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

by LJ Evans

  At the end of summer and once football started, it was easier for me to ignore Brittney’s attachment to you. Our families and I were your biggest cheering section. You got to play varsity as a sophomore as the quarterback. Your god-like status had turned into mega stardom in our little town. Of course, Brittney thrived on that. And she was cheering too, but as a cheerleader on the sideline. So, she had to cheer for everyone, versus I got to scream your name like crazy. Brittney would give me dirty looks. But I just ignored it.

  She got me back though. As she was on the sidelines, she always got to be the first one to hug you when you came off the football field, and I had to settle for second. She didn’t let it last long though. And she’d get the ultimate payback in dragging you off to an after-party to which, on no uncertain terms, was I allowed to go to as a mere seventh grader. Neither my parents nor you would have allowed me to go.

  Not that I didn’t try, but Mama had a sixth sense about me trying to sneak out now. She’d been around me for almost thirteen years. It was like you going to kindergarten all over again and me trying to follow behind. Mama still didn’t lock me in my room, but I think she wanted to because I could be just as crabby and mean as I had when I was three and you were gone without me.

  One good thing about Brittney was that she had a temper. And that meant she was mad at you about as much as she was in love with you. So, there were some weeks where I only had to walk home with her once or twice because on the other days she was throwing her daddy’s-girl tantrum at you over something stupid. Or trying to make you “pay” for something. It was really lame. I was kind of surprised you put up with it so much. But maybe you’d gotten farther with her than you had with Kayla and weren’t willing to let that go yet. Boy hormones and all.

  But I’d gotten the picture. On the days Brittney walked home with us, with no chaperone sent by her mama, and your mama not really seeing the need these days as long as your door was left open, I went to my own house to do homework. It was crappy. And lonely. But it was better than sticking toothpicks in my eyes trying not to watch the two of you with your hands all over each other, and with no Wynn to distract me or take one for the team.

  The times that the three of us were together (or even the three of us in a bigger group), Brittney and I would fight as much, if not more, than the two of you. We would argue about music, sports, anything. It was our ultimate goal in life to see which of us you would side with more. And we were definitely keeping score. I was winning. Well, Brittney probably didn’t think so, but I knew that you’d only said that you liked Lady Gaga to appease her. You and I had made fun of that drama music many times. So, she thought she was winning, but I knew the truth about you like I always would. Just like I knew the truth about how you saying I was your little dolphin just drove her nuts, but she’d smile her wickedly sweet smile and agree.

  The things you and Brittney fought over were stupid, high school drama things. Like the fact that Sherry Martin smiled at you in first period, or that you picked up Amber Whittaker’s books for her after they hit the deck in the hallway. Or the time she got really drunk at a party and kissed Paul because you were talking to some random girl. Things that proved she was insecure and jealous, even though she tried so hard to pretend that she wasn’t. She always made mountains out of molehills.

  You would get frustrated and tell her that she had to trust you. You never screamed at her. I wanted to scream at her. God, I would have loved to have torn her hair out and banged her head on a sidewalk somewhere, but I think you enjoyed the fact that after you calmed her down, you’d get a little further into her pants. Sometimes, I think you provoked the fight by making sure she saw you with a girl so that you could do just that. Get a little further in the make up, make out sessions. Ergh. Still gives me the shudders.

  I knew that you fought over me too. Like you and Kayla had, but again, you never did it in front of me. And Brittney never said anything to me like Kayla had. She tried the opposite tactic. She didn’t want me to think that she was threatened by me. She was. There were times that you’d choose me over her. Coming to my meets versus taking her to a movie. Or, like you had with Kayla, staying to walk home with me after school even when football season was over. Things like that killed her. Just like they’d killed Kayla.

  But Brittney had learned from your break up with her BFF, and she didn’t want me to know that I was more than a fly on the windshield to her and her relationship with you.

  In January, you turned sixteen and I turned thirteen. You and I were close in more ways than one. Our birthdays being only about two weeks apart. Both January babies. Winter babies. For two whole weeks, our mamas had thought that I’d be born on your birthday. But I was stubborn even then and wanted a bit of my own space, so I waited just a bit. I’m the thirteenth. You’re the third. This year our parents had decided to throw us a joint party. A big shindig that would celebrate two rites of passages. We were holding it the weekend between our birthdays.

  The day you turned sixteen, you got your driver’s license, and our daddies drove home a cherried-out ’67 Camaro for you. Okay. We may have not been rich by the standards of the folks who go to boarding school and attend debutante balls, but, for our little town, our families did okay. And a lot of cars came our daddies’ way through the dealership. The Camaro was proof of that. They’d originally said it was too much car for you, but I think that was to throw you off the scent when you’d been talking about the dump that Wade’s brother had owned.

  Now we had a cool way to get everywhere. No more bikes required. Of course, sometimes we took the bikes just because you and I enjoyed bike riding. We’d take a ride down to the lake and over the hills and back to town just to clear our heads and let off steam. That was something else Brittney didn’t like, but she was a cheerleader, not a tomboy, and at fifteen going on sixteen, she was never going to be seen on a bike.

