Rosebush by Michele Jaffe Page A

hitting each other with sticks here than attacking other people’s kids in public” was how Mr. di Savoia explained it, but based on the way Mrs. di Savoia snickered when he said that, it was clear it was as much for him as for them. Each hole had a dance you had to do before you could shoot, and some of them had secret handshakes, and I could hardly remember a time I’d had more fun. As I left, Mrs. di Savoia took my hand and gave me a kiss on each cheek and said in her slightly accented English, “I hope you will visit again. It is rare for Nicola to bring a girlfriend over. Come back soon.”
    Nicky blushed. “Mom.”
    “I’d love that,” I said, and totally meant it.
    Langley and Kate found me at my locker the next morning at school.
    “Where were you yesterday, jelly bean?” Langley asked, peeling the silver foil from an ice-cream sandwich. One of Langley’s many enviable qualities was that no matter what she ate, she never put on any weight. “We kept calling and calling you.”
    “I was at Nicky di Savoia’s working on bio. Did you know there’s a mini-golf course in the basement of their house? With a volcano?”
    “Seriously?” Kate asked, sipping her latte. “Don’t let my father hear that, he’ll put one in except instead of a volcano, it will be a statue of him.” She got pensive for a moment. “Of course, that could be fun to shoot balls at.”
    “And you could dress it up.” I shouldered my bag and the three of us started to walk toward AP European History.
    Langley nibbled the edge of her ice-cream sandwich. She always ate it the same way, nibble, lick, nibble, lick, from the outside in. “It sounds like you had fun.”
    “I did.”
    “I wouldn’t hang out with her too much, though.”
    I stopped walking. “Why not?”
    Langley stopped too. “Haven’t you heard the rumors? Licky Nicky? Likes to suck dicky?”
    “I’ve never heard anything like that,” Kate said.
    “Me either,” I agreed. “What are you talking about? She dates David Tisch.”
    Langley shrugged and started walking again. “I guess he hasn’t heard them either.”
    Maybe because I was listening for them, I started hearing the Licky Nicky rumors after that. At first it was just a trickle, but soon everyone was talking about it. One guy said she’d blown him in front of one of her dad’s gold records, another told about a hot night on top of the miniature-golf-course volcano, the kind of details that gave the rumors authenticity. I was in the hallway once when a senior boy came by and said to her, “Hey, Nicky, hungry? How many licks would it take you to get to the center of this?” and grabbed his crotch. She started getting more withdrawn, so I didn’t see her as much, and when our bio rotation ended, I didn’t see her at all. I heard she and David broke up, but I didn’t know the details.
    The last time we talked was in early December. There was a weekend of Indian summer, so I took Annie to the park and Nicky was there with the twins. It was a little more than a month after I’d started dating David and I thought it might be awkward, but she came over in response to my nervous wave and said, “So, I hear, you and David.”
    “Yeah.”
    She gave me a weird look. “Enjoy that.”
    “Um, thanks?” She was turning to go when I stopped her. “Want to get a coffee or something later?”
    “Why? So you and your friends can destroy my reputation some more? There are easier ways to steal someone’s boyfriend.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “I know where those Licky Nicky rumors came from. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but how could I not? When the ‘details’ started filtering out. My dad just finished his miniature golf course and you’re one of the only people to go down there.”
    “You think I started those rumors?”
    She didn’t say anything, just stared at me blandly.
    “Why would I?”
    She gave me a hard look. “Don’t act naive. ‘He sounds like the perfect