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

by LJ Evans

  “It’s just my period, it’s not like I stabbed myself in the stomach or anything.”

  You stared at me for a moment, then shook yourself out of your reverie. You loaded up your stuff while I loaded up mine, and we hit the bikes. We rode all the way to the Quick Stop in silence. It was the closest place that would have pads.

  We parked our bikes, and you looked at me for a moment, hesitant, unsure. I hardly ever saw this side of you. You were forever the confident god of girls and football.

  “Do you want me to pick something up for you while you go to the bathroom?” you asked, still looking like you might throw up at any moment.

  “That would be great,” I said casually.

  I headed to the bathroom, and you headed to the personal hygiene products.

  Luckily, I had another suit and some jean shorts in my bag. I got that out, ready to change once you showed up at the door. I was starting to get worried that you had actually passed out when you finally knocked.

  “What took so long?” I groused, but it turned to a laugh at the look of complete bewilderment on your face.

  “There were so many. I… I didn’t know what to choose,” you whispered. “I hope these are okay.”

  You shoved a brown bag at me, and I realized that the guy at the counter must have taken pity on the football hero buying feminine hygiene products because Lord knows you couldn’t call them pads or tampons.

  “It’ll be fine, thanks,” I said with a smile and shut the door in your face.

  Thank God my mama had already shown me everything about these stupid female products. She even had a store of them waiting for me at home. It took me a few minutes to feel like I was cleaned up and had it on right, but I still wasn’t comfortable.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. I didn’t look any different, but all of a sudden, I was different. And you knew it. God hadn’t been taunting me at all. He’d actually helped me out. A lot. You wouldn’t be able to believe I was anything but a girl now. After a few minutes, I realized I couldn’t keep you waiting anymore. Even though having you worry about me was kind of making me all tingly inside.

  I left the bathroom and froze. There you were. No longer worried at all. Instead, you were all smiles, and they weren’t aimed at me. They were aimed at Brittney. Kayla’s BFF who was nowhere near as cutesy and ditzy as Kayla. No way anyone could think of Brittney that way. Most especially me. Kayla might toss her hair and giggle, but Brittney was smart and manipulative.

  Brittney had an ICEE in one hand, and the other hand was twisting the rope bracelet you had on your wrist. The one I’d made you last summer as part of Wynn’s attempt to have me learn some girl things, and you’d worn it all year. It was a little beat up, but you said it was good luck.

  For a second, I hoped that you weren’t laughing about me. That you hadn’t said anything about why we were at the Quick Stop. But then I knew better. You’d die before you’d blab one of my secrets to someone. Even someone who looked as good as Brittney.

  Her hair was blonder than Kayla’s. Ice blonde. But still Barbie-like. And it swung around her face like strands of silk, whereas my dark hair was always dry and brittle from too much chlorine. She always looked just girly enough to show off every beautifully perfect curve of hers, but not so girly as to be prissy and turn the boys off. She didn’t look like someone who spent hours in front of the mirror even though I knew she had to in order to be that amazingly perfect every day.

  I joined you.

  “Well hello, Cami,” she said with her fake, mean girl smile.

  God, I wanted to punch her in her perfect nose for ruining everything. It had all finally been going my way. A fantastic lazy day with you being hit with a lightning bolt sign that said, “Cam is a girl, Cam is a girl, Cam is a girl.”

  Now, instead of seeing me as a girl, you were looking at Little Miss Model with your knowing, flirty smile. You leaned onto the Coke machine, placing your hand just above her head as she preened under your shadow. Then you turned and winked at me. She couldn’t see it, but I knew that wink.

  I rolled my eyes, and Miss Perfect thought I was doing it at her, so she got all squinty-faced.

  “Guess where Brit was heading, Cam?”

  I looked at her in her cover-up that barely covered her tush and wanted to strangle her a little more. Of course, she was heading to the lake.

  “Well, a bunch of us are meeting up out at the lake. Jake says you were just here to stock up on some supplies before going back out?” she said, daring me to contradict it.

