February
I woke up feeling tired and out of sorts. My room-mate was up already, probably gone in
to breakfast. I dragged myself to the
sink, and while I was brushing my teeth I remembered: I wanted to get to the
Library before 8:30. When I have to, I can
get ready very quickly. I managed to
freshen up fast, and had my clothes on before I heard the quick knock. (She always knocked before she came in.)
“You’re up early! Where’re you
going?”
“Oh …” This was very unusual;
she usually never asked me stuff like this.
“... I just woke up early, so … I thought I’d head in …” I improvised,
giving my hair a few last touches, and putting on a little lip gloss. She kept staring at me, and I could feel
myself getting red. If I tried to
explain, I’d say something stupid, I knew.
I just glanced at her and smiled enigmatically. My hair was getting to be a problem; there
were tangles at the ends, and I’d broken them off. The room-mate had long hair, too, and the
room was full of long dark hair all over the rug. Ugh.
It was a quick breakfast and I hurried to the library. It was a little after 8. I looked around in the library lounge, but
there was nobody. I took out the History
text I had checked out on Friday, and started to read. I noticed her as soon as she sat down.
She lowered herself slowly into the upright chair at her usual
table. I quickly looked away; I knew by
now that she became uncomfortable if I kept looking at her. She pulled out a folder and a textbook, and
looked around again. I was pretending to
be absorbed in my book. Somehow I could
see her look at me a couple more times.
Pretty soon she was drawn into whatever she was doing –some homework, I
suppose-- and she had forgotten about me for the moment..
I read for almost half an hour, and to my surprise, picked up a lot
from the book. I was forcing myself to
be interested, and I was getting interested. It was all that stuff about the Constitution,
and the man had made it seem pretty logical.
I bookmarked my place, laid down the book, and slowly got up without
getting noticed by the girl. I strolled
over to the coffee bar just outside the library, and got myself a small
coffee. I'm beginning to cut down, because
it gives me a sour stomach.
When I got back, I walked over behind a tall rack of magazines, from
where I could see her unobserved. She
had just noticed that I was missing, and spent a minute looking for me
fruitlessly, of course. She then noticed
my stuff on the side-table, and taking a last cautious look around, bent over
her notebook. She was a left-hander, I
knew. Today she had worn a brief skirt
with an irregular edge, which drew attention to her legs, and I could feel
myself getting warm under my heavy
clothing. I watched her writing for a
while. She wrote very slowly and
carefully, printing. I liked that!
I suddenly noticed the time; it was just a few minutes to my history
class.
History went well; I had retained a lot from my reading, oddly
enough. After history, it was my music
lesson. I hadn’t practiced long enough,
and I got a lecture from the instructor, and I left with my face all red. I ran into her on my way back to the library, and we were both startled, and
looked quickly away. She was headed in
the opposite direction, but I kept myself from looking back at her, because I
had done that once before, and she had been looking back at me!
It was difficult to look for her during lunch, because Lisa, Julie and
Matt insisted on eating with me, and were beginning to ask questions about why
I was looking around so much.
“There. She’s looking round
again!”
“Who’re you expecting?” Julie
was always suspicious, and accused me of having a ‘secret friend.’
“Just looking, Julie! People are
all dressed up today, that’s all …”
“Oh. It’s dress-up day for the sororities, I think. The Gammas are all dressed up.”
Julie was off about the Gammas, and I was safe for a while.
“What are you going to do for Spring Break?”
“Just … stay right here, I guess … I’ll be fine!”
“Oh.” Julie felt she ought to
invite me home for Spring Break, but she was too chicken to ask her
parents. My home was on the West Coast,
and it was too far to fly out there just for a week. My sister had had me over for Thanksgiving,
but she was in Japan, and wouldn’t be back in time. I had family in Georgia, but I didn’t feel
like going.
My Dad ran a business in San Francisco with his sister, and was busy
all the time. My mom had died while I
was in high school, and Dad was not quite over that. College was in the Midwest, and I was pretty
much marooned there until the semester was over. I’m a sophomore, and English major, but I’m
thinking of changing my major to something else, like, … I don’t know; art,
maybe. I got good grades in art last
year, but I haven’t taken any art courses in a while.
