When I was twelve years old I was tall skinny, and covered in freckles. My uncle used to tease me by telling me that I had swallowed a bunch of pennies when I was a baby and that was why I had so many tiny brown blemishes on my pale skin. I never believed it, but it didn’t make it any easier to accept the fact that they were there. Every morning they were still there.
That summer my father had begun to dig up our backyard to make room for our new in ground pool. This had been a dream of mine and my older sister’s for as long as we could remember. Nothing makes a kids life more complete than owning a pool of their very own. In my mind I could picture all of the popular girls asking to come over and swim. I could also see limitless possibilities involving parties and all sorts of other social improvements thanks to that cement hole and the chlorine scented water inside of it.
The digging and installiaton of the pool only took about two weeks, but at the time it seemed like it had taken a year before that water began to flow and all of those tractors and workers had left our yard for good. My father had overseen the construction of the pool and because of his finicky nature it had taken longer than originally thought.
“You may be satisfied with just wanting it done, but I want it done right,” he told me when I began complaining. I never said anything else about it.
The day that it was ready my sister had christened it herself before I had gotten home from school. She was a senior in high school and got out about two hours before me. She was lying by the pool in a fold out lounge chair tanning when I walked in through the gate in my swim trunks. I can still remember how the sun glared off of the water causing me to squint.
“How’s the water?” I asked.
“Its cool, but you’ll get used to it after a while. Just dive in. That’s the best way to do it,” she said.
I walked over to the deep end and dove in head first. The water felt like cold rays of light shooting through my body. I refused to come up right away. Instead I swam underneath the water until I felt my body temperature begin to adjust to the frigid water. I finally came up right in front of where my sister was tanning.
“Its freezing, you liar,” I said.
“Don’t be such a puss, Curt,” she said. Her head was tilted back and she wore a smirk from tricking me. I swam away kicking my feet behind me and splashing water on her feet and legs.
“Cut it out, or I’ll go get Dad,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. I now wore the same smirk that she had worn moments ago. I swan around the pool for about ten minutes and then I began to grow tired. I got out and sat on the chair beside my sister and let the sun dry me before I went back in.
“Has Les seen the pool yet?” I asked. Les was my sister’s boyfriend. He was a big funny guy who always loved to wrestle with me when he was over. I liked him and hoped in my young mind that he and my sister would get married one day soon. What a good brother in law he would make, the brother that my parents never gave me.
“No, he’s probably gonna come by tomorrow. I invited him and Dana to come over and swim.”
“Dana? Why is that loser coming over?”
“That loser is my best friend, and you had better be nice to her.”
“Whatever,” I said. Dana wasn’t bad, but she was always making jokes that I didn’t understand and laughing about them to herself as if only she understood what they meant.
“Well, I invited Nick to come over too,” I said.
“Ohh, that’s just great. That’s all I need is you and your nerdy friends hanging around us all day.”
“Oh please. Don’t flatter yourself. We really don’t need to hang around you and your loser friend to have a good time. I’m surprised that Les hangs around you. I think he’ll find someone better one day.”
“Whatever, Curt. Why don’t you get back in the pool and see how long you can stay at the bottom.”
Conversations like this were very common between me and my sister. We loved each other very much and if anyone else had said some of the stuff to one of us that we said to each other, then there would have been trouble for that person, but this was just how we communicated. We had gotten into a routine of insulting when we were young and had been stuck in it ever since. I think it came from my Dad. He always loved to tease and couldn’t stand it when someone just stood there and took it. He loved the light hearted ribbing that went on between me and my sister even though he always complained about our arguing.
I jumped back into the pool and swam around until the sun began to dip behind the tree line nearby. The sky had turned that florescent pink color that only makes appearances in a summer sky. My sister had returned to the house at some point while I was under the water. The more I swam the hungrier I became and I craved hotdogs for some reason. Either hotdogs or Sloppy Joes. I still crave those to this day when I go swimming. I don’t remember what we had that night for diner, but it wasn’t either of those things.
