Serial Summer

by Angel Lawson

His eyes travel up and down my body, landing on the towel in my hair. “I noticed.”

  I narrow my eyes and notice something. He’s wearing a camouflaged cap. My eyes search his arm and spot the tattoo. It’s the serial killer from this morning! Great. Now he knows where I live. “Well, are you going to fix it?” I ask, wrapping my arms around my waist.

  “It’s not really my job.”

  I try to determine if he’s joking or not. The amused look is gone, replaced with a challenging smirk. I don’t know who this jerk is, but I can feel the shampoo caking in my hair and dripping down my legs. “What? You helped her.” I point to the retreating form of the old woman, who now that she has water no longer cares about the two of us.

  “I’ve known Dorothy since I was six. She makes me apple fritters. No way I’m pissing her off.” He leans against the side of my camper and I notice that, behind the smug expression and scruffy beard, he’s all sharp bone structure. Not girly. Masculine with a lean jaw and obnoxious, pretty eyes. He’s not just a potential serial killer. He’s a handsome jerk, too.

  “So you’re blackmailing me for pastries to fix my water?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Something like what?”

  He crouches on the ground and attaches what I assume is the water service underneath my camper. It only takes him a minute, and when he stands up he brushes off his hands. “I’ll let you know,” he says with a cheesy wink, and once again I watch him leave while I stand alone by my trailer.

  ~*~

  Sleeping in the camper proves more comfortable than I hoped. Or maybe I’m just exhausted because I don’t wake up until mid-morning. From my bed I can see my mother is in what we call “The Zone.” She spent last night setting up her work station. This includes a laptop, several notebooks, three pencils, a pen and a couple of other current objects she likes to have around. An electronic owl with a moving head peeks at me from its perch on the counter. I’m not surprised she’s already working. It took us three days to travel here, which is enough time for her to get antsy to begin writing. I plan a quick exit from the camper.

  Behind the curtain in my “room” I wrangle myself into a bathing suit. It’s a two piece, kind of. I mean, technically it’s a two piece but I’ve never been that comfortable parading around half naked, so the edges of the top and bottom of this one almost touch. I tug a cover-up over the swimsuit and head out the door with a container of yogurt and a fast, “bye,” to my occupied mother.

  Two new beach chairs lean against the camper. I take one and grab my beach bag and set off in the direction of the shore.

  Ocean Beach Family Campground is located on the edge of the Inter Coastal Waterway, which is kind of like a river between the mainland and the outer islands. Ocean Beach is directly across from us, a mere swim away, where quaint cottages intermix with massive waterfront homes. I stare at the waterway and the boats cruising in front of the campground beach and pretend for a moment there are not 100 trailers behind me, including the one with a Confederate flag mounted on its ‘porch’.

  The weather is perfect for the first of June. Warm but not too hot. I open and set my chair in the sand, facing the sun. I’m happy to be out of the cramped quarters for a while. My mother and I have one of those more-friends-than-mother-daughter things going on. She started writing professionally when I turned eight. She wrote a book about a murder in our community, and then acquired an agent and publisher and she’s written over 20 books on true crimes and mysteries across the country. Her genre is popular, but dime store cheap. It’s enough to live on, and she provided me with a good childhood, even if she wasn’t around all the time. I stare across the water and promise myself for the gazillionth time not to become a single mother.

  “You’re gonna burn,” I hear over the waves and noise off the waterway some time later. I must have dozed off.

  I shade my eyes and see a girl, or woman I guess, with three kids in tow, all scurrying toward the water. She’s carrying a rusty chair and a bag of beach toys. “You put on sunscreen? Your chest is super red.” The word red drags out into two distinct syllables. Before I can answer she looks to the water and shouts, “JT! Stop pushing your sister!” I see the little boy, about three years old, smile wickedly but wade into the water, leaving his sister alone.

  I hear a clatter as the woman drops the bag of toys and she tosses something in my direction. I catch the bottle before it flies past. In the purest southern accent I’ve ever heard she says, “Put some of that on.”