This nameless girl I’ve been stalking is still a mystery to me. I first noticed her in the Fall. She’s a short-haired blonde with really blue
eyes, a little heavy-built, but I like the way she’s built. She seems to have no friends, and I feel as
if I want to make friends with her, but I can’t quite loosen up enough to talk
to her. We just stare at each
other. I think she looks a little
suspicious of me, which is why I’m beginning to watch her from in hiding. This is not good.
Unexpectedly, a couple of weeks after, I walked into a hair place. I like to wear my hair long, but I was
beginning to get annoyed with all the split ends, and I’m thinking it’s time
for a trim. It’s late on a Friday
afternoon, and I’ve got the okay from Dad, to spend up to $25. If it costs more, it will be out of my
allowance.
I went in and put my name in the customer list, and saw her!
She’s working as a hairdresser! That’s the most unlikely thing I could
imagine! I mean, she isn’t a beauty
freak, or anything; no makeup, no mascara, nothing!
I sat down, and pretended to read a magazine. She hadn’t noticed me; she was giving a
haircut to a man of about forty, and he was flirting with her. Actually, I guess he wasn’t; he was just
talking to her, and she was nodding. I
listened carefully, and I heard a soft Hm-hm?
like wasn’t really paying attention.
Then he said something, and she blushed, and looked up to disagree with
him, and saw me watching her.
She stopped for a second, startled, and then bent over his head, her
neck was red! She was blushing like
mad! Oh, she was so innocent… I wanted
to find out what they were talking about, but they were talking too softly.
Before I knew it, she was done with him, and while I had been watching
all this, the two women who were ahead of me had been taken, and once the man
had paid her and she had thanked him for a generous tip, I guess, she looked at
the book and blushed, and called, “Jennifer?”
I stood up and smiled, and she came out to meet me.
“Hi, I’m Kerry!” she said, and offered her hand. I could hardly breathe, but she gave me a reasonably
bright, slightly embarrassed smile, and led the way to her station.
“How would you like your hair cut?”
She had a soft voice, which I realized I had never heard before. I had only imagined her voice; I thought it
would be either low and muffled, or high and breathy. But it was a medium voice, neither low nor
high, and quiet, but clear.
I was a little surprised; I had expected a remark about my hair, which
was sort of customary.
“An inch or two off,” I began, and I could see her nodding at once, and
her expression in the mirror was definitely one of approval. I began to realize that she was not
embarrassed; she had just been taken unawares.
“Just to get rid of the split ends, and stuff,” I continued awkwardly.
She fitted the cape that would keep hair fragments off my clothes on
me, and began examining my hair. I knew
already that it was in bad shape, but she was very critical.
“There are some really bad splits … almost two inches!” she said. This happened all the time; if you have long
hair, hairdressers tend to lay a guilt trip on you. She had almost forgotten that I was the girl
who stalked her mercilessly.
She was very professional. She
knew exactly what she was doing; she shampooed the hair down, parted it in
layers, put it up in clips, and started snipping confidently. She was silent, and as I felt the pleasure of
her competent fingers in my hair, my tension mounted higher and higher, until
my nerves were humming.
“I’ve seen you in the library,” she said, finally, and smiled at me in
the mirror. I realized that she was
really pretty, then; not just her legs, but her face.
“I know!” I exclaimed, turning red.
Minutes went by.
“How did you get into … hair … um …”
“Hair styling?”
“Yeah, hair styling?”
She paused, and brushed her bangs behind her ear and smiled again,
blushing a little.
“Last summer, before I got in,” she explained. “I thought I’d learn hair styling, just in
case!”
I could see my eyes going wide.
I had thought she was an upperclassman, and a good student. She just looked really intelligent, not at
all the Beauty School type.
For a while, I lost myself in the sheer pleasure of having her fingers
in my hair, trying not to stare at her face.
She offered to French Braid my hair, and I agreed. Suddenly it was over, and I was paying her a
modest tip, and I was on the sidewalk, walking back to my dorm.
This was very confusing. I had
gotten the urge to trim my precious long hair partly because I wanted her to
notice me, and my hair was my best feature: long and silky and glossy. But a professional hair stylist does not
really notice hair, except as a part of their job, in a sort of objective
way. So I had taken a step in the wrong
direction; instead of being noticed, she would now not notice me at all,
because I would be, well, a customer. It
seemed very important to actually find out how she felt about me. At this time, I had not yet thought out all
the implications of how I felt about her.
