The Law of Tall Girls Read online

  Blue Dress rolled her eyes and made a disgusted sound, and Greg burst out laughing.

  “Come again?” Jay said.

  “Three minutes!” Tori called from the other side of the restaurant.

  “They,” I said, indicating Steve and Tori, “bet me that I couldn’t get you to kiss me. And … I took them up on it.”

  He still appeared bewildered. Probably thinking, And this is my problem, how?

  “Dumb, I know, but I did. It’s just that I could really use the money.”

  I looked away from him. I could feel heat radiating out from my face — my cheeks must be the color of the cherry-red leather seats, the crimson checkered suit of Jumping Jim on the window decals, the ketchup-scarlet of pure humiliation.

  “Hey, I’m flattered. But I don’t generally go around kissing strange girls.”

  “Strange, man, you said it,” Junior quipped, and Blue Dress and her friend giggled.

  “Sure, no problem,” I stammered. “It was always going to be a long shot. Sorry I bothered you.”

  I’d never been so mortified in my entire life. My eyes were prickling with shame and anger at myself, and my chest felt like it was clenched in the crushing grip of a giant. A real one, twenty feet tall at least. Why in the name of all that’s holy had I ever taken the freaking bet? What had made me think, even for one crazy moment, that a tall, hot guy would want to kiss me? I turned to go and was halfway back to where Steve and Tori stood gloating at how fast and how entirely I’d struck out, when I heard the deep voice again.

  “Hey, Peyton?”

  “Yeah?” I turned to face him. He still stood beside the girl in the blue dress. The rest of the group were at the door, ready to go.

  “What was the bet?”

  “Four hundred dollars.”

  He gave a low whistle. “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Yeah — go big or go home, right?” I said, trying to force a note of humor into my voice and a carefree smile onto my face. But none of this was amusing. I didn’t have four hundred bucks to burn. “Like I said, dumb.”

  I shrugged and turned back. Tori and Steve high-fived each other, then both held out their hands as if I was going to hand over the money right there and then.

  A warm hand grabbed mine from behind and tugged, spinning me around. Jay stood there, his head tilted to one side, a grin on his lips, and a challenge in his eyes.

  “Let’s disappoint them, yeah?”

  ~ 3 ~

  Jay pulled me toward him, twirling his arm above my head so that I pirouetted like an old-timey ballroom dancer before thudding into his chest. I had to tilt my head back to look up into his amused eyes. It felt extraordinary to be the shorter person — rare and amazing. And a little unnerving.

  One of his hands wound around my waist, pulling me close. His other hand cupped my cheek, and then he was kissing me. He. Was kissing. Me. I tasted the smoky sweetness of chocolate milkshake and, for just a moment, I was acutely aware of the snickering, of wolf-whistles, cheers and jeers, but then a roaring in my head drove it all away.

  Once, when I was about nine years old, a tornado raged a path of destruction through Baltimore. My mother and I were safely down in the basement by the time it passed over us, but we could still hear it — a terrifying, roaring rush of power that thundered over and around us. The sound and sensation overwhelmed me, reached into my chest and sucked out my breath, drove like a freight train through my brain, and swept all my thoughts away.

  That’s how I felt now.

  No chance for breath. No time for thought. No impulse to do anything but hang on tight, and be.

  And then, almost before it began, or maybe after a few hours, it was over. My lips, which had been his, were my own again. Pulsing, as if calling out for the lost warmth.

  “You okay?” He chuckled down at me as he let go. He had crinkles at the corners of his eyes which curved upwards like tiny stacked smiles.

  “Huh?”

  I could feel a dopey smile on my face. Couldn’t begin to figure out how to replace it with anything approaching nonchalance. My brain still felt empty, light, dizzy. Perhaps I swayed a little, because he put out a hand to steady me.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Uh-huh.” I had to get it together. “Yeah. Thanks.”

  “C’mon, Jay, let’s go already,” Blue Dress whined from the door, giving me some serious stink-eye.

  “Okay, then.” He stepped back a few paces. “See you around.”