The next morning Nick came over bright and early with a towel draped around his neck and a back pack slung over his shoulder containing a change of clothes. He wasn’t as tall as me, but he was one of the few kids our age that was already beginning to have muscular arms. He lifted weights with his older brother a lot and his body was beginning to show it. He had dark blonde hair that grew lighter each summer. Nick was on the verge of becoming very popular in our junior high. The next year we started the eighth grade and everything changed for him socially.
“Hey man, where’s this big new pool?” he said. I pointed out of the window at the back of the house when we passed it on our way to the kitchen. I had just woken up and wasn’t in the mood for a lot of talk just yet. I needed some cereal before I did anything.
“Man, that’s a big one,” Nick said.
“Regulation size,” I said. I poured myself a bowl of Rice Crispies and listened to the popping that it advertised as I poured the milk into it.
“Are we gonna head out there after you eat?” Nick asked.
“Yeah. Mia said that Dana and Les were coming over too.”
“Oh yeah? That’s gonna be nice.”
“What’s so nice about it?”
“Man, don’t take this the wrong way, but your sister is hot. It will be nice to see her in a bikini. And Dana too. Man, have you ever noticed how big her rack is? I can’t wait to see that.”
Most kids my age would get offended when someone would talk about their sister the way that Nick was talking about Mia, but I was used to it. She and her small circle of friends were the talk of all of the boys my age. We had just began to notice girls, and now that they had seemingly appeared out of nowhere in all of our everyday lives we all had become very critical and complimentary of what a ‘hot girl’ should look like. However, I had known Dana all of my life and I didn’t look at her like that, and I definitely couldn’t see what all the fuss was over Mia. To me she was the pesky girl who hogged the telephone and the bathroom and left dripping wet towels on the floor.
When I was done with my cereal I headed to my room to change into my trunks, Nick had sat down in the den with my parents as my Dad grilled him about what sports he planned to play when we reached high school and my mom asked him how he thought he had done on the final exams so far. The next week would be our last week of school and then it was a pool filed summer followed by the eighth grade. My parents seemed to love Nick. I always thought that he was just what they wanted from me. He was always a lot more athletic and did a little better in school, but when we hit high school his grades would start to dip and we would drift apart more and more. By our senior year we were just a part of the faceless mass in the halls to one another.
Nick and I headed to the pool with excitement. I could tell that he was looking forward to this. His voice went up to a really high pitch when he looked forward to something. Nick was always very easy to read. I often wonder what happened to him. Last I heard he had gotten married and moved to Charlotte to work for his father-in-law’s car lot.
“Man, your yard looks totally different now,” Nick said.
“Yeah, I’m still not used to it yet.”
We swam for hours, but at the time it didn’t seem like more than just a few minutes. The water had been cold when we had gotten in but as the sun beat down on us we could feel the water begin to warm. I watched as Nick seemed to turn a darker shade of brown and his hair a lighter shade of gold. I was protected by the gallon of sun screen that my mother had made me apply before I left the back door.
Nick challenged me to a race around the pool. Before I accepted I knew what the outcome would be. The race would consist of three laps around the entire pool. I dug and did my best and came very close to the win, but of course Nick won. I wasn’t upset about it. I knew that there were just some things that others were better at than me and Nick was better at just about everything than I was. It was something that made me admire him while at the same time holding a silent grudge that I wasn’t even totally aware of. A part of me waited for him to screw up and when he began to in high school years later, I must say that that part of me relished it.
After working up an appetite we went inside where my mother had made us grilled cheese sandwiches and fries for lunch. We ate as if we had just crossed some great desert. While we sat at the table my sister walked in. She had our portable phone in her ear. She was wearing her bathing suit top and had a towel wrapped around her waist. Her hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail.
“Hey, Mia,” Nick said. He was throwing obvious glances at her chest, but I don’t think Mia paid him enough attention to notice. She waved at him with one hand and continued her conversation.
“Well, just hurry up. If we’re gonna get any sun this is the best time of day to do it,” she said. “Alright, bye.” Mia hung up the phone and walked over to the fridge where she took out the orange juice and poured a glass.
“So, how’s it going, Mia?” Nick said.
“It’s going,” she said. Mia looked over the shirtless Nick and held an impressed look on her face. Not attracted, just impressed. “Have you been working out Nick?”
“Yeah. Me and Gary work out a few times a week.”