I just knew that I liked her, despite not having spoken to her enough to
know what sort of person she was. In a
sense, I had created a personality for her in my mind, and so far she seemed to
fit it very closely, by some miracle.
The next day, I managed to escape my room so early that I wasn’t seen
leaving by my nosy roommate, Lauren. I
had found that by taking my time getting some early morning coffee at the coffee
bar in the student lounge, I could watch for Kerry walking in.
“A medium Latté, please.”
“Regular or Decaf?”
“Oh … Decaf.”
“A shot of anything?”
I was surprised. No, I didn’t feel like any flavoring, and I
said no thanks. Then I saw a familiar
blond head in the picture window. The
coffee girl (a religion major, I knew; she seemed nice, but we were not
acquaintances, really) seemed to be taking longer than she needed. Kerry seemed more aware of her surroundings
than usual. She normally walked with her
head bent, deep in thought. Today,
instead of a backpack, she carried a shoulder bag, and she was wearing
leggings, which was unusual. Her hair
was still wet from her shower, I presumed, and I felt a guilty pang when I realized
I had gotten dressed without showering.
But wait; that was because I had shampooed after I got home yesterday.
Kerry.
A wave of warmth went through
me, and I tried not to look as though I was blushing. My blushes were not very noticeable,
normally. The coffee arrived, and I took
a long sip, and tried not to look as if I was hurrying. There she was, about thirty feet ahead of
me. I hungrily ate up the sight of her
straight back, her wide shoulders, her gorgeous hamstrings, and the way she
walked, which seemed sexy to me, even if it was a perfectly ordinary walk. I realized that I was stripping her with my
eyes, and felt a shock of amazement.
That’s when I realized how peculiar it was that I was developing what
amounted to a physical attraction for another girl. I wasn’t upset, but I was certainly
disturbed. I was still strongly
attracted to guys, too; I often preened when one of them noticed me, but it was
getting to the point where I was physically attracted to anyone who was at all good-looking.
Kerry had approached her usual
table, and was putting her bag down and looking around. I looked at my feet, and then looked up at
her, just in time to notice that she had spotted me coming in behind her. She was confused, and I could tell that she
was beginning to feel awkward, being watched by me. It was OK!
We were both acutely aware of each other, so I hadn’t yet become just a
head with hair on it.
It was a few days later that
we approached the tables from opposite directions at the same time, in the
early afternoon. I slowed very
gradually, and we looked each other over.
She was wearing a very short denim skirt that made my pulse race; and
she could see my approval even when I didn’t say a word, and glowed slightly
with satisfaction as she laid down her books.
She was carrying them loose in her arm this afternoon. She looked up again, and her eyes looked over
my face, taking in everything.
She gave me a polite smile,
and said, “Your hair looks real nice this afternoon!”
“Well … I guess,” I said,
grasping for something more intelligent.
Her eyes drifted to my bare
midriff, which had been left bare by the edge of my shirt creeping up. I tugged down the retreating shirt edge, and
she reddened slightly.
“Nice day,” she said.
“Yeah,” I replied.
“Cold!”
She nodded, looking momentarily out of the window, then took
out her text. She sat, tucking her leg
under her. She looked lovely, like a
mermaid, or something.
“Are you going to the choir program?” she asked, in her
quiet voice.
“You going?” I asked.
She nodded vehemently, in a cute way.
I was going anyway, but it seemed a good idea to make her think I was
going because of her. “I guess I’ll go!”
“Great!” she said, sitting down, and giving me a bigger
smile than she had given me before.
We didn’t get to talk much after that for a while. I went to the choir concert, of course. I had gone once before, the previous year,
but I had been preoccupied with something else, and did not notice the choir
very much. But to my surprise, Kerry
was in
the choir. She was an alto, and I could
tell by watching her face that she was completely on top of the music, and
probably knew it all by heart. It was a
varied program, with lots of old familiar songs (unlike the previous concert,
where it was all songs I had never heard in my life), and I enjoyed it. Kerry kept looking for me, but she didn’t
recognize me.
The weather warmed up, and I started wearing my short spring
dresses and things, too, and so did Kerry.