  I shrugged.

  “So, Cam. Looks like we won’t be so lonely at the lake now.”

  I grimaced and shifted from foot to foot. Truth was, I wasn’t feeling myself. I had dive practice in a couple hours and wasn’t sure what the hell I was going to do or tell Coach, and sometime before then, I really wanted to talk to my mama. God was trying to tell me I was a girl, after all, and Mama was a girl.

  To this day, I’ll blame it on being my first time that my judgment was clouded right then, because I did the stupidest thing I’ve ever done… like a cow walking itself into the slaughterhouse. What I said was, “You go on. I want to go home and get out of the sun for a while before dive practice.”

  And you bought into that line. Of course, I had just bled all over the place in front of you, so maybe you thought I should go get out of the sun. Or maybe you wanted to put some distance between us to forget the gory sight. Or maybe you’d completely forgotten about it in the ten minutes I’d been in the bathroom and Miss Perfect had shown her boobs to you. Boobs I still didn’t have.

  God, I hated girls with boobs.

  You grabbed your bike and walked it alongside Brittney who didn’t have a bike, of course. Beautiful Barbie dolls didn’t ride bicycles. I went the other way, towards home. You did look back at me once and wave. I waved back, but I was feeling more down than I’d ever felt before. I know. I know. Hormones. They were still playing havoc on us.

  That weekend, I knew I needed help. If I was going to snag you before another goose did, I had to grab your attention once and for all. True, I was still three years younger than you. You were going to be a sophomore, and I was only going into seventh grade, but it could work, right? Okay… so, I was delusional back then? I’ll just continue to blame it on the hormones.

  I recruited Wynn to help me once again. Her and my grandma. My grandma was so thrilled that I wanted to shop for some girl clothes that she handed over her AMEX card as fast as a raccoon opens a garbage can. My mama was disgusted and told me that I was abusing her mama’s good nature, but I promised her I really was going after girl clothes. I don’t think she believed me until I came home.

  Wynn and I spent an entire weekend at the mall. It was more time than I’d spent at the mall all year, probably in all my almost 13 years put together. But it was a pain that I knew would help me in the end. Like the zillion push-ups and pull-ups Coach made me do that tore my muscles apart in order to put them back together all that much stronger.

  Wynn helped me with dresses and frilly tops. Wedges and boots with heels. She took me to her hairdresser and had my hair layered. She took me to the MAC makeup counter and had them do their thing on me. When we got home on Sunday, my mama burst into tears. Literally. She took a thousand pictures and sent them to my grandma, and Grandma called me crying. It was a little nauseating.

  “Mama, I may look like a girl, but I’m still me, and this mushy stuff is more than I can take,” I said with disdain as I stormed my way to my room with Wynn in tow.

  Wynn helped me get my closet set up, then moved on to my bathroom to uncoil the flat iron we’d bought and write directions on my mirror for the makeup regimen so that I would be sure to do it. God, it seemed like a lot of work to be a girl. Being a boy, or at least a tomboy, was way easier. You got up, brushed your teeth, pulled your hair into a ponytail, threw on jeans and a tee, and were out the door in fifteen minutes. All this was going to take me fo
rever.

  After Wynn took off, because her family insisted on having a full sit-down family dinner on Sundays, I stared at myself in my sliding closet mirror. I didn’t not like the look. It was still me. Just a me with a jean skirt instead of shorts and a lacey top instead of my t-shirt. The makeup, well, that would take some time to get used to.

  After staring at myself, trying to decide what I thought about the new look, I decided that I had to see your reaction. Like I was bleeding all down my leg again and needed to know that you knew I was a girl. After all, your reaction was the only one that mattered. I called out to my mama and daddy that I was going next door. I heard my dad snicker and the slap that was my mama hitting his shaved head. I just rolled my eyes and let the screen door slam.

  When I got to your porch, I heard a twitter, and I froze. Fear reached up from the pit of my stomach to place a stranglehold on my heart.

