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

by LJ Evans

  In any event, I still didn’t really stand a chance against you in the long haul, but I was still beating Craig. He wasn’t a jock. I wasn’t even sure why he still hung out with you two. He was into computers and video games and was constantly talking about how he was going to make the first real flying car that would be marketable to the masses.

  Craig was annoying. He was like a gnat buzzing in your ear all day long. But you and Paul still hung out with him even though you were nothing alike. A lot of the times, I was stuck with him because you were off flirting. I tried to be nice. He was your friend after all, but sometimes, you just have to push a guy like that into the lake to see what reaction he’ll give you. He never had one. He just dried off and moved on. What kind of guy does that?

  Near the end of the summer, football practice kicked back up. I usually rode with you from the lake to practice. I’d watch from the stands and criticize everything you and the coach had done on the ride home. After all, I’d been watching you play football since I could stand.

  I wasn’t the only one that came to watch though. There was your gaggle. To be honest, you weren’t the only cute guy on the team. Paul held his own with his Harry Stiles-ness and some of the other football players had mighty fine asses that drew the girls in as well.

  But even though all the girls would “claim” ownership of one guy or another so that no one was stepping on their “turf,” in truth, they all would have dumped that crush in a heartbeat if they thought they had a chance with you.

  You threw like a god. You ran in touchdowns. You could block with one hand. And when you took off your helmet and shook out your dark, wavy locks to wink up at the stands, it was like a collective sigh went out amongst the girls sitting there. Movie reel perfect. You wouldn’t even contradict me, would you? You’d just smile that self-assured smile and ruffle my hair.

  Kayla had dibs on you, but I could tell her best friend, Brittney, would have tossed her panties your way in eighth grade and said to hell with Kayla. She was always watching you, even when you were with Kayla. Truth be told, she was actually prettier by far than Kayla, but not quite as obnoxious and flirty. The guys said she was a man killer. Quiet and deadly. I could see that about her. But you were interested in the flirty one. So, Brittney just stood by on the sidelines and watched with a knowing smile, as if she had looked into a crystal ball and could see the future. It made me nervous for you. And me.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  It was after the gaggle had started appearing to drool over you at football practice, and near the end of summer, that things started to go really haywire with you physically. There was one day that really stands out amongst the rest to me.

  We’d left our bikes at home when we’d gone to football practice, and we’d just gotten rid of your gaggle and headed towards our block when it started. You were carrying most of your pads and gear. I was carrying your helmet when all of a sudden you bumped into me. At first, I thought you were just playing our little bumper car game that usually ended up in a wrestling match on the ground, but when I looked up, your eyes were all out of focus. I grabbed your arm and called your name. You looked at me, but it was with a faraway look. I sat you down on a neighbor’s lawn and grabbed a Gatorade from my backpack, practically force feeding it to you. It took a while, but you came back a little.

  “What the hell, Jake?”

  “I’m just dizzy. Dehydrated.”

  But you were still slurring your words, and you were still out of it. We both knew it was more than being dehydrated. In fact, you were drinking more liquids than ever. You were always thirsty. And ever since that first day at the lake earlier in the summer, you’d been having these spells, and lately, they’d been getting worse.

  “You need to tell your mama. Or my mama,” I said thinking of mama’s job at the hospital.

  “No way. I tell anyone, and they pull me out of football make a big stink that I can’t play until I’m checked out. That’s bullshit. I’m fine. The Gatorade helped.”

  I just stared at you. I knew you weren’t fine the same way you knew I wasn’t fine when you’d saved me from the tree house or saw me dive off the cliff. So, I just stared. You squirmed a little, drank some more Gatorade, and then sighed at me when I was still glaring at you like a tiger eyeing its prey.

  “After season. I promise,” you finally said. And I knew you would keep your promise. Just like I’d kept all my promises to you. But I made a silent promise to myself that I’d have lots of food, Gatorade, water, whatever on hand just in case you needed it.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  You harassed me about the dirty pink backpack loaded with crap after that, but I think you did it as your way of telling me you hadn’t forgotten your promise to me. Or thanking me for bringing it. Or both. I just took the pestering and moved on. Paul said it was like I was storing up for an invasion, but he was always the first to deplete my resources which pissed me off because I was saving them for you.

  You and I would exchange a look during Paul’s harassment that spoke volumes. I never gave up my silent vigil, watching your every move for a sign that something was wrong. Kind of like our cat, Sadie, had watched her kittens tumble about… watching to see if something bad came around.

  I never gave a thought to what would happen if I wasn’t there keeping watch. After all, I practically lived with you during the summer. We even spent many a night sleeping out in the tree house with Mia as our chaperone. Not that our parents would have thought we needed a chaperone. Not then. Not when even you didn’t think we needed a chaperone.

  I just had no notion that we’d be separated. Dinner was at my house or your house, and even with the gaggle texting you the whole time, you never shooed me away. Sometimes, when you were in the bathroom, I’d look at the text and want to throw the phone against the wall because Kayla was so obvious and stupid and full of drama. You knew it. But you liked having someone to practice kissing on.