I just loved all her clothes, and I loved her in them. I began to dream about her every night, and I
was thoroughly disturbed. But my school
work wasn’t suffering; I was keeping a B average in almost every course. I normally did better in some courses, but
not this semester, apparently. Finally,
it was actually the Friday before Spring Break, and I had not made any
arrangements. I got a note from the Dean
of Students, telling me I could stay on campus if I wanted to. I had just got an iced Latté from the Coffee
Shop, and sat down to drink it, watching the other students meeting their
families. I ordered a hot sandwich, and
sat down to wait. It seemed too much
work to go down to the Cafeteria to get lunch.
The long lounge was deserted, except for a few students anxiously
calling on their cellphones. I was
surprised and startled to see Kerry at the other end of the lounge, reading
what appeared to be a novel. She looked
up right at me, and smiled slightly, amused that I had noticed her. Obviously she had spotted me as soon as I had
got into the lounge. Kerry had two bags
with her.
I had been thinking about Spring Break almost all the time
for the last week or so. On the one
hand, it gave me a week of privacy; I had begun to feel frustrated at my
Roommate constantly being in our room, asking questions. On the other hand, it would be a week without
getting a look at Kerry, and I was, in a way, becoming addicted to looking at
Kerry for so many minutes a day. To be
honest, I had begun to fantasize about her, and becoming … I don’t know … I
didn’t have the vocabulary for explaining what I needed.
Presently, everyone was gone from the lounge, except Kerry,
and of course, me. I knew there had been
a couple of students last year who had stayed for Spring Break, but they
weren’t here this year.
After a decent interval, I got up and walked over to Kerry,
leaving my books at my table.
“Hi!” said Kerry, in her low, somewhat muffled voice. I wondered how she could sing so well with
such a muffled voice.
“Your folks getting late?” I asked, with a smile.
She shrugged, and smiled back.
“Do they live far way?” I asked.
“Oh no, right here in town!”
I laughed. “Why’re
they late, then?”
“My mom doesn’t drive, and my Dad works late,” she
explained.
“Oh, I see.”
“How about you?”
“I’m not going home for the break,” I said, suddenly
realizing that this would seem interesting to her.
“No? Your parents
traveling, or …?”
“It’s too far; I’m from California,” I explained.
“No family close to here?”
“A few in the Washington, D.C. area, and one in Atlanta,” I
replied.
“Oh no, so far away!”
How painfully sweet her voice was! I was already prepared to be her slave, but
now I was almost swooning with love and admiration for this lovely, simple,
charming girl. I was so lost in my
private thoughts that it almost slipped by me that she was unhappy with the
idea of leaving me alone on campus. She
continued to gaze at me in distress.
“Don’t worry; I stayed behind last Spring Break too. It’s fine; they have food, and everything!”
“Still, …” she began, her smile fading. She seemed to make up her mind about something,
but it wasn’t her way to discuss her idea until she was sure it was going to
work.
It was now about six, and already quite dark. Only the two of us were in the lounge. I would normally have gone to my room, to
clean up after my roommate left. (She
normally left a huge mess.) But I was
keeping Kerry company, though we were not talking at all. I had given up on conversation, and pulled
out a Manga novel I had picked up to read.
(My roommate had lots of them, and she had asked me to read them any
time I wanted.) Kerry watched me, but I
carefully didn’t stare back. A few years
ago I had realized that I tended to stare, and had made a conscious effort to
be careful in the staring department.
“Then, I guess you’re a sophomore?”
“Yeah; and you?”
“I just joined this Fall … Freshman,” she said, looking
right into my eyes. She had lovely light
blue-grey eyes. “What’s your major?”
“Undeclared,” I said.
“I’m thinking of Art, though my family wants me to do something like,
physics, or chemistry.” I shrugged. It was not my favorite topic of conversation. “And you?”
“Psychology, and English, maybe,” she said. I was surprised; she didn’t look as if she
were interested enough in people to want to do psychology. English would be fine. She spoke grammatically, and I had decided
(based on very little evidence) that she was articulate and communicated well.
 |
| My golden girl |
“If I asked my folks, would you like to come home with me?”
she asked, blushing. “There’s plenty of
room. And you could come back here
whenever you wanted, to get anything.”
“Oh. Um …” I was
struck speechless, though I had anticipated a similar offer for a while. every nerve in my body wanted me to say, yes, yes, sure, why not? I’ll go get my stuff right away! But I simply looked around, confused. “Just think about it,” she said, sounding
worried. “I should give you some time
to, like, decide whether you want to come home with us. Your folks might be upset, maybe?”