  “Okay,” I say, squeezing a glob of sunscreen into my hand and slathering on my skin.

  “I’m Anita,” she says, dropping into her chair. “Number 46.”

  “Forty-six?”

  “Yeah.” She takes a sip out of a diet drink can. “My lot number. You’re in 19.”

  Of course.

  “Oh, okay, I’m Paige,” I say. I look at this woman—she isn’t very old, close to my age. Her dark hair is long and in a thick braid. For a mom, her body is pretty hot. The bikini she has on is tiny, showing twice as much skin as I am.

  I frown at the kids in the water and try to do the math on their suspected ages and how old I think she may be.

  “Only one of those is mine,” she laughs, seeing the confusion on my face. “The little one. Sibley. The others are her cousins.”

  “You seemed a little young for three kids,” I confess.

  “Pretty normal around here. My brother had his oldest,” she points to JT, “when he was still in high school.”

  “Wow,” I say, because all of my other thoughts are inappropriate to say out loud, like “holy crap!” or “run Paige run!” or “If I‘d gotten pregnant in high school I think I would’ve killed myself.” Instead I say, “That must’ve been rough.”

  “Eh,” she shrugs. “He’s an idiot. Don’t get me wrong, we love JT but his mother, Mandy? She’s crazy. That’s why I’m watching him and Carly, because she took off two years ago.”

  “Oh, so you babysit them every day?” I’m trying to follow this girl’s story and figure out why she’s telling me all of this and how I can possibly sneak away without her noticing.

  She takes another gulp of soda and adjusts her top. Her skin is super tan. “Yeah, he works down at the marina when he’s not here working with Bobby.”

  “Who?”

  “My husband.”

  “Oh.”

  “My family owns the campground but the guys also work at the marina. Well Justin works at the marina primarily, now that he’s finished with school, but they all kind of go back and forth.”

  I’m starting to get a headache.

  “Enough about me, I hear you’re staying with your mom? She’s some kind of writer?”

  I don’t even pretend to be shocked she knows this. I have a feeling we were a breaking addition to the campground newsletter. “She’s writing a book about some serial killer. Donald something.”

  “Gaskins?”

  “Yeah that sounds right. Donald Gaskins killed a whole bunch of people around here back in the seventies.” At least, I think that’s what she told me.

  “Oh.My.God. You’re kidding right? Donald Gaskins the serial killer from Florence?”

  I shrug. “I think so.”

  A huge grin spreads across her face. “Wait ‘til I tell Bobby. He’s obsessed with serial killers. He makes us watch all those biography shows and things. Personally, I think it’s gross but he can’t get enough. Plus, there’s no one famous from around here, so Gaskins is like, one of our claims of fame,” she sighs. “It’s pretty typical the only local person worth writing a book about is a crazy guy who killed people out on the highway.”

  Again, I’m not sure what to say and just offer up a lame, “cool,” in hopes she’ll stop talking, at some point. She doesn’t, so I settle into my chair, close my eyes, listen to the small waves hit the shore, the squeals of the children playing, and more small-town gossip than I will ever need.

  ~*~

  Worried about t
he pink splotches on my skin, I attempt an escape about an hour later.

  “You must spend a lot of time indoors,” Anita says. I pull my sundress over my head. “No partying for spring break or is Vanderbilt not a party school?”

  “Not me. My friends all did though.” I should have gone with them. If I had, maybe I wouldn’t be on the side of an ocean right now, living in a camper with my mother, and what happened never would have happened.

  “Not enough money?” she speculates.

  For some reason I tell her the truth. “No, I spent it with my boyfriend.”

  Anita raises an eyebrow. “A boyfriend worth skipping spring break sounds pretty interesting.”

  “He’s not my boyfriend anymore. So unfortunately, it was kind of a waste.”

  “Oh, well that sucks,” she frowns. “Well, by the end of June you’ll be brown as a berry and you’ll have so many fun stories to tell your friends.”

