My Life as an Album (Books 1-4): A small town, southern fiction series

by LJ Evans

  For me, that first day at the lake was magical. The high school kids didn’t hit the lake till later in the day. Maybe they were sleeping off their hangovers or making plans for that night, who knows, but they weren’t there till the afternoon. And the lake wasn’t really big enough to attract serious boaters or water-skiers. So, all in all, it was pretty quiet.

  We were a lot farther from town and our houses, but it was all good. We had your cell phone in case of emergencies, but we’d almost die before we used it and have our parents find out. We didn’t want to ruin a good thing.

  The lake had a warm breeze and the smell of the trees and flowers. One hundred and ten percent better than the chlorine, suntan lotion, and hot dog stench at the pool. We measured the distance across at the short end and had our new racing grounds. We didn’t have Wynn. I missed that a little. Just a little. But there was no way I wanted Wynn to know where we were and bring the flock of gaggling girl geese with her. Plus, Wynn would probably say something to her mama, and it would all be over because then my mama would know. Wynn wasn’t the best secret keeper in the world back then.

  We raced all day. Hardly used sunscreen. Ate lunch on the shore. And we didn’t have to fight with babies, parents, or lifeguards. It was a little piece of heaven. You beat me every single race that day, and yet I was still smiling. I told you that it was because you weren’t distracted by boobs. You laughed and ruffled my hair, but didn’t disagree.

  We were both starving by the time we left at almost six o’clock. We’d eaten everything we’d brought with us by about one. When we were at the pool, you were constantly back and forth to the snack bar, so we’d never really gone hungry. That day you acted cranky and a little disoriented on the way home. I had to keep you from making a couple wrong turns down the dirt roads, and you growled at me like my dog, Sparky, when the cable guy came to our house.

  When we got home, dinner was waiting on your table, and we scarfed it down like we hadn’t eaten in a week. As soon as you had food, you perked right back up. When I made a couple wisecracks about your GPS failing you, you looked at me funny like you didn’t even know what I was talking about. Even in my stupid ten-year-old brain, that seemed strange.

  So, I just started packing lots of extra food. Energy bars, bananas, extra sandwiches, and Gatorades. I don’t think I really realized that anything serious was wrong with you. I just thought you’d been super hungry. My mama thought I was trying to save money and was all smiles. If she’d known I didn’t give a rat’s patootie about the money, that I just wanted to keep you from being cranky with me, she might have been a little more hesitant to send me off with such a pile.

  Slowly, as the summer got hotter, the lake got busier earlier in the day. More teenagers came bringing their music and beer. Most of them left us alone because, even as middle schoolers, you and your boys seemed like kids to them. But a few of them, Wade and Blake especially, because they were the ones who played football with you on our block, began to watch our races. And even participate. It became a new adventure. They hated being beaten by a “little” girl. But I was quick as lightning in the water. I didn’t always win, but I came close, and sometimes I did win.

  Unfortunately, they also brought their girlfriends with them. That was a distraction for you again because these girls had more curves than the wannabes at the pool had. They were also a lot more experienced, and better at flirting, and you were the god you were even at thirteen. The only good thing is that the lionesses weren’t really interested in a man-cub, even though you were the god you were.

  But you were interested. Or rather, your hormones were. One day, while you were particularly distracted by the music wafting from Wade’s car and the teenage girls in their short-shorts and bikini tops dancing around full of alcohol, I was left alone longer than I could stand. I got angrier than a bull stabbed in its… well… that would be more boy humor. I’d gone from competing with a gaggle of geese to a group of lionesses. And if the geese outshone me, the lionesses might as well have eaten me alive, the little grasshopper I was.

  So, that day, while you were honing in on your flirtation skills, I was alone, with no kaleidoscope eyes watching me. And I only felt alive with you or when I was in the air. So… that left me eye-balling the cliff hanging over the lake. It seemed to be a little higher than the seven and half meter board at the pool, but to me, that just added to the challenge and excitement. It would mean I’d be in the air for longer.

