make the labels while she went to the art store. Then she stormed out of the house, returning an hour later with poster board, cardboard, oaktag, cans of spray paint, a matt knife, and a sealed bag of clay that was supposed to harden when it dried.

  Rosie propped a picture of a medieval castle against a vase of dried flowers and began rolling strips of clay to make the base of the castle. Placing a piece of poster board on a magazine, Rosie drew a line marking the edge of the first wall, and picked up the matt knife.

  “You’ll cut your finger off,” her mother barked, grabbing the knife out of her daughter’s hand. Mumbling to herself, she began cutting, but the knife veered off to the side. With more huffing and puffing than Rosie thought was necessary, her mother rummaged through a drawer in the desk in the living room and found a wooden ruler. Her face was getting redder by the minute, and when the matt knife caught against the edge of the ruler, Rosie thought her mother would have a stroke.

  “This is how I get to spend my day off?” shouted her mother, running downstairs to the basement and yelling upstairs, “Call your father and ask him if he took the metal ruler! I’m not buying another one!”

  “Mom, take it easy!” Rosie called to her, but before she could dial, her mother was upstairs, grabbing the phone from her. She punched in the numbers and said, “Bob? I need the metal ruler to help your daughter with her damned project.” Then she said, “I’m not swearing, I just need the damned ruler,” followed by, “Please, Bob, no lectures, I’m at the end of my rope.” There was a silence, and Rosie’s mother turned to her and said grimly, “Go downstairs and look in Dad’s workroom and it should be in the drawer with the missing handle.”

  She muttered thank you into the receiver, and Rosie found the ruler, and work resumed. Her mother managed to cut a straight line without lopping off her finger, and they anchored the pieces of card in the clay. Then Rosie unrolled a roll of paper towels so that they could use the cardboard tube for the turret.

  “Isn’t it too small?” said Rosie, risking another explosion from her mother.

  Mrs. Goldglitt took one look and threw it in the trash can, while Rosie rolled a piece of oaktag into a cylinder, taping it together.

  “Good,” said her mother grudgingly.

  By this time, Mrs. Goldglitt’s lips had formed a permanent frown as she fashioned another piece of o
aktag into a cone that the two of them taped to the top of the tower. Rosie carried the castle carefully outside and went back for the cans of spray paint.

  “I’m having a cup of coffee,” said her mother. “You’re on your own.”

  Rosie painted the water a pretty shade of blue. The sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze blowing, and she was nearly done. A cardinal flew by, and Rosie smiled at the flash of red. She had the rest of the weekend to have fun with her friends. They’d go bowling soon, and have lunch at Sal’s, maybe browse next door at the pharmacy. Life wasn’t so bad. Why let someone like Robbie Romano ruin her day?

  Rosie took the cap off the final can and began spraying silver paint on the castle walls. The wind picked up and sent the spray traveling in the opposite direction. Rosie looked down at her favorite pair of jeans. They were speckled with color. She started screaming just about the time that Tommy and Eddie and Tony were passing by. Tommy the Hooter began laughing hysterically, pointing at Rosie. The two boys joined him, marionette puppets following their leader in his stupid dance.

  Mrs. Goldglitt opened the door, wearing the daisy top that Lauren had worn to school the day before. She glared at the boys, her arms crossed as if she were Rosie’s prison guard. Was it the look on her face or the skimpy top on a grown older woman that scared the boys away? Rosie would never know the truth, because she would never ask the question, never, never, never, in a million years.

  * * *

  On Sunday morning, Rosie walked into the dining room, where the castle sat drying on pieces of newspaper. She screamed for the second time that weekend, a bloodcurdling noise that brought her mother and Jimmy racing down the stairs in their pajamas. Mrs. Goldglitt stared at the wrecked castle. The clay had dried, but the walls had collapsed and fallen over. To Rosie’s horror, a tear trickled down her mother’s cheek.