  “Yeah.” Sense was beginning to creep back, and, with it, embarrassment. I must look and sound like a complete idiot. “Hey, Jay?” I said as he turned to join his friends. “Thank you. That might have been the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

  A look of surprise flickered across his face, but then the girl was tugging at his arm, and his cousin was teasing him, and the other two girls were shooting me incredulous looks as they left. Then he was gone. And the spot where he had stood was just an empty space.

  From behind me I heard Jim’s rich voice singing, “I’m all shook up.”

  My lips still tingled as I floated across the restaurant, light-hearted and brimming with satisfaction, to where Jim, Steve and Tori stood. A huge smile lit up Jim’s round face, but Steve wore a sour look — losing a couple hundred bucks will do that to you, little guy. Tori’s expression was less easy to read. More speculative than disappointed.

  “There you go,” I said, puffing out a relieved breath.

  “Knew you could do it, kiddo,” Jim said, patting my back before disappearing into the kitchen.

  “So,” I said, “it looks like tall boys are attracted to tall girls.”

  “Are you so sure of that?” Tori asked.

  “He kissed me, didn’t he?”

  “I’m guessing you told him it was a wager, right?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So, it was probably just a pity-kiss.”

  Ouch.

  Steve snickered. “Want some ice for that burn?”

  What I wanted was to wipe the smiles off their mean faces. A dozen clever comebacks would no doubt occur to me later — sharp, funny replies to all the insults sent my way this evening. But right now, I couldn’t think of anything.

  “It doesn’t prove anything about whether tall guys do, in fact, want to date tall girls,” Tori needled.

  I shrugged. I could fault her manners, but not her logic.

  “How about we ramp this up?” Tori said. “I’ll bet you couldn’t get a tall guy — any tall guy — to date you. If you win, you get eight hundred beautiful smackeroos.”

  “Do you even have eight hundred smackeroos?”

  “Of course.”

  It was possible that she did, but it was more likely that she was just entirely sure she couldn’t lose the bet. I packed more polished glasses onto the high shelf while I considered.

  “And if you win?” I asked Tori.

  “You pay us eight hundred dollars.”

  I winced.

  “I guess it depends how confident you are that tall girls are attractive,” said Tori, a truly evil smile curving her shining black lips.

  “Yeah, feeling pretty, Stretch?” Steve taunted.

  Pretty? No. I’d never felt pretty in my life. Almost by definition, very tall girls couldn’t be pretty, or cute. Striking, yes. Attractive, maybe. Eye-catching — always, unfortunately. But pretty? No, pretty was for petite and dainty girls. Girls whose knees didn’t touch the back of the seats in front of them in the cinema. Girls who didn’t have to bend their knees to ensure their faces weren’t cut off in group photos.

  And how confident was I that I could get any guy to date me, let alone a tall guy? Not confident at all.

  But still, eight hundred bucks.

  “He must be really tall, though. At least a couple of inches taller than you,” Tori said. “How tall are you anyway?”

  “Six feet and three-quarters of an inch,” I mumbled. Every time I stated my height, it felt like I was maki
ng a confession.

  “Let’s call it six foot one,” Tori said.

  “Let’s not,” I said.

  “He needs to be at least six-two.”

  “Six-four,” Steve chipped in.

  I glared at him. “Guys of that height are rarer than unicorns.”

  “Fine, let’s meet in the middle — six-three,” said Tori. “And you need to have at least three dates with him.”

  “Four,” said Steve. “Four dates with the same guy.”

  “And because this is a social experiment in the willingness of males to date tall females, the dates need to be public,” Tori said, pointing a fork at me. “No staying at home to watch videos in the basement, or having a picnic in some deserted field.”

  “And, and,” said Steve, his eyes bright with excitement, “the last date needs to be the ultimate in public dates — he has to take you to the prom.”

  “Ooh, nice one!” Tori bumped fists with her collaborator.

  I picked up my rag and wiped gunk off the nozzle of a ketchup bottle.

  “So, four public dates with one guy six-three or over, the last of which is the prom, and I win eight hundred dollars? And if I lose, I pay you that?” I clarified.