  I left you on the beach, found my way barefooted through the trees, up the cliffside and out onto the edge. I looked down into the water and could feel the breeze on me already. It was a hot, sticky breeze, but I knew it would lift me up and away, and for three seconds I’d feel as if you were watching m,e whether you were or not.

  I closed my eyes and pictured the dive. I just wanted a forward pike with a twist. At that point, I didn’t know what the move was called. I just could picture in my head what I wanted my body to do.

  I pushed off the edge, and just as I felt my feet leave the ground, I heard you. That inner sense of yours had tuned in at the last minute, and you screamed, “Cami! Nooooo!”

  But it was too late. I was already rotating through the air, feeling alive and feeling the breeze. I unfolded, arms first into the water. I took my time coming up to the surface, and when I did, you had swum out to me. You grabbed my shoulders and shook me so hard my eyeballs rattled.

  “What the hell were you thinking?!”

  “You’re hurting me,” I said as you pushed your fingers harder into my arms and continued to shake.

  “You God damn fool!”

  I looked up at you feeling alive from my dive. Alive from your eyes on me. I’m sure I was all smiles. I felt right down to my bones that it had been a damn good dive. But you weren’t interested in critiquing my dive at all. You were all rant and no rave.

  “You can’t dive here at the lake! You don’t know how low it is or what the hell is under the water. You could have broken your neck. You could be dead!”

  You were raging, and your fingers were still digging into me, and I still didn’t care.

  Blake swam out to join us. “She okay?”

  “I’m fine!” I said with a grin the size of Texas on my face.

  You were still glaring at me, and Blake noticed the whiteness of your fingers pressed into my skin. He reached out and tore your fingers from my arms.

  “Dude. You’re gonna leave a mark. Let her go. She’s okay. She’s Super Girl.”

  You released me, but then you brought me up against your chest and hugged me so tight, like you had when you’d caught me flying from the tree house ladder. Your chin rested on top of my head. This time, I definitely didn’t push you away. Instead, I let my hands wrap around you as you held onto me like you’d never let me go. And I was lost. That was the only place I could ever call home. Ever.

  We stayed late at the lake that night. Wade and Blake had brought their tiny barbeque out with them and cooked burgers, and we’d even gotten permission to stay out with them. Well…our parents thought we were “going to the lake with them,” not “staying at the lake with them.” Paul and Craig had to go home. Gee, darn. So, it was just you and I and the rest of the teenagers.

  After we’d eaten, Blake brought out his guitar and started dazzling the ladies with his country rock music, which didn’t sound too bad, but what did I know? I couldn’t carry a tune any more than I could throw a football. Anyway, the lionesses were otherwise engaged, and you and I went over to our favorite tree. The one that looked like it was holding its arms up to the sky in a victory dance. We lay down on the grass below it. The sun went down, and the lightning bugs came out. The air smelled like summer. But all I could smell was you. The sweaty boy smell that somehow didn’t disgust me at all. It smelled like grass and earth and summer and cookies.

  You put your hands behind your head, and I laid my head on your inner arm. We stared at the stars as they started to sprinkle the sky a
lmost as if the lightning bugs buzzing through the grass had been caught up in the great beyond. We were quiet for a long, long time. Finally, you broke our silence.

  “You have to promise me, you won’t do that again, Cami.” You said it in your voice that had changed to its deep, deep ember over the summer. I knew you were serious because you called me Cami. So, I just nodded, my heart in my throat.

  “I mean it. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to you.” I couldn’t have responded if I wanted to because, at ten, I didn’t even begin to understand the flood of emotion those words gave to my body just beginning its own hormone overdrive.

  “Let me hear you say it,” you said while never looking at me, just looking at the sky as it turned from gray to midnight blue.

  “I promise I won’t dive off the cliff again,” I said quietly. Solemnly. And you knew I was telling the truth because I never broke promises to you. And right then, I had no intention of breaking that promise. But later on, that was a different story. And I guess that story is for later.