  The week you got your license, we were riding home in the Camaro, and Brittney started in on you about how you’d invited Amber to our party. I’m sure she was seething inside that I’d be the center of attention with you, but I had no doubt that she’d make sure she was glued to your arm all night.

  Regardless, she didn’t want to play second fiddle to me and some other girl. So, she was ranting and raving about how you inviting Amber made it seem like you were shopping around for a new girlfriend, and made her look like last year’s news.

  You were trying to keep your cool, but I could see your ears turning red which meant you weren’t really playing it up this time, but were really seething inside.

  I was sitting in the back seat watching the ping-pong match, thinking to myself, “What the hell do you see in this girl? She obviously doesn’t know you at all. Doesn’t know how loyal and trustworthy you are. Doesn’t see how you are steeped in Southernly knighthood that had been passed down by Tennessee daddies for generations.” Okay… you’re right. I probably didn’t think all of that. But it doesn’t make it not true.

  Finally, I couldn’t keep quiet anymore. I just screamed out, “Would you stop the ABC Family drama?!”

  To which both of you whipped around and said, “Butt out, Cami.” In unison. Well, you said Cam.

  And you went right back at it.

  “Then grow up!” I quipped back.

  Brittney turned on me, “Grow up! Says the child pretending to be an adult so she can tag along after Jake like the sick little puppy she is.”

  Silence, for a second settled down. I looked into the rearview mirror, and you wouldn’t meet my gaze. The fact that you didn’t defend me, when you always defended me, made my temper flare in a way it hadn’t in a long time.

  I pushed the front seat forward, slamming Brittney into the glove box. She caught herself with her hands and a cuss word, but I was reaching for the handle of the door, ignoring it.

  “Let me out of the car,” I said, pulling at the door.

  “Jesus Christ, Cami,” you said as you squealed to a stop wi
th me halfway out of the car.

  I didn’t care. I got out, gave you both a one-fingered wave, and headed off down the street. I heard the engine cut out, but didn’t really comprehend anything until you had me slung over your shoulder like a bag of cornmeal.

  “Put me down!” I screamed, pounding your back with barely controlled anger from four years of pent up emotions, at the same time as I was trying to pull down my jean skirt so that my polka-dotted underwear wouldn’t show to the world.

  Brittney was out of the car with her arms crossed.

  “She is not getting back in this car with me,” Brittney said angrily. “She could have killed me slamming my head against the dash!”

  “She is. And so are you,” you muttered with a grunting male manhood that startled me. You were never all caveman chauvinist, but you seemed to have reached your estrogen limit.

  “I am not,” Brittney defied you.

  “Well, she is,” you said, and you flung me into the back of the car with such ferociousness that I bumped my elbow on the side of the car and had to slam my hands out to keep myself from hitting the floorboards.

  “Are you choosing her over me?” The sarcasm and disdain in her voice could have dripped an acid hole in the sidewalk.

  “I’m not choosing anybody,” you growled. “She’s my responsibility. I’m taking her home. I’d really like my girlfriend to come too, but if you can’t handle that, it’s on you.”

  Neither Brittney nor I were happy with this response. I didn’t want to be your responsibility. I wanted to be the girlfriend. I wanted to choose to get in the car, not be there because you felt I had to be.

  I tried to get out, “I am not your problem!” But you pushed me back into the back seat with one hand. And it hurt. When I looked up into your face, your beautiful eyes were so dark that I could hardly see the gold flecks. You were pissed. Probably as angry as you’d been the day I’d dove off the cliff at the lake. It stopped me. I shoved myself back against the seat and crossed my arms.

  You looked across the top of the car to Brittney, still standing on the sidewalk like a diva gone wild.

  “Well?” your voice was foreboding. I knew that even in my dreams I’d never go against that tone. A tone you had never, ever used with me, but I’d seen you use before slaughtering the opposition on the football field.

  Brittney reached into the car, grabbed her designer bag, and stomped off down the street completing her diva image in my mind. I wanted to celebrate, but was still as pissed at you as you were at me.

  You got in and burned rubber in the opposite direction. In the couple blocks it took to get home, you had calmed down enough to at least be driving sane, but one look at you in the mirror told me you were still fuming.

  You drove into your driveway, and I jumped out from behind the passenger seat like a jack-in-the-box set free. I was feeling an odd burning sensation at the back of my eyes, and I had no intention of letting you see me cry again over you. Not ever, if I could help it. But you were quicker than me. You were around the car, and had grabbed me by the arm and dragged me, not to your house, but to mine before I could dig my heels in.

  As we entered the house, I was screaming at you to let me go, and you had your lips set in a straight line that you usually reserved for your opponents on the football field. I tried to escape but you flung me on the couch, and when I went to leave, you sat on me.

  All the commotion drew my mama into the room. She looked at you and at me with surprise registering all over her face.

  “What on earth?”

  “Tell your mama the kind of language and foul gestures you’ve been using today, Cami.”

  Cami. My heart sank. You were deadly serious. But I just glared at you and made the childish gesture of buttoning up my lips and throwing away the key.

  I pushed at you again, but you didn’t budge.

