The Kiss Keeper - Krista Sandor Page 0,3
have to meet their kiss keeper at the well and offer a kiss to appease the Kiss Keeper—or else.”
“Or else, what?” Nat asked.
“Jesus, Nat!” her cousin exclaimed, then bonked the side of her head. “You know this! If you take off the blindfold or don’t offer up a kiss, you’ll have bad luck, and you’ll never find true love, blah, blah, blah! You have to do it.”
“Are you going to follow me?” Natalie asked, hating the treacherous shake in her voice.
Leslie bumped her shoulder. “Hell no! Do you think I want to watch you and some loser lock lips?”
But before she could get in another word or ask another question to stall the inevitable, the sound of Leslie’s flip-flops clip-clopping down the path faded away as her cousin booked-it back to the teen girls’ cabin. Natalie took a steadying breath, her senses heightening, as the forest came alive. The scent of the salty sea and wild blackberries washed over her while insect chirps and frog calls peppered the air as she carefully took one tentative step, then another, then another.
“Calm down,” she whispered, her voice cutting through the nocturnal soundscape.
She knew these trails. She’d sketched a blackberry bush near here just the other day. And, as far as the well, it was simply a circular rock formation with a little wooden roof. Nothing scary. Nothing out of the ordinary. But when the wind picked up and whistled through the thick Maine foliage, her rational brain took a back seat to that little part of her that believed in the folklore of the Kiss Keeper.
Was the ghost of Otis Wiscasset out here, waiting to collect his summer kisses? Was there someone behind her? A spirit? A ghoul? Were they all skin and bones, floating inches above the ground, glowing in that horror movie haunting shade of electric blue? Her pulse kicked up when a voice brought her spiraling thoughts to a screeching halt.
“Um…hello?”
Nat startled as a shiver spider-crawled the length of her spine, and panic flooded her system.
She stretched out her arms, waving them this way and that. “Is that you, Otis?”
It was real! It was real! It was real!
Holy cow! Her cousins were right!
She turned left, then right, then caught her booted toe on a hard tree root and pitched forward, falling into the arms of—not a ghost.
“No, I’m…the guy,” the voice in the darkness said as two hands gripped her shoulders.
Even though she was wearing a blindfold, Nat squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to invoke the Kiss Keeper Curse.
“I’m…the girl,” she answered with her hands pressed to his chest.
Whoever her kiss keeper was, he was tall, and while he wasn’t super muscular, he wasn’t scrawny either.
Who could it be? Unfortunately, it wasn’t like she could even guess. Yes, she’d thought about what it would be like to have a boyfriend. But once she’d arrived at camp—the one place in the world that made her feel whole—she’d focused on her art and sketching and had barely glanced at any of the boys. She wasn’t even sure she could name all the girls in her own cabin.
“Are you still wearing your blindfold?” he asked, his thumb brushing past her collarbone and setting off the butterflies in her belly.
She sucked in a sharp breath. “Yeah. Aren’t you?”
“I am. I am,” he shot back quickly with an apprehensive tinge to his words.
Good. At least, he was nervous, too.
“This is weird, right?” she offered.
His thumb stilled, and his grip on her shoulders relaxed a fraction. “It’s really weird.”
If this were her normal life, she’d jump back, out of this stranger’s near embrace. But this wasn’t a stranger. It was her kiss keeper, and oddly, she didn’t want him to let go.
“Have you ever kissed anyone?” she asked.
He swallowed hard. “Have you?”
She smiled into the darkness. “I asked first.”
Her kiss keeper chuckled, and the nervous edge in his voice disappeared.
“No, I’ve never kissed anyone before.”
Relief calmed her frayed nerves. If she were a terrible kisser, at least, he wouldn’t know.
“Should we do it?” she asked, now the one swallowing back her trepidation.
“I think we have to. You know, the legend and all that.”
She nodded. “We don’t want to upset Otis.”
“And my balls,” he blurted.
“Your what?” she threw back, not sure she heard him correctly.
Her kiss keeper shifted his weight. “The guys said that if I didn’t kiss you, my balls would shrivel up into raisins, and for the rest of my life, my voice would sound like I’d sucked in a lungful of helium.”
She