Chp. 1: How things Change
I could feel the hot, rough cement stoop under my khaki skirt, and my hands were sticky on my face as I rested my chin in my palms and glared jealously at the small children splashing around in their blue blow-up fishy pool. Their age's ranged from five to about eleven and they lived in the apartment building across the street. They were crowded around the water in a plastic pool decorated with bubbles and greenish yellow smiling fish. The pool sat halfway on the sidewalk and halfway on the three feet of grass that stretched out in front of the large tan building. They didn't seem to notice the faded orange spray paint or the window with the broken glass. I never had when I was their age, but I wasn't their age anymore, I was sixteen.
I closed my eyes and recalled spreading my old striped beach towel out on my neighbor Marie's burning hot station wagon and laying my body, which my mother had slathered with 60 spf sun block earlier that day, on the dented car. I used to close my eyes and listen to the small children squealing with delight and my brother, Evan, nearby, laughing quietly at a joke his best friend Jason had just told. I opened my eyes. Evan and Jason were both nineteen now, things had changed. They barely had time to hang around and watch the younger kids back before the teen years. Once they got a hold of bikes they just assumed if they had to be bored, hey- they might as well be bored somewhere near girls. Evan got a good bike when he was ten, but it took Jason until he was twelve to save up and buy one of his own, even with Evan's help. After that they would glide through the streets, legs pumping in a steady and somehow comforting rhythm, grinning at one another.
Evan had chestnut hair and light green, sometimes hazel eyes. He was always a favorite of the opposite gender with his roguish grin and square jaw. Jason had dark brown, almost black hair that glistened in the sunlight and deep dark eyes. They had the type of looks romance novelists dream up and then dub, "Devastatingly handsome."
My friends used to watch them admiringly when we got older, "They are SO hot! How can you stand it?" One of my friends gushed when we were twelve and the boys were fifteen.
I rewarded her comment with a raised eyebrow. "Well, one is my brother and the other might as well be."
My best friends Lexi and Theresa lived nearby. Lexi had shining dirty blonde hair and clear sky blue eyes that twinkled when she was up to something or happy. She was a few inches taller than I was, and a tomboy like me when we were little. When we got older she really got into softball and was one of the best on her team. We originally started playing together when we were third-graders, but after a year or two I quit; it was all right, but not really my thing. Lexi, however, had a real love of the game, baseball too.
Theresa, on the other hand, constantly had her nose in a book and a vicious disposition. In junior high she often wore all black to school, lipstick too, daring the newly avowed cheerleaders to make fun of her. They might have if she hadn't scared them so much. She was on honor roll but not high honors, probably because whenever a class became particularly boring she pulled out whatever book she was reading that day and, ignoring the fact that her thin, straight black hair would fall over her face, she would focus her amber-brown eyes on the pages and wrap herself up in the story. She was the rebel in our little threesome, the outcast, and she enjoyed it immensely. That's not to say I didn't do the same thing, with the book I mean. I just wasn't as obvious about it. On every report card since seventh grade, without fail, at least one of her teachers would comment on her potential, and encourage her to try to live up to it.
I met Theresa when I was about four and she moved in to the apartment down the hall from mine, and Sara when we were seven, she lived across the street. I had long thick strawberry blonde hair the snaked down my back in tendrils when I left it down. My eyes were marble green, like you see on countertops sometimes and I was 5'4" when I turned sixteen, 5 months ago in March. That was back when everything was simple, different. Well maybe not simple, things haven't really been simple since the end of last summer when I came home from camp. It's surprising how much can happen in a few short months.
The kids across the street in the kiddie pool continued to play and yell merrily at one another. Finally sick of it all and disgusted with my envy I stood up abruptly, turned on my heel and stalked back in to the house.