Playing With Matches Read online

  Just as the cartoon reached the surprising ending of Bugs humiliating Sam, Melody looked in my direction. Her face registered brief surprise, then lost all trace of emotion. She simply stared at me for a few seconds, like I was an acquaintance she couldn’t quite place.

  “Hi,” I blurted out. She turned back toward the screen.

  “Let it pass, Leon,” whispered Johnny. “She’s with people.”

  Bart Axelrod exploded onto the screen in a hail of gunfire. Wearing a ponytail entirely too long for the cop he was supposed to be playing, he burst into a crack house. Facing down the drug runners, he let loose more shots from his pistol than were fired during the invasion of Normandy. “Punk,” he whispered at the last man standing. “I’m gonna be picking your brains out of my shoes for a week when I’m done with you.”

  Okay, maybe it wasn’t Citizen Kane.

  I kept trying to pretend that Melody wasn’t there and enjoy the film. By the time Axelrod’s black, by-the-book, older partner was killed by the head villain, I was looking in Melody’s direction again. She noticed and pointedly looked away.

  “Melody?” I called in a loud whisper. She frowned and shook her head. Several of her companions looked in my direction. I felt unreasonably jealous. She should be sitting with me, not them.

  I sat staring at my lap, feeling sorry for myself, until I was interrupted by Johnny’s moronic laughter. Axelrod was wrestling with a henchman in the back of a speeding truck. The thug had him by the throat and was trying to force his face into the road as they sped along at a zillion miles an hour.

  “Now there’s a stunt I’ve never seen in any other movies.”

  I nodded, not really listening. My gaze fell across the aisle and I caught Melody looking at me. She instantly turned her head away.

  “Melody?” I tried again.

  “Leon, no!” she almost yelled. Someone behind me shushed us.

  This went on for about ten more minutes. We kept glancing in each other’s direction, only to turn away when we were noticed. I felt like I was back in elementary school. It was time for action.

  “Johnny,” I whispered, “I’m going in.”

  “Eh?”

  “I’m going to tell Melody I love her.”

  “What? Since when?” The person behind us shushed us again.

  “For a while now. I just didn’t realize it.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Wish me luck.”

  “What? You can’t tell her now; we’re at the movies.”

  “Then I’ll tell everyone I love her.” The idea hadn’t occurred to me until then, but it was worth a shot.

  “Leon! Don’t even think about it!” A look of horror spread across Johnny’s face.

  “Think Romeo and Juliet, Johnny. Think, um, Samson and Delilah.”

  “Think John Hinckley,” begged Johnny. “Think restraining order.”

  “Here I go.”

  Johnny sighed, dumped the remains of his popcorn on the floor, and stuck the tub over his head. “Tell me when it’s over.”

  As I hopped up and over to Melody’s seat, I suddenly had a pretty good idea of how kamikaze pilots felt: I was going to die and I didn’t even care. Waiting for her to forgive me wasn’t working; I had to show her I was willing to do anything to win her back.

  “Melody,” I said, in my normal voice.

  Melody started a bit when she realized I was standing right next to her. “Leon, sit down,” she ordered loudly and angrily.

  “Shut up!” someone called.

  I knew I should go back to my seat, but I couldn’t. The problem was I couldn’t think of a blessed thing to say.

  But someone up above was to give me inspiration. By coincidence or design, I had approached Melody right when Bart Axelrod was giving a passionate speech to his on-screen love. Striking a pose in full view of the packed theater, I faced Melody and mouthed the words I’d heard a dozen times.

  “Babe, take me back. I know I hurt you, honey. I know I did you wrong.”

  Melody cringed and looked like she’d very much rather be somewhere else. Her companions looked from her to me with great amusement.

  “I been a loner all my life, babe. I didn’t think I needed no one. But then I seen you up onstage at Chi Chi’s and I can’t think about no one different.”

  Melody was blushing through her scars. Several audience members were yelling for me to sit down. Too late to stop now. I continued the monologue.

  “I loves ya, darling. I tell you, she didn’t mean nothing to me.” That got a reaction from Melody, though not exactly a happy one. “It won’t happen again, sweetcheeks.”

  Someone’s half-eaten candy bar pegged me in the side of the head.