  Anita has no idea my friends are barely speaking to me, and even if they were I’m too embarrassed to tell them about this humiliating summer vacation. Not when they are all about to head to Europe on the school trip I busted my ass to get a scholarship to attend. Plus, I’ve endured enough embarrassment for a lifetime. There’s nothing like getting caught with your pants down, literally, to make you reassess your life goals.

  “Maybe,” I smile, unable to outright lie. I wave goodbye and leave her to her tabloid magazine and kids, taking the walkway back to my camper. Since ours is on the front row, it’s a short trip. I’m surprised, though, to see my mother outside the trailer propping up the blue and white-striped awning.

  “Hey,” I say to my mom, dropping my chair and bag on the ground.

  “How do you like it?”

  “It’s great,” I say, touching the fabric over my head. “You should’ve waited. I could’ve helped.”

  “Oh this nice young man came by and helped me with it. He helps manage the property.”

  “Bobby?” I ask, recalling the name of Anita’s husband. She said he manages the campground while her brother worked at the marina. I suspect the guy that turned off my water is probably Bobby. Maybe he came over to help my mom to make up for being such a wanker.

  She has a string of lights in her hand and is weaving it around the underside of the awning. “He didn’t say.” She looks at me and wrinkles her nose. “Wow you’re red.”

  “I know. I may have forgotten sunscreen.”

  “I have some aloe in the bathroom cabinet, but you’ll still probably peel.”

  I touch the red skin on my arm and make a white spot. “Great.”

  “I’m going on a field trip this afternoon—for the book. Do you want to come?” she asks.

  I consider her offer for a moment but realize if she’s gone then I can have the camper to myself for a while. “I think I’ll stay here and continue unpacking.”

  It’s a white lie, I think later, when I’m clean and sprawled on my bed. Just one more to add to the pile. I’m in shorts and a tank top with aloe slathered all over my body. I do feel bad, lying to my mother. She’s always been supportive and honest with me—something that, until recently, I had been with her.

  Humiliation makes it harder to tell the truth.

  It also makes me desperate because I pull out my laptop to see if I have any messages or emails. We have wifi here, since mom needs it for her book. The computer takes a minute to warm up but soon I’m faced with a long string of emails. I open the first one from my friend Irene. Apparently she is still talking to me.

  Wish you were coming! There’s still time. We don’t leave til the 15th and I talked to Mark. He says you can still come. The choice is yours…call me.

  Then from Catherine:

  I know things suck right now and you think it will be awkward but just come! Face it and own the mess. It’s not the big deal you think it is. Plus, I think he misses you.

  I read a couple more like this and shut the lid with a snap. My friends mean well, but I wish they would leave the subject alone. They’re leaving for Paris in a couple of weeks (twenty one days—but who’s counting?) and the willpower it took to walk away from Mark has been the hardest thing I’ve ever managed to do. I’d already ditched them for spring break for a guy and now I was doing it again. Just not to hang out with him this time, but to avoid him.

  I notice there are no emails from him. There never have been. I realize now why. He couldn’t leave a paper trail or anything tangible to connect us together. I guess texts could be deleted but emails were too risky. At the time I brushed it off. Like a lot of things.

  I run my hand between the mattress and the wall and dig out my journal. The photo is of the two of us, one of those stupid ones you take yourself. Half of my head is out of the picture and it’s a tiny bit blurry but we both look happy. Little did I know within weeks of this photo everything would be a mess. Next to his photo is the airline ticket to France. Still valid. As long as I have it I know there is a chance. A choice. But choosing him, which is what it would mean, is not an option. Not for me. Not for his wife.

  Just thinking about her makes my stomach recoil.

  The metal door opens and my mother walks into the camper. I toss the papers back in the book and slide them next to the wall, unable to just trash them like I knew I should.

  “Get up,” my mother says, seeing me lying on the bed. I notice a bottle of wine wrapped in a brown paper bag in her hand. “Put on something nice.”

  “Why?” I ask. I’m not even sure I can. My sunburn is pretty bad. No chance I can wear a bra.

  “We’ve been invited to cocktail hour.”

  “Cocktails? In a trailer park?”

  “Yes, every Monday they have cocktail hour. We’ve been invited.”