  Tori nodded. “That’s about the sum of it.”

  It was hugely tempting. I wanted to prove that tall girls could be attractive. Plus, more than anything, I wanted to leave home and go to college somewhere exciting — California perhaps, or New York. True, I hadn’t yet decided what I wanted to study, but whatever I signed up for, eight hundred dollars would add a nice chunk of change to my college fund.

  “What’ll it be, Peyton?” Tori asked. “A bird in the hand or two in the bush?”

  Oh, what the heck. “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  I stuck out my hand and shook hers, feeling like I might just have done a deal with the devil herself.

  ~ 4 ~

  Three days later, I still hadn’t wrapped my head around the craziness of that Friday night. And neither, apparently, had Chloe.

  “And he just kissed you?” she asked again, although she already knew the answer.

  I’d described what had happened at least three times, but clearly we weren’t through dissecting every last detail.

  “No, he didn’t just kiss me. He tugged my hand, spun me around, clutched me against his chest, and cupped my face. And then he kissed me.”

  She sighed in satisfaction. I rotated on my towel, wriggling hollows into the sand so that I could lie comfortably on my stomach. It was time to roast the back of my body. The first semester of our senior year started in one week’s time, and Chloe and I were working hard on our tans, spending most of our days on Blue Crab Bay’s small beach.

  I was six years old when my parents divorced, and as I grew older, I’d had less and less to do with Dad, especially since he moved out of Baltimore to this tiny spot on the Chesapeake Bay, where he ran a not very profitable sailing school. I was now down to visiting him once a year in the summer vacation. I looked forward to my visits, but more because they gave me a break from my mother, and her issues, than because I wanted to spend time with Dad.

  He was a nice enough person, as was his second wife, Lucy, but I had little in common with either of them. This year he’d warned me that he wouldn’t be able to take off work to spend time with me (not too devastated about that, Pops), and suggested that I bring a friend for company. Chloe’s bubbling small talk, her questions about Dad’s business, and her extravagant compliments on Lucy’s cooking had helped fill the awkward silences that normally characterized our “family” suppers.

  “And it was good?” Chloe asked now, still focused on that kiss.

  “No, it wasn’t good. It was fireworks and angel choirs good.”

  “Huh. And now you’ve got to get him to date you?”

  “It doesn’t have to be him — I think he lives over in D.C. anyway. It just has to be a really tall guy.”

  “The lifeguard is cute,” Chloe said. Generous of her considering she’d been eyeing him all morning.

  I gave the guy on the high chair a quick assessing glance. Five-nine, tops. One inch shorter than the official average height of the adult American male. Five-nine males, even cute ones, didn’t raise a blip on my guy radar. I had no desire to date someone whose hands and feet were smaller than my own — nothing made me feel as freakishly big as that.

  “He’s too short,” I said.

  “He’s not short!” Chloe protested.

  From her height of five foot four — the exact average height for American females — I guess most guys looked tall.

  “Too short for me,” I conceded. “But he’d be perfect for you. You could wear four-inch heels and still be shorter than him. And, more importantly, you wouldn’t be breaking The Law.”

  Chloe knew all about The Law of Tall Girls.

  “Well,” she said, pulling a T-shirt and shorts over her bikini, “if I’m going to razzle-dazzle him, I’ll need a new bikini and maybe a cute sundress. Let’s go shopping.”

  Blue Crab Bay was a tourist trap of a beachside town with souvenir stores standing shoulder to shoulder along the main road. At Chloe’s insistence, we stopped in at every tacky one of them. She was fascinated by the racks stacked with plush toys in the shape of sharks (“Do they even have sharks here?” she demanded); T-shirts reading Talk Nauti to me and Keep calm and dock your boat in my port!; glass bottles filled with sand (“What fool would buy a bottle of sand?”); bags of hushpuppy ready-mix; and an endless variety of objects made from shells — cockle shell necklaces and tiny whelk earrings, shell-encrusted cellphone covers, ashtrays and soap dishes made from clams, and even pet shells — which came complete with names, miniature birth certificates, and stuck-on googly eyes that reminded me of the girl in the blue dress at the diner.