  “Jake, I have to go.” The voice drifted away into a sound that I had come to hate with a passion that could only be equivalent to our Tennessee Titans’ hatred of the Ravens. It was the smacking and slurping which meant only one thing. More tonsil hockey. I smacked my head against the post silently. It was Brittney. She’d swooped in like a hawk, instead of the goose that I’d taken her for.

  After I listened, yet again, to more smooching for more time than I thought I could handle, I stepped my newfound boots onto the step with a click. The noise brought two faces around. Yours and Brittney’s. Her eyes were way more calculating than Kayla’s had ever been. She knew exactly what I wanted, whereas Kayla had mostly seen me as her little sister’s freaky friend who wouldn’t leave you alone but wasn’t really a threat in the girlfriend area.

  “Well, well, it’s the girl next door,” she said with a smile and a Southern, daddy’s girl sweetness that hid her true meaning from you and only you. Us girls, we understood each other. And even though you may not have thought of me as a girl back then, I still was one and Brittney knew it.

  “Cam! Where you been all weekend?” you asked in a way that at least let me know you had noticed my absence. Maybe not enough to call out a search party, but you’d noticed.

  I moved fully onto the porch and into the light better. Brittney saw it immediately. And she laughed. Her pretend I’m-being-nice laugh.

  “Why Cami, don’t you look beautiful. You’re all done up. Who’s the boy?”

  You had your arm around her waist, and she’d turned so she was leaning her backside up against you. You let your chin rest on her head like you had once upon a time with me, and my insides turned nastily. My fists clenched.

  “I don’t know what you mean,” I tossed and tried to look blasé in my new threads.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a skirt. Turn around for us,” Brittney continued. You hadn’t said anything. You were eyeing me, but your hand was wandering up and down Brittney’s arm in a distracted sort of way. She placed her hand on top of yours and played a little jingle on it that I guess was meant to be seductive. I surely didn’t know anything about that yet. The art of seduction.

  “Come on, Jake. Make her turn around for us. She looks so pretty, don’t you think?”

  Her asking you the thing I wanted most to hear from you, was enough to almost make me want to pound her head into the porch pillar, but I wouldn’t let her see it get to me, so I just wiggled around and shook my booty like I was dancing to a country rock song. She laughed. You didn’t. You were more serious.

  “You look really good, Cam. Different. But good different.” The smooth baritone of your voice washed over me.

  I’d missed the look in your eyes as you said it because I was still turned around, so I whipped about to see if I could catch the remains of whatever it had been, but Brittney had already drawn your face down to hers for a kiss. If only I could shoot arrows with my eyes. If only I really was Super Girl like Blake teased.

  “I’ve gotta go. But I’ll see you tomorrow at the lake, mister.” She kissed you long and hard, flashed her perfect white teeth at me, and then strolled gracefully off the steps and down the street. Her house was just a block over.

  You watched her until she was out of sight, and I watched you. You had a different look on your face than you normally had watching Kayla. With Kayla it had always been a little about exploration and adventure. A game. A new game you were learning. With Brittney, there was a look of something else. Fascination? Determination? I don’t know. I just knew it was different.

  I slid past where you leaned against the house to get to the porch swing. You joined me, and we swung in silence for a while.

  “So, who is he?” you asked, picking up on Brittney’s assumption.

  I shrugged.

  “Come on. You can tell me,” you teased, nudging my shoulder playfully.

  I couldn’t look at you. I wanted to shout, “You, you moron!” but Brittney had taken the steam out of me.

  “So, Brittney, huh?” I said, changing the subject.

  You looked out to where she’d disappeared and grinned. That grin of confidence that melted many, many a heart. Including mine. How could one boy be so damn perfect?

  “I didn’t realize that she’s liked me for so long.”

  I rolled my eyes at you. “God, you’re dense sometimes.”

  You looked at me in surprise, the smile still there. “You knew?”

  “Everyone knew, idiot.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Now there was a loaded question. “She couldn’t have done anything about it anyway.”

  “What?”

