For a girl who sang like and angel and who Jamie had seen plenty of times before and who he liked well enough to want to kiss her this holiday, Julia was surprised she’d not heard of this Mallory before.  Maybe he’d mentioned her and she just hadn’t noticed, the name flitting in one ear and out the other.  Now she seemed significant, and Julia imagined something like an angel girl in a white choir gown, calling down a circle of saintly light around her with the power of her voice.  Of course Jamie fancied her.  Of course he wanted to kiss her.  Who wouldn’t want to kiss a girl like that?  The only thing about this that surprised her, really, was that he seemed to be asking her to dare him to do it.  

“Alright then,” Julia said, grinning.  She started in on another round of Silent Night while she processed this idea.  Jamie finding a girlfriend – would that change things between the two of them?  It didn’t occur to her that Mallory might not fancy him madly.  If Mallory went to this school, he would want to start spending more time with her than with Julia.  That was how those things worked, didn’t they.  Julia wasn’t sure, but she was suddenly very glad that this girl wasn’t a witch – whatever she was.  “So you’re going to persuade her into a kiss and then tell me alllllll about it afterwards.”  Julia felt slightly funny thinking about this, as though she wasn’t sure she was going to want to hear about it, but she couldn’t stop smiling to save her life.  

“You need a challenge, too, of course.

“I do?” Julia asked.  She wasn’t aware that this was a competition, but she supposed he was right.  Dating and kissing and everything about that part of the social life of girls was all one big competitions, in a sense.  She noticed that her playing had slowed in tempo and when Jamie continued on she stopped all together, dropping her hands into her lap.  

“Yous should try to get a lad to kiss you before we're back  in January. You'll have the advantage, seeing as any lads you'd be kissing are all here and you can start any time yous like.”

“Nobody is about to kiss me by January,” she said, wrinkling up her nose dismissively.  “Not unless I just walk up and ask him to.”  Julia had at least some modicum of dignity – enough, at least, to prevent her from going around begging for her first kiss from boys who didn’t otherwise notice her.  “If I wanted to go about it like that, I would just ask you to kiss me.”



Life unfolds in proportion to your courage.