  Worst of all were the mobiles with their trails of shells, coral and sand dollars which hung from the roof beams and door frames of every store we entered. I couldn’t take five steps without braining myself on a dangling conch or a chunk of driftwood.

  “Ooh, this one looks nice,” said Chloe, gazing into the window of a tiny store called She Sells Sea-Shells.

  “Haven’t you seen enough? They’re all the same.”

  “Not so. See that?” She pointed at something in the jam-packed window display. “It’s a sand-globe! You know, like a snow-globe, but filled with sand. How awesome is that?”

  I sighed and trailed after her into the store. The interior was crammed from floor to ceiling with all kinds of novelties and trinkets — my worst kind of place. Standing still so as not to bump anything off the brimming shelves, I tried to ignore the sense that everything was closing in on me. I took a deep, steadying breath and instantly regretted it. Dust. Dust with undertones of mildew and mold. Automatically, I switched to breathing through my mouth.

  “Hah! This is great — come see what’s written on it,” Chloe said.

  Resisting the urge to flee the claustrophobic collection of crap, I eased carefully toward her. As I leaned forward to read the inscription on the sand-globe, something snagged in my hair, pulling me up short. I gave my head a sharp jerk, and heard tinkling and jangling from just above me. Great, another mobile.

  “Careful there!” said a sharp-featured man wearing an I heart NautiGirls T-shirt and a badge which identified him as the store owner.

  I reached up my hand and felt rough bulges and a bumpy pitted surface snared in my hair. Working blindly, I tried to work the mysterious object free, but only got myself more thoroughly entangled. At the continued tinkling, other shoppers turned to stare. My face grew hot, my heart was beating unpleasantly hard, and the dust and mildew made it hard for me to catch my breath. I needed to get out of here — now. I tugged away from the grasp of the thing like a wild animal fighting a snare. I could feel tears rising.

  Then Chloe was in front of me, holding my hands tightly, and forcing me to meet her eye.

  “Just breathe. Just breathe with me, Peyton. I
n, 2, 3, 4… and slowly out, 2, 3, 4…”

  By now, everyone in the store was gaping at me. A few were sniggering in amusement. A woman in a neon-yellow sundress said, “You should cut it out, that’s what I do when my girl gets gum stuck in her hair.”

  “Nobody is cutting my friend’s hair,” Chloe said firmly.

  I yanked again at the trap.

  “Watch it! You’ll break it!” said the man. He shoved aside my hands and stood on tiptoe to reach up to the matted snarl. “Starfish are very fragile, you know.”

  “Get me free, Chloe,” I whispered through clenched teeth.

  “You’re too tall. I can’t see what I’m doing,” the store owner said.

  “Here, let me help you,” a tall man volunteered, stepping around the back of me. “Wow, it’s a regular bird’s nest up here.” He chuckled.

  “Chloe!” I pleaded.

  “Just a few more seconds,” she promised.

  There was a sharp tug of hair at the crown of my head, and then I was free. I bolted for the door, and once outside, sat on my haunches and dropped my head between my knees.

  From inside I heard the sound of laughter and the owner saying, “Honestly! You’d think some people would be more careful where they put their heads, so they don’t destroy property.”

  “And maybe some people should be more careful where they hang their mobiles, so they don’t injure customers,” Chloe snapped as she stomped out of the store.

  She gripped my arm and pulled me to my feet.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. My breathing was already slowing down. “It was just all that stuff all around me, you know? And getting stuck in my hair.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have thought. Well, no more of those tacky tourist stores. Let’s go grab a cup of coffee somewhere, or maybe,” she said, casting me a still-worried glance, “some calming chamomile tea. Then we’ll get our fashion on.”

  “No, I’m fine now, really. I can handle a nice clean, spacious clothing store.”

  “Okay, if you’re sure? Where do we start?”

  I led her into the swimwear boutique with the best variety and steered her to the full rack of bikinis in her size. She immediately picked out one in a hideous leopard print, held it against her chest and studied her appearance in a full-length mirror.