  And according to Wynn, Kayla bragged all the time about what a good kisser you were. Why wouldn’t you be? You were good at everything else. It seemed only logical that the smooth as ice cream boy would be smooth as silk on the lips too. And you were. I’d find that out later. Go ahead and laugh, snicker. I know you’re doing it with that knowing smile of yours. I wish I could punch your shoulder right now…

  Anyway, back to the point at hand. One of the things that started chipping away at our time together came a couple weeks after that big dizzy spell, right before school started. You know what I’m talking about, right? I can tell you it in one word: Coach.

  We were at the pool, and I was doing a dive from the high board. It was a particularly difficult backward twist that I hadn’t quite perfected but loved doing because I felt like it kept me in the air longer. When I emerged from the water, instead of being there to criticize my move, you were talking to an older man. All I felt was relief that at least it wasn’t a girl. I swam over to the poolside where you both looked down at me.

  “I hear you’re Cam,” the older man said. I liked the look of him. He was wrinkled in a nice way, from smiling. And he had gray hair that was losing its last battle with color and would soon be white. But he didn’t look too old, like my grandma on my mama’s side who seemed like she was just about to step into an urn reserved for her.

  He squatted down and stuck out a hand, not afraid to shake my wet one. “I’m Coach Daniels,” he announced.

  I looked from you to Coach and shook his hand, but I still wasn’t following what was going on yet.

  “Coach Daniels has a competitive dive team,” you filled in the blanks for me.

  “The Vikings?” I asked. I’d heard of them. I remembered you reading a little about their success in the paper. There’d been some story about this big time Olympic coach opening up a dive school, but I hadn’t really paid much attention. He was still raising money to build his own facility and was using the high school pool as home base for now. But I wasn’t diving for medals; I was di
ving for air time.

  “You’ve heard of us?” His smile grew.

  I just nodded and pulled myself fully out of the pool. He looked me over. Not in a creepy way either, but more like he was seeing where my muscles were and where they needed to be shored up.

  “Cam, he loved your dive.” I looked at your face and your amazing kaleidoscope eyes, and they were shooting fireworks of excitement. I didn’t see you like that very often. Mostly playing football. Sometimes when we came up with some crazy stunt to punk our parents.

  “Thank you?” I said questioningly because I was still a little behind on what you thought was so exciting.

  “Young lady,” I winced, and Coach changed tactics, “Cam. That was the best damn dive I’ve seen in a couple of years.”

  I just stared at him and then at you like you’d both lost your freakin’ minds. The best dive? It had been really awful. I’d made a huge splash going into the water and my twist really hadn’t been completed. I told you both that and Coach’s grin just got wider and wider.

  “That’s amazing! Most divers your age can barely tell me the name of that dive let alone what they did wrong.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what the dive is called, but I can sure as hell tell you what was wrong with it.”

  “Cam! Don’t swear,” you said. I just rolled my eyes at you. You’d been swearing so much this last year that I didn’t think I’d be able to keep it out of my vocabulary even if I wanted to try. Which I didn’t. My mama and daddy had been called to the school three times last year because of my language, which I thought was an improvement over my lack of self-restraint, but I’d still been grounded. Homework and reading only for a week each time. I didn’t care. I still got to do homework and reading with you, so what did it matter?

  “I’d like to come by your house. Talk with your parents. Get you on my team,” Coach told me.

  “Really?” I said with genuine surprise.

  “Really!” he said with a smile.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  So that night, Coach came by my house. You were there. Like you would have been anywhere else, right? You’d bounded into my house and read my parents the article on Coach from our local newspaper’s website. Then you brought up all these Olympic stats on him and rattled off names of famous divers he’d worked with.

  My parents were trying to play catch up, bewildered. “I don’t understand. Where has Cami been diving?” my mama asked.

  “At the pool,” you and I said in unison, but our eyes met, thinking of my cliff dive.

  “From the high board? Jesus, Cami. You could have gotten seriously hurt doing that,” my daddy said with a sad shake of his head.

  “No, sir. She’s really good,” you came to my defense.

  So, when Coach came in, they were already a little dazzled and off-centered. And Coach completely bamboozled them. They would have been ready to hand him the keys to the house if he’d asked.

  “That’s settled then. I’ll see you on Monday at the high school, right after school lets out?” he said.

  It was then that it hit me. Right after school. Not only was school starting, and we’d be drawn apart all day for that, but now, if I was diving somewhere, it meant that I wouldn’t be at your football practice. I wouldn’t be able to watch for signs of dizziness or fainting or crankiness.

  “Um. Thanks, but no thanks,” I replied and ducked my head.

  “What?” everyone in the room said at once, including you.

  “I just think I have other things to do after school.” But I couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes, especially yours.

  “Like what?” mama said, eyes narrowing in on me with suspicion.

  I looked up at you; my eyes begging you to understand that I couldn’t leave you. Sure, I loved diving, but I could do that no matter what. If something happened to you when I wasn’t watching, I’d die. And you did get it, but you didn’t smile. Instead, your eyes darkened and you gave me your hard, unrelenting stare you normally reserved for your opponents on the field.