“Oh no, not at all. I
just have to ask my Dad, that’s all!”
“OK,” she said, nodding.
“Oh, here they come … that’s my Dad, in the pickup,” she said, blushing.
Like Kerry, her father was big made, not just tall. He had a slow smile, and sandy hair
carelessly brushed into a sort of side part, jeans and a denim jacket over a
shirt with a fine plaid pattern, which did not look like the usual lumberjack
uniform. He was not quite six feet tall,
but looked all of 250 pounds of solid muscle.
With him was bright-eyed, blue-eyed, dark-haired kid who studied me with
interest. Kerry had introduced him as
her brother Kevin. He was slight and
tall, and looked about twelve.
I had shaken hands with Kerry’s father Larry, which I
thought a name that suited him well. He
had immediately called home about the possibility of a visitor, and Kerry’s
mother had agreed. While Dad was loading
up Kerry’s bags into the back of the pickup, which was a nice new one, freshly
washed, Kerry, Kevin and I went to my room to pack some clothes for me.
“Do you have to, like, tell anyone?”
I had to tell the Residence office that I would be gone, so
that the Cafeteria could plan their meals.
I stepped into the office, and the lady in charge said she had just been
on her way to my room. “Everyone who was
planning to stay over the break seems to have gone with a classmate,” she said,
“and I was going to offer to take you home with me!”
“Kerry has offered to let me visit for the week,” I began.
“My folks said yes,” Kerry said solemnly.
“That would be fine,” said the lady, Mrs Boyle, evidently
comfortable with Kerry’s respectable appearance.
It was odd, having Kerry in my room. Kevin prowled around, not talking, but
checking everything out. Kerry
occasionally called out to him not to touch anything, and instead of getting
indignant he simply nodded. He flashed
an occasional grin at me, and I could see the way Kerry’s eyes lit up on his
face, too. They seemed too perfect to be
human beings.
Kerry was casting a critical eye over my clothes, the few of
them that were clean, and I was getting embarrassed. “Bring a swimsuit,” she was saying with a
smile. “They’ve got the pool ready
already!” This was embarrassing, because
my only swimsuit was indecently revealing.
“I don’t have one,” I said, keeping the swimsuit hidden.
“Oh,” said Kerry. “I
have a couple, but …”
Kevin grinned.
Obviously Kerry’s suits would not fit me. I had never worn anyone else’s suit, and I
didn’t think it was a normal thing to do.
Kevin simply shook his head and pursed his lips, and Kerry grinned and
shrugged. “I don’t like to swim that
much,” I said.
After the bags had all been loaded, and Kevin offered to
ride in the truck bed, Kerry got in next to her father, and I got in, and I
pulled the cab door shut. I had just
learned that their family name was Lynch.
For the first time I was seated right next to Kerry, feeling her arm
along mine. She felt warm and a tiny bit
sweaty, but she smelled perfect, wonderful, healthy young girl. She turned and smiled at me. When we were seated, we were the same
height. We giggled together, and I
thought I could never be happier than I was just then. My hand wanted to grab her hand and
squeeze. I am not an affectionate, touchy-feely person, but at that moment, I was
afraid that my sheer joy would frighten Kerry who sat next to me.
Unable to resist my urge, I just tapped Kerry’s hand, which
was lying on her thigh. She turned her
head, her face radiant with a gleeful smile.
She gently tapped my hand, which was now on my own thigh. We traded taps as her dad drove along, down
the street that led to the College, into the major road that led through the
residential parts of the town, then turned off into a suburb, past a strip with
department stores and supermarkets and my favorite ice cream store. Tap! I
tapped her back, and I felt her silently shaking with laughter. I quickly turned my hand palm up, and
waited. It was insane; I had hardly had
a conversation with her, and here we were … I did not even have words for what
we were doing.
“This is our street,” she said softly in my ear, and I
looked to get a good view. It was an
unremarkable street with houses spaced well apart, and SUVs in almost every
driveway. Then we were in a more modest
part of the same street, and we turned into a wooded lot, and she put her hand
in mine and quickly squeezed, and let go.
Kevin jumped off the truck bed, and by the time I had got
out, and helped Kerry out, savoring the feel of her arm in my hand, a short
woman with dark curly hair, and Kerry’s lovely smile stepped out of the
shadows, and came straight to me, and gave me a quick hug, before I could
gather my wits together.