“Oh right, Gary plays football doesn’t he?” Gary was in the tenth grade this year. He was older than Nick and but younger than Mia and her friends. Mia would tell me later on that he used to hit on her relentlessly until she graduated, but he was as she said ‘a huge sleaze.’
“Yeah, he made the varsity team this year. So he works out harder than he did. I just started working out with him this year.”
“Well, you should stick with it. Its working,” Mia said. Nick nodded and wore a look of utter bliss on his face. When she left the room he gave me nod as if he had just won some argument. I simply shook my head and finished my sandwich. Mia made observations and gave compliments like this all the time. It wasn’t uncommon, but Nick had convinced himself that she was into him and I think he held onto that conviction for the rest of the time that we remained friends.
When we returned to the water it was warmer than it had been before and our energy had been refreshed by the food that my mother had served. After being in the pool for a few minutes I looked through the window of our kitchen and saw that Dana was now here and she was walking around with my sister. It took them a while to come out to the pool, but when they did Les wasn’t with them.
“I thought that Les was coming,” I said. My sister ignored me and Dana stopped in front of the pool covered with a large beach towel that was tightly wrapped under her arms hiding her breasts.
“What’s the matter, handsome? Am I not good enough?” she said. Dana said stuff like this all of the time and it was one of the reasons that I didn’t really know how to take her. I knew enough about her to know that she spoke to most people like this, especially other guys. Once I asked Mia why she acted this way and her simple answer was, “Attention.” I didn’t understand what she had meant at the time.
I smiled at Dana’s question in the uneasy way that I always responded to her and she went back to talking with my sister again. They took their towels off and laid by the pool in the fold out lounge chairs. Both of them held their heads high as if they smelled something. I heard them talk in low whispers saying the names of people that I had never heard of and laughing about some girl who my sister called, “sad”.
“Man, look at Dana’s rack,” Nick whispered to me. “Your sister is defiantly hotter, but Dana’s cans are huge.”
“Whatever, dude. You wanna play Marco Polo?”
“No way. I’m not gonna play that baby game with those two right there.” Nick said.
“What’s the difference?”
“If we’re gonna have a chance with them at all we have to act a lot more mature than that,” he said.
“Nick, you’ve got to be kidding,” I said.
“Hey man, your sister was flirting with me and Dana was flirting with you. I think there could be something there.”
“Nick, my sister was not flirting with you. And, Dana wasn’t flirting with me. They talk like that to everybody.” It was beginning to be obvious to me that the sudden attention that Nick had been receiving from the girls at our school over his newly developed arms was beginning to give him delusions of grandeur that I didn’t know anyone our age was capable of.
“You can think what you want, but I know how it is,” he said.
I ignored him and went about my swimming. As the day went on I was in and out of the pool. Several times I got hungry and went inside for a snack or a drink, but I couldn’t talk Nick away from the girls for more than a few seconds. He sat there with his legs dangling in the water being totally and utterly ignored by Mia and Dana, but he still wasn’t discouraged.
It was about four pm when Les arrived. He walked through the back door of the house and was wearing swimming trunks very similar to my own. He gave me a smile and a nod and walked over and sat beside my sister. She was pouting and ignoring him for a minute until he tapped her shoulder in a joking way that she couldn’t ignore. She turned to him with a furious look on her face and said, “Why don’t you go play with my brother. You act about his age, anyway.”
“What did I do?” he asked. Mia didn’t answer. She turned toward Dana and I saw Dana give Les a sympathetic shrug.
“Hey, I never said that I would be here at noon on the dot. I told you that I would come over after I helped my dad with the lawn,” he said. Mia still wouldn’t face him. “Yeah, I wouldn’t expect a spoiled little brat like you to understand that.”
“Excuse me?” Mia said. She was wearing a face that I had seen several times and I was a little surprised that someone other than me could pull that face out of her.
“You heard me, Princess.”
“I may be a princess, but at least I’m not a liar.”
“How did I lie, Mia? Tell me that.”
“You told me that you were gonna be here by noon. You said last night that you would get up early and help your Dad and then you would be here by noon. I told my mother to expect you for lunch and she made sandwiches and fries that weren’t eaten because you didn’t show up. I looked like an idiot.”