  Blake ruined the moment when he called out to us, “Come on lovebirds, time to pack it in.”

  “You’re perverted, Blake,” you hollered back as you pulled me to my feet. And I guess to you, at thirteen, that did seem perverted. As if you’d think twice about a ten-year-old whose boobs had barely started to form.

  But I took off so fast towards Blake that you started teasing me on the ride home in the back of his pickup truck about having a crush on him. And sure, Blake’s shaggy blonde hair and baby face was on top of a really built body, but I wasn’t interested in him. There was only one boy I’d ever be interested in. And right then, his mosaic eyes were looking at me with laughter. What more could a girl want?

  At our houses, Blake stopped long enough for you to lift me off the tailgate and holler, “Adios, Super Girl,” before tearing off the down the street. I winced as your hands touched my bruised arms from earlier, and the wince didn’t escape your notice even though I tried to play it off.

  “I’m sorry I hurt you,” you said with emotion in your voice.

  “I’m sorry you did too,” I said back. You hugged me one more time. Just a one armed, sideways hug before letting me go and ruffling my hair. We headed to our respective porches. I stopped with my hand on the doorknob when your voice called out to me.

  “Cam.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It was a really beautiful dive.”

  I was all smiles when I walked through the door because I knew that, no matter what happened, you would always understand what drove me.

  Stay Beautiful

  “There's pretty girls on every corner

  That watch him as he's walking home.”

  - Swift & Rose

  The gaggle of geese must have sung “Stay Beautiful” about you as much as I did. It’s that song that talks about the boy with the jungle eyes and music smiles that all the girls watch as he goes by. The gaggle quickly realized what I’d always known: that you were beautiful—inside and out. And on top of that, you were going to be a superstar. And while all the girls were daydreaming about you, somehow, over the summer, my dreams slowly started to change too. When we’d begun the summer at the pool, I hadn’t really wanted you in a boy-girl sort of way. I just didn’t want anyone else to have you. But eventually, I realized that there was more to it than that.

  While life was bringing me a little more into focus as a girl, I still had bumps for breasts, and hips that seemed to be there but not really. I didn’t know it then, but I was not ever destined to be a “curvy” girl. And truth was, I wasn’t even comfortable with the little curve that was there. Even though I knew that you still couldn’t keep your eyes off Kayla and her friends’ bumps and curves, I couldn’t imagine you seeing mine.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  Somehow, our parents found out about the lake, and weren’t even mad. They just made sure you had your cell phone, and that I loaded us up with supplies. So, with the blessing of parents, more and more of the gaggle of geese made their way to the lake too. As if almost being eighth graders somehow made them adults. They weren’t. They liked to think they were though. I guess I’d understand that in three years, when I was in eighth grade and wanted you to see me as the adult that I wasn’t.

  We still split our time between the lake and the pool, though, because you wouldn’t let me dive at the lake, and I had gotten bitten by the diving bug. It was kind of nice to keep the gaggle on their toes. Where was Jake going to be? We could escape for a portion of the time from the girls who thought that you were a piece of apple pie and couldn’t get enough. Bad thing was that I couldn’t have Wynn there if I didn’t want Kayla there.

  But you and Kayla had become a thing, sort of. Kayla had lots of things because she and her friend, Brittney, were the queen bees of middle school. Lovely, popular, but with a mean side that could twist a knife in anyone with words said with a smile. Not to you, of course. To you, they were like sweet tea on a hot day.

  It was okay. I learned to put up with the flock of gaggling geese as long as they weren’t yet lionesses. I got to dive when we were at the pool. And that kept me alive inside while you were flirting with the girls, draping your arm around their shoulders, and tossing them playfully into the water, only to pull them up and rescue them from their damsel-in-distress calls. It was all a little sickening. Even Wynn thought so, and she was all girl.

  One day, I caught you kissing Kayla behind our tree. I was looking for you to start our 100 freestyle, and there you were with one arm around her waist and the other behind her head to protect it from the gnarly tree bark. I saw a flick of tongue, and she pressed her bikini covered breasts into your bare chest. I just stared for a moment, like I was caught watching a movie that I didn’t want to see the ending to, but couldn’t turn away from.