  “Can I talk with Cam for a minute?” you asked. My parents just nodded, and you led me out to our backyard. Without a word, you climbed the ladder to our tree house, and I followed.

  We lay down and looked out the window at the stars as the crickets made music. You didn’t say anything for a really, really long time.

  “You need to do this, Cami.” And you used my name wrong so I knew you were serious, but I didn’t care.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “If you don’t do it, I’ll never forgive you.”

  I looked over at you, and you were watching me in a funny way. A way that made my stomach do flip-flops that they never did when I dove.

  “I can’t.” I barely breathed it out, but you heard me.

  “Then I’ll quit football so that you will.”

  Now, even being the stupid girl that I was, I knew there weren’t many things a country boy would give up football for. Football was a living, breathing entity in Tennessee, just like in many Southern states. And you were the god of the football team. And now you were saying you would give up that godlike status so that I would dive. It wasn’t a little thing. It was huge.

  “No! Out of the question.” I was stubborn and unhappy.

  “What if I promise, promise, promise to keep myself hydrated and at the first signs of dizziness, I’ll sit out?”

  “You won’t.”

  We both knew you wouldn’t. You were quiet again. You were staring into my eyes, trying to guess exactly how stubborn I was willing to be on this. I was willing to die being stubborn about this. Diving didn’t mean anything. You meant everything. Finally, you said real quiet, “What if I promise to talk to my parents and go see a doctor?”

  I looked up at you and saw the depth of your emotion in your shining green eyes.

  “I don’t want to go to a stupid dive school anyway. They’ll want me to dive their way, and you know me, I’m not any good at following rules.”

  “I think Coach Daniels is different, Cam. I think you’d have a lot of say. Shit. You’re only ten, and he already respects you.” You put your hands behind your head and turned back to looking out at the stars. “You’re like a dolphin in the water, Cam. You. The water. You’re one. It’s amazing to watch. It’s beautiful.”

  My hungry little heart thumped at those words. You. Calling me beautiful. Even if it was only the way I swam. I scooted over so that my head was on your inner arm and stared out at the night with you. The thought of diving for someone else was an interesting perspective. To feel like I was good at something. To know that you thought I was good enough to do this. It was a little intoxicating. But my insides were still all twisted up at the thought of leaving you at practice and something happening.

  I guess I knew, even then, that at some point I wasn’t going to be able to stop what was happening to you with anything in my dirty pink backpack full of food supplies. So, if this was a way to get you to go see the doctor, then what did I really have to lose? Ha. That’s a joke now, looking back. I had everything to lose.

  “You’d really go to the doctor?”

  You just nodded. But I felt it. And I knew you were telling the truth like I always did. It was a low blow in some ways because you knew that I wanted you to go to the doctor because I was worried about you, but on the other hand, it made me realize just exactly how much you wanted this for me.

  We realized we’d have to go back inside to talk to the grown-ups, so I jumped out of the tree house from the window with you growling at me not to, and we went back inside. Coach Daniels was so excited he picked me up and swung me around so that my feet actually floated. My parents just stared like they weren’t sure who I was and really weren’t sure about this crazy, happy dude in their living room.

  You said you’d see me in the morning, and our eyes met for a long time. I could see the mixed feelings in yours. You were still excited for me. The brightness was still there, but you wer
e worried too. I just had this aching feeling that our lives were changing even more, and this time, I couldn’t blame it on the hormones.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  On Monday, after school, I saw you just enough to wave as you got into your mama’s car, and I got into mine. You winked at me. We had both caught hell from our parents once you’d gone home and told them what had been going on.

  My mama, the hospital administrator, filled me with a million horror stories of what could have happened, what could be wrong, and how dangerous it was to keep quiet about someone’s health. Your parents railed on you about how stupid it was to risk your health and your future for a stupid game. Even though both our daddies knew it wasn’t a stupid game. They were right, you know. We had to find that out the hard way… God, if we could only go back. Do it again, right? Life doesn’t give you do-overs, no matter how much people talk about second chances. It doesn’t happen.

  You had to skip practice, and my punishment was that I couldn’t go with you to the doctor. I wanted to. Instead, I was on my way to meet Coach Daniels for the first time at the high school pool.

  It helped a lot that he was really excited to see me. He talked non-stop about all this potential he saw in me. It was a little infectious. There were other kids there too. Some younger, some older. Boys and girls. But they all looked at me a little enviously as Coach told them about me in ranting raves. He put me through some dives. I didn’t know any of the names, so he showed me videos on his phone. I could do a lot of them. Not well, but I could get through the motions.

  “Shit. I have to put in a ten meter,” he muttered almost to himself. Then he saw me watching him with a smile, and added, “Sorry, little lady. Didn’t mean to cuss. I know you are trying to break the habit.”

  It made me like him even more. Right there. The fact that he was laughing with me. That he wasn’t trying to change me. That he was going to change the build of his dive school just for me. Instead of me having to change for him. That was all kind of cool. And even though I’d liked the look of him before, I really felt like I could trust him now. That was a big step for me because trust was usually something I reserved for just one person.