Les looked around and saw that Nick and I were watching the argument in perfect silence. Dana had turned back to her tanning and ignored it. I’m sure it wasn’t the first time that she had to sit through one of my sister’s tantrums while some poor guy had to apologize. Les took her hand and leaned over to whisper something to her. They stood up and walked inside. Mia jerked her hand away from him before they made it through the back door.
Dana sat silently while Nick and I swan around. Since the disappearance of my sister he had seemed to mellow and was again acting like the kid that I enjoyed hanging out with. The posturing was for the moment laid aside. We raced again and once again he beat me, but I was getting closer every time and I was sure that by the end of the summer I would beat him at least once.
“You weren’t even close,” he said.
“Yes, I was. I’m getting closer every time.”
“Man, in your dreams.”
“Hey Nick, you want to race me?” Dana said. She stood and for the first time I noticed her. Nick was right. Her breasts were very round and ample. I don’t think that I fully understood the term ‘hourglass shape’ until that day when I saw her standing in that bikini.
She seemed to tower over Nick and me as she stood on the edge of the pool with the sun behind her. Her hair was barley touched her shoulders; it was much shorter than Mia’s. She walked around and slowly sauntered down the submerged steps into the water. Her body was tense as her large hips disappeared into the blue and then she took a gasp of breath and ducked under right where she stood.
Shooting up she let out a loud gasp and wiped her eyes. Her hair was now slick and darker. It seemed to stick to her skull. She began to swim and looked like a professional. Nick wore a concerned look on his face and then wiped it away with a cocky smile when he saw me looking at him.
“Alright, junior. Let’s do this,” she said. She was in the shallow end and was standing waiting on Nick to get there. I watched her as she pulled her hair back with cloudy white arms and a long firm rib cage.
“Alright, Curt, you have to keep an eye on this in case it’s a close one,” she said. I nodded in agreement and said, “On your marks, get set….GO!”
Nick shot himself off of the side of the pool with his feet and resembled a frog as he did. Dana kept a good pace and seemed to flow through the water with much more precision and ease than Nick with all of his frantic paddling and flailing. Dana held the lead for most of the race but at the last minute Nick shot ahead of her and won it. He grasped the diving board on the deep end and took long exasperated breaths for a moment.
“Who won, Curt?” he asked.
“You did,” Dana answered. Nick took a moment to regain his composure and then said with confidence, “I thought so, good race though, Dana.”
Dana swam around for a minute and then came over by me. Nick had gotten out of the pool and was headed inside of the house for a q-tip to clean his ears and a glass of Kool Aide. She never looked at me, but just her presence that close made me nervous and I had a tense feeling as if I wasn’t sure what was going to happen. She was standing close enough that I could smell her. There was a vanilla smell from her tanning lotion and I could smell a small hint of sweat mixed in with the chlorine from the pool which now stuck to her skin.
“That was a good race,” I said. “Really close.”
“Yeah, Nick can swim. I’ll give him that,” she said.
“Yeah, Im getting closer though. I think I’ll beat him at least once before the end of the summer.” Dana put her hand on my shoulder and I froze. I can still remember how it felt. Warm and damp. She slid it down to the small of my back and said, “Im sure you’ll catch him. Don’t worry.”
She then got out of the pool and walked around to get her towel. She dried herself for a moment. I watched her as she bent over and dried her hair with the towel. Her body moved with such a simple ease that for the first time I wanted to touch her, but I didn’t know why. She walked into the house passing Nick as he came back out. She never looked back at me. Nick finished his glass of Kool Aide by the pool and then hopped back in.
“Man, your sister is really giving it to Les in there. I heard them yelling from the kitchen.”
“Yeah, Mia is a real pain. I don’t know why a guy as cool as Les is still with her,” I said.
“Man, Mia is so hot that she’s worth the head ache.”
“Your nuts,” I said. And we didn’t speak about the girls for the rest of the time outside.
A few moments after Nick got back into the pool I heard a car drive away from the front yard and figured that it must have been Les. This may have been the last straw for the poor guy. It angered me that my sister had blown it with such a good guy and that it was totally her fault. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized things are very seldom one hundred percent one person’s fault. It usually takes two, but at the time I didn’t see that. The world was still very much right and wrong and there were few in betweens.