  “I could be dead in the morning. Let me know you still care.”

  By this time, everyone in the theater was watching us. Audience members shouted opinions.

  “Take him back!”

  “Shut the hell up!”

  “Down in front!”

  “Dump him; go home with me!”

  “Make him beg!”

  “You’re my everything….”

  I suddenly made full eye contact with Melody, and I hated what I saw. She wasn’t impressed. She was mortified. She looked like I was ridiculing her, which was exactly what I was doing. I had tried to impress her by being goofy, but I’d only managed to draw attention to her and make her look foolish. The thing she’d told me she hated more than anything.

  There was no point in going on. Turning away, I trudged out of the theater. Audience members laughed, whistled, and pelted me with popcorn. I didn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing me run.

  I walked out into the cold night air and sat on the curb. She was really gone this time. Just when I thought I couldn’t sink any lower, something like this happened. To top it all off, Johnny had driven me. I had to wait out in the parking lot till the movie was over. My life was in the toilet.

  Only it wasn’t, really. I’d had a semester I’d remember for the rest of my life. I’d won the girl of my fantasies and dumped her. I’d taken off a girl’s shirt. I’d eaten a cigarette. And I’d learned that maybe, just maybe, there was something about Leon Sanders that girls liked.

  I didn’t turn around when the theater door opened, but I did recognize Melody’s voice.

  “Everyone’s going to be talking about that on Monday, you know.”

  I still didn’t turn around. “Anything to be popular.”

  She sat down on the concrete next to me. “Did you think making a public spectacle of me would win me back?”

  “Yes.” I was too miserable to think of any other reason for what I’d done.

  “You’re unique; I’ll give you that.”

  We sat in silence, not looking at each other.

  “Melody?”

  “Yes, Leon?”

  “Do I stand a chance? At all?”

  There was a pause. “As a boyfriend, no.”

  “How about as a friend? I miss that.”

  “Leon, I want to hate you so much. I want to put you out of my life. I want to say you meant nothing to me. But I really did like being with you. I…Leon, you were my best friend. I’ve never had that before.”

  Insert knife into heart, twist.

  “Could we go back like that?” I asked, afraid of the answer.

  “I don’t know. Could we?”

  I finally looked in her direction. She was staring at me expectantly. And then it hit me: for one of the few times in my life, I knew exactly what a woman wanted.

  She didn’t want lame excuses for my cheating, or promises she wouldn’t believe. She didn’t want public displays of insanity or whining and begging. After several weeks, I finally figured out what it was she needed. I took her hand and she didn’t pull away.

  “Melody, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. There’s no excuse, so I won’t justify it. But I really do regret it. I’d like to be your friend again, if you’d let me.”

  For the first time since t
he breakup, Melody smiled at me. It wasn’t her full-force, gorgeous smile, but it was a start.

  “Want to buy me a taco, Leon? We can walk from here.”

  “I’d like that.” We stood up.

  “Do you need to tell Johnny you’re leaving?”

  “I think he’d be happy never to see me again.”

  We walked on through the crisp spring night in silence. I couldn’t remember ever feeling so relieved. Though she wouldn’t take me back as a boyfriend, at least she’d forgiven me enough to be friends. It was a start…and an ending, it seemed. Dan had been right. Melody had passed through the fire. She was harder. Those special feelings she’d had for me were gone, and I’d have to accept that.

  Then again, she was still holding my hand.

  Brian Katcher wrote Playing with Matches on a third-hand laptop while living in Mexico. He is a school librarian and lives in Missouri with his wife, Sandra, and baby daughter, Sophie. This is his first novel.

  Published by Delacorte Press an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc. New York

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Brian Katcher

  Interior illustration © 2008 Cole Gerst/option-G

  All rights reserved.

  Delacorte Press and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Katcher, Brian.

  Playing with matches / Brian Katcher.

  p. cm.

  Summary: While trying to find a girl who will date him, Missouri high school junior

  Leon Sanders befriends a lonely, disfigured female classmate.

  [1. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Beauty, Personal—Fiction. 4. High schools—Fiction. 5. Schools—Fiction. 6. Disfigured persons—Fiction. 7. Missouri—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.K1565P1 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2007027654

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-84882-7

  v3.0