“It’s good to have you with us,” she said, in a quicker,
crisper version of Kerry’s speech. The
little family of four had surrounded me, and were blinding me with the brightness
of their smiles, and their welcome. My
baggage was taken inside, and I was bustled into a cosy little room upstairs,
and shown the bathroom, and given a towel, in case I wanted to take a shower or
a bath. “You can take a nice long soak,
if you want,” said Kerry’s mother Kaitlyn.
“Kerry can shower in our bath; we have two,” she explained.
I was determined to protect the reputation of our
family. I had heard only fragments of
our family history, but it was clear that my father’s family had its shameful
secrets. But in the US, we were
eminently respectable, and I knew that if I was invited to shower, it was best
that I took up the offer. My nerves were
humming with excitement for which I did not have a name, and I almost shamed
myself with the lasciviousness with which I conducted my ablutions, to put it
delicately. I decided to go down to
supper in a lovely dress I owned, which I had only worn for my junior prom in
high school, but which was quite simple in design. I had also decided not to wear any underwear,
I don’t really know why.
There was a soft knock on my door, and I called out to
whoever it was to come in. It was Kerry,
dressed only in an orange T shirt and boxer shorts. She saw me in my elegant clothes, and drew a
long breath.
“Wow … you’re all dressed up for dinner!”
“I …” To be frank, I
didn’t know how to reply without sounding either rude or condescending. “I could change,” I offered. “Are you, like, dressed for bed?”
“I kinda forgot you were here,” she admitted, blushing. “I’ll go dress! I’ll be right back!”
Before I could say anything, she was gone. She came back shortly, dressed in a skirt and
a knitted top, looking quite decent. She
did wear carpet slippers, which seemed reasonable; I was wearing a plain pear
of slippers too. She led the way to the
stairs, and we went downstairs together.
The table was laid, and Dad and Kevin were seated, waiting for us. Mrs Lynch smiled approval at Kerry and my
dress, and waved us to two of the remaining seats, and brought out a simple
meal of roast beef and potatoes, and sundry vegetables.
At home, surrounded by her family, Kerry was far more
relaxed than I had seen her at College.
In a few moments, I had learned that she was in the choir, the band, the
swim team, and was interested in music and athletics. Her legs were no accident; she described how
she had to wake at four in the morning every day, swim the prescribed number of
laps, then clean up and come to classes, then get an early supper, and head off
to band practice, then choir practice.
She evidently had few friends, and most of those were in choir, band,
and swim team.
Kerry was her family favorite. Dad, Mom and Kevin all doted on her. Once she had given a full report of all that
she was doing currently, they turned to me, naturally.
“Well,” I began, “I play in the orchestra, violin.”
“You do? I tried out for orchestra, but I couldn’t get
in!”
I shrugged. I
colored; you had to be fairly good to get in, but my conviction that Kerry was
perfect in every way warred with this information. “Maybe you were having a bad day,” I
suggested.
“Uh uh,” she contradicted.
“I played my best! Maybe I should
have tried for viola.”
My eyes went wide. I
happened to know that we only had two violas, and they wanted a third. “If you try out, you’re sure to get in,” I
told her. I explained that we were
short.
“If you had brought your violin, you and Kerry could have
played for us!”
I looked at Kerry, who was seated across from me, and we
blushed together. My heart was beating
so hard, I thought I would die. I could
see Kerry was also feeling something equally strange. I was suddenly acutely aware that under my
dress, I was naked. I crossed my legs,
and pressed them tightly together.
Somehow we managed to finish supper, and Kerry came
upstairs, into my room. We seemed unable
to avoid looking into each other’s eyes.
We sat side by side on the edge of my bed.
“We’re going to have fun,” she said softly to me.
I wanted to say: I’m
so happy, I think I’m going to cry!
And it was as though she could hear my thoughts. Her smile disappeared, and she gazed into my
eyes, and I looked into her light blue ones, that seemed open right into her
soul. I struggled to smile, to lighten
the mood.
“You must be tired,” Kerry said, sliding off the bed. I slid off, and my dress was pulled up,
accidentally, so that anyone could have seen all of my private parts, but Kerry
had just glanced away, and I quickly slapped my skirts down over my thighs. She turned round and only saw me smoothing my
dress down, blushing bright red.