  “You’re kidding. You want to go?” I can tell by the look on her face she wants to go. What has my life come to? Where is my mall-shopping, suburban, keeping–up-with-the-Joneses mother?

  “Oh, I’m going. And so are you.” She starts to undress and I avert my eyes, but not before I see the razor thin scar on her chest. The one she got climbing a fence when she was a kid. In a second she’s slipped behind the shower curtain and yells, “Twenty minutes. Be ready.”

  Chapter Three

  I’m not wearing a bra.

  I can’t.

  My shoulders and back and chest and that sensitive skin near my armpits is fried. I have on a loose sundress that if I bend over too far will reveal everything. I don’t even care. The pain takes precedence.

  “You look like you need something to drink,” an older man says to me. Of course he’s older. Everyone here is older. He has on some kind of fishing hat and the tanned skin of the year-rounders. That’s what they’re called, compared to me and my mother, who are just summer people. The year-rounders seem to all be over the age of seventy, except Anita and her extended family. And this guy. He’s more my mom’s age. Anita’s family is exempt anyway because they own the campground. I overheard another woman call the locals “townies.” I suppose she and her family would qualify.

  “I had one,” I say, holding up my empty glass. I’m only nineteen but there’s no way I’m hanging out drinkless at a cocktail party full of old people. Not to mention my mother has been crowned queen of the night by the Ocean Beach Family Campground. Once word got around that true crime author, Julia Barnes, rolled her shiny silver trailer into the campground for the summer, the fans emerged. It’s not really a surprise that a village of vacationers are fans of her books, they’re pretty much as “beach reading” as you can get. One person recognized her from the back of a copy of “Dahmer’s Deaths” and the gossip chain took off. Now she’s sitting in a beach chair, in the middle of a dozen men and women, telling them stories about all her adventures. Nothing makes a better cocktail party anecdote than ritualized murder.

  I glance at my mother, who is laughing at something, and then at the bottle of wine the older man has offered, and hold up my glass for a refill. He smiles, and starts pouring. “I
thought so,” he says. “My name is Richard.”

  “I’m Paige,” I say and take a gulp of my drink. I’m going to need more than a buzz to get through this. I wish Anita was here but this doesn’t seem like her crowd. We’re clustered on a wide dock owned by the campground. The sun is setting, casting a pretty pink glow on everything.

  “So what brings you down for the summer?” he asks, and I start to wonder if he’s flirting (ew) but he seems genuine so I let it pass for the moment.

  “My mom is writing a book, and I tagged along. We decided to go the scenic route and live with the locals rather than the tourists.”

  “Sounds adventurous.”

  I glance at my mother. “That’s my mom. Always up for a challenge. Have you met?”

  His eyes shift to where my mother is animatedly telling a story of some kind. I swear I hear the name John Wayne Gacy. “We have.”

  “Oh well, then you know. She’s the life of the party and all that.”

  He gives me a sympathetic grin. “And you’re not?”

  “Ha!” I laugh, tipsy. “Nah, I’m good. I just never desired to be the center of attention like she does, you know? She loves the drama and the fame her job provides. She loves digging around in the history of these murders, all the gore, but also revealing the personalities and people. I just kind of prefer not to be noticed.”

  “Why’s that? You seem like a perfectly interesting young woman. Are you in college?”

  “Yes. In Nashville.”

  “What are you studying?” He leans against the railing of the dock. I notice his shoes are made from a soft, dark leather. Expensive.

  “General studies right now. I haven’t picked a major.” I shrug. “I’m not all that together.” That is possibly the understatement of the year.

  “You’ll figure it out.” A boat cruises by and Richard waves to the people inside. The water laps at the dock pilings. He tilts his head and raises his glass at me. “Nice to meet you, Paige. Hopefully we’ll see each other again.”

  “Thanks,” I reply. “It was nice meeting you also.”

  I watch him wander through the crowd of neighbors, stopping once to look at my mother, before disappearing between the campers. I turned to see the final traces of the sunset now by the edge of the waterway and try to stop thinking about the ticket hidden next to my bed.