  I punched your arm, and you wrestled with me a little. It ended up with me on the floor of the porch in a very unladylike fashion. I was super glad I hadn’t put on the pair of thongs that Wynn had tried to insist I wear.

  You didn’t even notice. You didn’t even try to look up my skirt. You just sat on my stomach, crushing the air out of me like you’d done since I was barely walking.

  “What are you talking about?” you asked.

  “The girl code. Can’t go after the guy your friend’s been playing tonsil hockey with. Now get off me, you’re crushing a rib.”

  You proceeded to tickle the hell out of me until, even in the dim light, you could see I was turning blue from lack of oxygen to the brain. Even then, you didn’t get up.

  “You should have told me.”

  “Why?”

  “I like her better than Kayla. She’s smart. And definitely not annoying. Just think how far I could have gotten this year.”

  “You’re gross,” I said, breathing heavily as you rolled off me and sat on the steps looking up at the stars. I watched you for a moment. My heart breaking with each beat that it took.

  I rolled over and joined you. We sat there in silence for a while, shoulder to shoulder. Finally, I stood, jutted my hip out a little, and said with as much sauce as I could muster, “Gotta go. Big day tomorrow.”

  You grinned at me. “God help the boy you’ve set your eyes on.”

  “Well, you know. It is me.”

  I flaunted and then wiggled across your lawn in a bad imitation of Brittney’s graceful sway. I flashed a smile back at you and said, “Did I do it right?”

  “What?”

  “God. You really are an idiot.”

  You picked up a pebble from the flower bed and tossed it at me. I ducked in plenty of time and finished wiggling back to my house, listening to you chuckle after me, wishing with all my heart for a whistle instead of a laugh.

  So, my new look had been too late. At least for you. But I did make a splash at the Dairy Queen on Monday. We all went there after the lake. I had my new threads on, you had Brittney on. Vomit.

  There were eighth grade boys and even high school boys that were taking a look at me. Wynn was pleased as a pumpkin. She felt like she had done her job. You were too busy feeling up Brittney to notice. And that was the only person I really wanted to notice me.

  So, I just was
me. Obnoxious, tomboyish me. Although, somehow combining my new look with my normal, boy-like talk, seemed to draw a crowd. Wynn was very grateful. She dove right in and picked up where I was silent. She wasn’t stupid like Kayla, but she definitely knew how to appeal to the guys’ hormones too. I didn’t. Obviously. Well, maybe it was just your hormones that were like me and the football. Matching ends of magnets.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  That’s the way our summer passed. With you and Brittney playing tonsil hockey… and more. Ew. All I know is that now there were times where you sent me home from the lake while you and Brittney stayed. On the blanket we used to use. Gross.

  I had a crowd of boys willing to take me home. My daddy hated it. But he didn’t have to worry. None of them even got to first base. I just wasn’t that interested in doing that whole thing with any of them. They seemed childish and too eager. The couple of guys that tried to kiss me got smacked on the head and were quick to move on.

  By the time school started, things were pretty much back to normal. Except Wynn had a boyfriend, and you had a girlfriend. And I had to focus on my diving in order to survive the torment inside me. Coach was thrilled. He hadn’t seen me that focused since, well, ever. I started winning more competitions left and right. My parents were proud, and you were proud. But you would hug me and then text Brittney, which kind of blew the whole thing for me. Because, let’s face it, I’d never cared if my parents were proud of me.

  You Belong With Me

  “And you've got a smile that could light up this whole town

  I haven’t seen it in awhile, since she brought you down.”

  - Swift & Rose

  The one thing about Brittney is that she never really got the Jake Phillips on the inside. She liked the outside Jake. She liked the captain-of-the-football-team-whose-gonna-be-someone-someday Jake. And when you were upset or fighting with her, she didn’t get why it was me that you went back to, why I was the one who could make you laugh when you were down, or why our tastes were always exactly the same and often opposite of hers. She didn’t get it because she never really got that you didn’t belong to her. You belonged to me. And it was almost a year before she would figure that out.