  She opened her eyes and saw me. She pushed you away. “We’ve got company. Your kid sister is here.”

  She sauntered by me with a snarky smile. “Freak,” she whispered as she went by. It was all I could do to keep from sticking my leg out and tripping her, but you hated it when I was mean to your gaggle. So, I restrained myself. I was learning restraint because you were teaching it to me. My parents should have paid you money for teaching me something they never had succeeded at.

  I pretended to puke as you joined me. “Do you have to ruin our tree by stinking it up with your skanky love motions?”

  You were one big beaming smile, and you ruffled my hair, but your eyes were on Kayla’s ass. I sighed. A deep, disgusted sigh. You chuckled.

  “You’ll get it. Give yourself three years, and you’ll be Kayla with some boy kissing you by the tree.”

  You pushed my shoulder with yours. I was ready for it and pushed back. The pushing match turned into a wrestling match. It wasn’t really a fair fight. I mean, I was strong. Strong for a girl because I was in super good shape. After all, I had to be able to keep up with you and your boys. But you were still three years older, and all muscled football player.

  So, the result was me in the mud by the lake with you straddling me with my wrists caught in your hands. Okay. I may have been just a kid, but wowie, wow, wow was that enough to make my hormones and insides go boom, boom, boom. You were your normal, gorgeous self. Tall, dark, muscled and grinning like you’d won the kingdom with your lance.

  Kayla caught sight of us, you tickling me while I was held in the mud, and she smiled her fake little smile before calling out. “God, Jake, I’m not letting you touch me now with all that mud on you.”

  It worked like a charm. You were off of me and after her in a flash. Trying to catch her to share your mud with her. And when you caught her, because she let you, you rubbed your body on hers, and she screamed as if she hated it, but we both knew she loved every second of it.

  And in those moments, the lake was not necessarily heaven for me. You may not have seen me as your little sister, but you certainly didn’t want to stick your tongue
down my throat and rub your chest along my small, small, infinitesimal boobs. I just lay there in the mud by the side of the lake staring at the puffy, white clouds stretched out across the pale, blue silk.

  Wynn came up and suggested we move the tubes out on the lake. We floated silently in the hazy sunshine while Kayla’s playful screams and shouts reached us, breaking the quiet of the day like a dog yapping in the middle of the night.

  “She’s so pathetic,” Wynn said with surprising repugnance. This was new. Wynn had always secretly worshipped Kayla, wanting to be the beautiful bombshell Barbie that Kayla was.

  “Thanks, Wynn,” I said, because you have to agree it was a nice thing for my best friend to say.

  “I mean it. If I ever act that way with a boy, just go ahead and put a bullet to my head.”

  “It works though.”

  She turned her tire so she could watch your and Kayla’s antics on the shore. I hated to watch. It made my guts turn in ways I could never make sense of.

  “Yeah, but you know that none of the guys really respect her.”

  That was true too. Paul and Craig talked smack about her on our bike rides home every night, and you didn’t really argue with them or discourage it. It was like you knew you could get her to do anything you wanted her to do, and that wasn’t a challenge or respectable.

  “They fight over her all the time,” Wynn said quietly.

  “Your parents?”

  She nodded. “HER dad, and MY mom.” There was some bitterness to it, and I realized why Wynn was no longer the worshipping stepsister. Kayla was causing problems in a home that had been stitched together and wouldn’t be that hard to rip apart. We continued again in silence for a long time while she watched Kayla’s drama.

  The good thing about the lake was still our races. I was on poop duty last year, and I was determined not to be this year, but you and Paul had started pumping iron to get in better shape for the football season. Eighth grade was a big deal. The high school coaches were all watching you and seeing exactly what position they’d have you starting in the following year, so it was important to you. Football in Tennessee is like Coke and bubbles. Can’t have one without the other.