“Good night,” I mumbled, and desperately put my arms around
her, and pulled her close.
It was heaven. I
never wanted to let go. And Kerry hugged
me back fiercely. We held each other
close, and began to rock to and fro at the same moment, and I held my cheek
against her cheek, and I said, “Oh Kerry!”
It seemed like an hour passed this way, but it could have
only been a minute. Kerry held both my
arms in her big hands, and looked at me, her eyes shining.
Presently I was in
bed. It was higher off the ground than I
was accustomed to, but the mattress was soft and comfortable. It seemed of a piece with the entire family:
warm, comfortable, and friendly. I must
have mumbled something when we parted, but my mind was not functioning properly. I was still completely off balance, vibrating
with all the feelings that were going through me. It was as though I was afraid to let this
girl out of my sight.
But I felt completely safe, as though nothing could harm
me. Though I felt greedy for her
company, I didn’t feel that she would leave me all alone. I felt almost physically that she was close
by.
It was a long time until I could drop off to sleep, and I
remember the dreams I had very clearly.
I was floating, face up, and I could will myself higher by simply
tightening my body. I did it
rhythmically, and I would float up, and then float down, float higher on the
rises, and falling less and less each time, until I was flying above the trees,
vibrating with pleasure; somehow I could see below me, even though I was facing
up, and I flew over the lakes, and up the faces of mountains, until I exploded
with happiness.
I woke up, needing to go to the bathroom. I opened my door, and the hallway was dimly
lit, and I found the bathroom, and did my business, squinting my eyes against
the glare of the light. I was tempted to
look in on Kerry, but I was afraid of being seen, so I reluctantly returned to
my room, and tried to sleep again, but without success.
Soon it was morning, and I heard birds singing outside the
window. I felt fuzzy-headed, but I felt
wonderful! I slipped off the bed, and
cautiously looked out my door. I saw the
grey light of an overcast morning through the hall window, and walked up to it,
and saw a large pool. And someone was
slowly swimming: it was Kerry.
My heart began to race; I had to get a better view. I went back in the visitors’ room, and found
my contacts, put them on, and hurried back to the big window, and drew aside
the curtains, and stared.
She wore just a one-piece deep red racing suit with a
T-back, and she was swimming lengths steadily.
I watched hungrily, devouring the sight of her as she made an effortless
turn, and continued to swim. I slowly
slipped downstairs, found the door that led out to the pool, and quietly took a
seat a little distance away, where I could watch her without her noticing.
At this stage of things, I was acutely aware of her body:
the sheer athleticism of the girl, the strength in her arms and her back, and
most of all in her amazing legs, the beauty of her motion in the water. I just knew enough ab out swimming that I
could tell that her form wasn’t perfect, but … she swam effortlessly. Everything else she did, she did with
determination and careful attention. But
in the water, she was a sprite; it was her element. For evermore I would imagine her in the
water.
It was cool in the shadows in the early morning, and I
pulled my nightie tight about me and looked down at my skinny, sallow-skinned
legs, and briefly felt envious. Steam had
been rising from the water surface, but as the sun hit the walls, and was
reflected into the water, Kerry seemed to glow.
She turned, and saw me, and her face burst into a smile of pure
pleasure.
“Hi!” she called, in a high, sweet voice, a contrast to her
usual calm, low tone. I just waved,
smiling back. She immediately turned on
her back, and I was afraid she would crash into the side of the pool, and
hurried to the water and crouched down, and my worry must have shown on my
face. “What’s the matter?” she called,
having flipped over to make the turn, and having resumed her backstroke.
“I thought you might hit the edge of the pool!”
“Oh no,” she explained, “I can see, like this, see?” Obviously she could, so I relaxed. “Just four more, now,” she said,
concentrating on her counting, and speeding up.
A minute or so later, she clung to the gutter casually, blowing out
water, and grinning her toothy grin at me.
“Wanna come on in?” she asked, gesturing with her hand. I shook my head, blushing. We’re flirting,
I thought in amazement; it seemed so natural, and I had slipped into this new
relationship so thoughtlessly. But she
was so utterly innocent, she doesn’t realize it yet. She swam closer, and pulled herself out of
the pool, and walked over to me.
“So, what do you think?”
“About what?”