We stayed in the pool for the rest of the afternoon. Before we knew it the purples and pinks of the sky had faded and night was on us. When we were leaving the pool I saw Nick looking over at the bathroom that connected to my sister’s room and mine. The window was a small little sliding thing that was longer than it was wide. Nick stood watching the silhouettes of my sister and Dana walk around in there. The glass was a dark stained glass. It was made for privacy. You could see out of it but it was distorted, and really all that could be seen from outside was the outline of the person in doors.
“Nick, come on. You’re such a perv,” I said.
“Man, don’t act all high and mighty with me. I was watching you when I was inside. You were checking out Dana the whole time that she was in this pool. And you looked like you blew in your pants when she touched your back.”
“Whatever dude, Im going inside,” I said.
I heard the window sliding up as I walked away and my sister’s voice shot out through the quiet darkness. I stopped and turned around to see Nick standing there smiling with his towel draped over his neck. It was very dark in the back yard and from the bathroom there was a dense ray of light that Nick seemed to be standing in the middle of. I turned and walked back toward them, and I heard him say, “Why don’t you ladies show me something.”
I couldn’t believe how brazen he had become over the course of just one afternoon. The day before I never would have believed that he had it in him to say such a thing to girls who were so much older than us, and not to mention far out of our league. He turned when he saw me coming back and winked. Standing in the middle of that light he looked at home.
“Why don’t you get lost, Nick,” Mia said. “You wouldn’t want me to call your Mommy on you and tell her you’ve been peeping.”
“What about you, Dana? You want to show me something?”
“Get lost you little pervert,” Dana said. I saw Mia walk out of the room and Nick took off toward the house. My guess was that he was afraid that she was going to get our parents. I turned to follow him and I heard Dana’s voice in a low whisper. I kept walking because I wasn’t sure if it was directed at me. Then I heard, “Hey Curt.”
I walked over and stood in the same ray of light that Nick had been in looking up at the girl standing in my bathroom window. She walked over and closed the bathroom door and then walked back to the slender window. I stood motionless, not sure of what to expect. Dana turned with her back to the window.
Wet strands of hair were plastered to her shoulders. I watched as she took the string of her top with her index finger and thumb and barley pulled. With no effort at all it fell away revealing her bare back. The sun had painted her skin pink and caused her freckles to run together in tiny brown sprinkles along her spine. My heart stuttered.
She turned and gave me a wave before she walked away. For a split second I could see the glitter from her red nail polish catch the light and twinkle. I was left standing in the light alone still looking up at the empty window. It was the first time that any promiscuity had been directed towards me, jokingly, accidental, or otherwise.
For a few minutes I stood there frozen in the yard. I looked up to see a sliver of moon overhead being outshone by the brilliant tapestry of stars that were strewn over the entire sky. Moments later I walked into our house still a little stunned and later that night when I saw Dana again she didn’t even look at me. It was as if it had never happened. I wondered myself if maybe I had imagined it but I knew that I hadn’t. The details were too distinct and clear for it to have been imagined.
I’ve held onto that memory my entire life. At times I would modify it and have Dana turn around, but it was never the same. No matter what my imagination dreamed up, it would never match the mystery of what had been on the other side of her that day as she stood in my bathroom with her naked back to me.
That night Nick and Dana both slept over. I didn’t see Dana in that way again. She began to treat me like she had always treated me and I slowly grew to have a crush on the memory of what she had done more so than her. I never shared with Nick what had happened when he went inside, but I silently held it over his head each time that he would begin to brag to me about his grades or athletic prowess. I wonder now if he ever noticed the quiet smile that would spread over my face when he began to catalog his accomplishments.
That night I lay awake and replayed it in my mind a million times. Those few seconds standing in that light would shape me more than I could have guessed. Before I feel asleep I became saddened by the thought that my memory would one day be diluted and wouldn’t live up to what had really happened that night. For a while it did, but now I think that it’s clear again. Older age has brought things back that the years had forgotten and in their own ways they are clearer than that chlorine scented water that I spent so many hours in that summer and the summers after. Swimming in circles.


THE END

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.03.2010

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