  “Jake, what is this?” My mama moved forward because she clearly didn’t like the way you were manhandling me, but I think she knew that I must have done something pretty drastic to push you over the edge like this. Even on the football field you hardly ever lost your cool. It was your cool head that was probably going to win you a scholarship.

  “She’s a nightmare, Andrea,” you said with exasperation.

  My mom broke out laughing, “And it’s taken you this long to figure that out.”

  “She doesn’t respect anyone’s privacy, purposely provokes Brittney, and uses language that would make a trucker blush,” you said in response.

  “Camdyn?” Mama said, looking at me, waiting for my response.

  “They fight all the time and then make up like jackrabbits going at it and expect me to sit there and take it all in stride,” I finally huffed out. “And I don’t swear all the time. Just when I’m angry.”

  Mama looked at both of us for a moment, and I think somewhere in her brain or heart or both, she started to see what was going on. Like your mama had the day I’d slammed out of your house while you were making out with Kayla.

  “I see,” she said, continuing to watch us. You were out of breath, but calming down, and I was trying to gasp for breath with you sitting on me, but no way were you getting me to admit that I was being crushed and couldn’t breathe.

  Mama walked over and touched your shoulder, looking down into your eyes with understanding and caring. “I think I’ll take it from here, Jake honey. I think you both need some time to cool off.”

  You didn’t even look at me, but you did stand up and say, “Fine,” in a tone that said it was anything but, as you stormed out of the house.

  I closed my eyes and gasped for air. It was bittersweet though, because the truth was, I already missed the weight of you on top of me. At least then I had you close to me. No Brittneys. No Kaylas. No sports. Just you and I.

  My mom sat down next to me on the couch and waited a long time. She waited too long because I knew I couldn’t leave until she’d said her piece, but I was so strung up emotionally, that I ended up crying. Silent tears. But tears. I hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Jake or her. I hated tears. They were for weak-kneed fools and drama queen girls like Brittney, and I didn’t want to be either. I think those tears caught Mama more off guard than you and I fighting had. I don’t think Mama had seen me cry since I was a toddler and who knows if I even had then.

  “How long?”

  I was surprised by her question. I’d expected a lecture on being sure to give you the privacy you deserved or using bad language or just about losing my temper, which had always been her favorite thing to nag me about.

  But instead, that one question told me that she understood. Understood every single emotion that was raging through me and just wanted to be there to support me. Because, that was my mama. I was really blessed to have her.

  She waited for me. Waited for my tears to slow down a little, and finally, when I could speak, it came out as a ragged whisper, “Forever.”

  She pulled me into her arms and let me continue to cry.

  Mean

  “And all you're ever gonna be is mean.”

  - Taylor Swift

  I guess that one word for that one song says it all. That was Brittney. Especially after she didn’t get what she wanted.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  The rest of the week after our huge blow out, I stayed late at dive practice and would send some newbie out to tell you that I was staying late and that Coach would drive me home. I’m kind of surprised you let it go. You were never one to let me sulk, but for some reason you did. Maybe because you needed the time and space as much as I did.

  Coach though, he didn’t leave it alone. At first, he’d just raise his eyebrows, and not say anything. Finally, on Friday, on the way home, he asked “What’s the deal with your right arm?”

  I looked out the window. “He’s got a new left arm.”

  “I see,” Coach said, and then he was quiet all the way to our house. He put his SUV in park in the driveway and put a h
and on my arm before I got out. “You know, Cami. Jake’s a whole lot older than you. Someday three years won’t seem like anything. But right now. Right now, it might as well be twenty.”

  I nodded.

  “But, all I can say is that there is something special between the two of you. Something that no girlfriend or miles will ever break apart.”

  I looked at him wide-eyed.

  “So. Just hang in there. Remember, someday, that three years won’t feel like anything more than a blink.”

  I smiled my thanks because the words wouldn’t come, grabbed my stuff, and headed home.

  ♫ ♫ ♫

  But come Saturday, I couldn’t avoid you. It was our birthday party.

  Our parents had gone all out, decorating our shared backyard with a maze of fairy lights strung over the top of us and all over the bushes and fences. They had prayed it wouldn’t snow and rented outdoor heaters and a dance floor.

  We both got to invite a boatload of kids from school and the neighborhood. Our daddies had been barbecuing tri-tip and ribs all day. Our mamas were making Tennessee specialties like Southern mac and cheese for me, mashed potatoes for you, and plenty of green beans loaded with ham hock fixings and butter. And of course, plenty of cornbread and sweet tea. We might as well have been our own meat and three that day.

  There was a huge two-foot cake with both our names etched along the side, but we didn’t really care about that as much as the pile of MoonPies that Mama had bought. You and I were MoonPie fanatics, even if you couldn’t really eat as many as you’d like to these days. I made up for it. I always ate your extras.

  But today, I wasn’t sure I cared about the yummy dinner or the pile of MoonPies. I was still not feeling myself. Wynn had outdone herself when helping me shop for a dress. It was midnight blue to set off my gray eyes, and was tight enough to show off the little curves I had, but not so tight that it looked slutty. I had pretty sparkly heels that, for once, I actually liked.