“Well, about my stroke!
Am I swimming well?”
I blushed, as she continued to grin. It was the sort of banter athletes used on
their non-jock friends, and I was completely at a loss. My friends were complete nobodies; awkward,
shallow socialites. I stared at her
legs, as she wiped the water off her face with her hands. Her legs were perfectly smooth, shaven free
of her body hair, and my mouth was watering with my desire to bite her, to hold
her legs, to crush myself against them.
I shook my head; I wasn’t going to get in the water in my sheer
nightie. I had to get in my room quick,
and get decent. She held out her hand to
pull me up, and I took it. We were
close, and once again we were looking into each other’s eyes, and her smile
softened. She began to walk toward the
house, and I walked with her. I felt
awkward, naked under the thin cotton nightgown I had worn.
She followed me to my room, and inside, and I realized that
she was as mindlessly attracted to me as I was to her. She was toweling herself dry, and once we got
inside, she backed out again. “You’ve
got toothpaste and all that?” I said I
had. “Ok, see you in a bit!”
When I got to the bathroom, Kerry was just coming out, and
she held the door open for me, and I could see Kevin looking down the hall
through his door, observing that the girls had taken possession of the toilet
facilities. “You’ll have to wait,”
called out Kerry, and the little guy blushed and closed his door. I hurried inside and began brushing my
teeth. I didn’t want to waste time
showering; I’d shower at night. I
checked my face carefully; it was the same as always, except that my eyes
seemed a little more … what’s the word? Piercing sounds wrong; they just seemed
to have more character. My eyes look
quite American, though some of my other features might be considered
oriental. My lips, and my mouth, generally,
looked … actually quite acceptable.
Anyway, I thought, Kerry seemed to like me the way I was. I carefully did my eyebrows –a departure from
habit– and just barely touched up my lips.
I put my hair in a ponytail, which emphasized how long it was, and
brought out the shape of my face, which was heart-shaped. I smiled at myself, thinking how vain I was
getting.
I hurried to change into light spring-time playclothes:
shorts, crop-top and shirt, and canvas shoes, and went downstairs. Only Mrs. Lynch was there.
“Hello, dear! Did you
sleep well?” I replied that I certainly
had. “Sit down, and I’ll fix you
whatever you’d like; pancakes?
Waffles? Oatmeal? Eggs?”
“Just waffles would be great, Mrs. Lynch!”
She got to work right away, and came to sit and talk to
me. “Kerry has a music class this
morning. You can go with her, or you can
stay and play with Kevin! The music
teacher lives in a small condo, so there’s not a lot of space there.”
I was tempted to ask to go, but my brain was getting too
clever. You’ve got to give her a chance to miss you, it was saying. I wanted her to have such a need to be with
me that she couldn’t concentrate on her music!
I realized that I want to completely enslave my new friend Kerry, almost
as badly as I wanted to be her slave;
in all other respects, my brain was behaving very sluggishly.
“Maybe I’ll just stay here and read, or …”
Mrs. Lynch was nodding.
She said Kevin would be around, just in case I felt like doing
something. He gets bored, she said, and
I’m glad you’re here to provide a little excitement! I replied that I didn’t know how exciting I
would be, and we got to batting the topic back and forth, until the subject of
it clattered noisily downstairs, burst into the breakfast nook, and blushed,
seeing me. His smile made me warm;
everyone in the family made me feel good.
I still remembered Kevin smiling at me from across the dinner table,
after he had told us an interminable story about some game of roller hockey,
and we had all kidded him about the details of it. It was the only time Kerry had made a
mischievous dig at anyone. Clearly the
two siblings were very close, and fond of each other.
Kerry came down soon afterwards, with her violin case in her
arms. She put it away, and smiled at
me. It was a mixture of a friendly smile
for a favored guest, and a tinge of something more: a shared secret. Just a tinge; nobody could have possibly
noticed it except me!
“I gotta go to violin lessons,” she said. “I’m gonna take my viola with me.”
“Good,” I said, wishing I had agreed to go to the lesson
with her. I so badly wanted to show off
to her, now that I knew she could play.
“Will you be ok?”
“Yup. I have a book
to read, and I’ll be fine!”
“Are you sure? You don’t want to be reading on your spring
break, do you?”
“Oh, sure; I’ll read for a while, and then explore down your
street, until you get back!”
