She was cool. We met
in the woods one summer, near the lake.
I had turned eight just before we moved out to the suburbs, and I was
exploring my new surroundings. I saw her
skipping stones across the water, dressed in a manner my parents would have
(and, indeed, did) found scandalous:
denim overalls, and literally nothing else. Her hair was cut short, short enough that I
first thought she was a boy. She had
something dangling from her lips that I couldn’t recognize at that
distance. She saw me out of the corner
of her eye, gave a smile I’d never forget, and flicked her head back slightly,
gesturing me towards her. I was hesitant
at first, but something compelled me onwards, driving my trepidation to the
shadows.
“Hey,
wanna see if I can hit that little fucker there?” she asked, gesturing with her
head once more to a bird perched on branch.
I was
more shocked at her language than at her suggestion, and I began to stammer an
objection, but she cut me off. “Just
kidding, fuxxake! The look on yer face. Whas yer name?”
“Na…Natalie.”
“Rosalyn. Call me Ros, though. Want one?” she asked, producing a pack of
cigarettes from the pocket of her overalls.
I realized then that was what she had in her mouth smoldering between
drags. She took my reluctance for what
it was, withdrawing the proffered pack to her pocket. “It’s okay, hard enough to steal these from
my pa without him catchin’ my ass and beatin’ it raw.” She flung a stone sidearm, skipping it across
the pond in four skips. “You throw, Nat?”
I
timidly shook my head. “’S’okay. Wanna learn?”
She selected another stone from the ground, and held it up. “See, ya gotta throw like this,” she
demonstrated, with another 4-skip throw.
I picked up a stone, and she stopped me.
“Too round—like this one, see?”
She pulled one from the sand, smooth and flat, and placed it in my
hand. “Now, throw.” My first effort wasn’t very good, just barely
skipping once. “Thas a start. Get some practice in, you’ll be good at it.”
She sat
down on a large rock, and took a long drag from her cigarette. “Nice dress.”
She shook the ash away, and flicked the butt into the lake. “Yer parents know yer here wearin’ it?” I was suddenly self-conscious of my clothing. I never considered it to be “nice”, just
average for me. I nodded, but it was a
lie. My father was at work, and my
mother was “napping” on the couch. “Must
be nice.”
I sat
down, on the grass at the edge of the sand.
The summer air held the silence well, and we just sat together looking
across the lake. “Yer awright, Nat. You commin’ here tomorrow?” she asked, standing up. The sun was beginning to sink below the tree
line, and the shade began to extend over the lake. I smiled shyly at her. She got up, and extended her hand to me. I took it, and she pulled me up. She gave that smile again, and sauntered off
through the woods. I stared after her
until she disappeared in the trees before turning and heading home.
Someone
unlike anyone else I had known had just entered my life, and it felt nice. I got home just as the sky reddened, right
before my mother woke from her “mommy nap”, brought upon by her truest friend
gin. My father wouldn’t be home from the
city yet; he never was home during daylight hours, even during the summer and
weekends, if he could help it. I came in
quietly, and closed the door silently behind me. My mother stirred as I walked past the
couch. “Mwhat time is it, sweetie? You hungry?
I’ll order us some pizza, okay?”
she groggily asked as she slowly righted herself to a seating position.
“Uhh…8? And pizza sounds good, Mommy.”
“Why’d
you let me nap so long?”
“I made
a friend.”
“Oh?” Her eyebrow arched as she picked up the
phone. “What’s her name?”
“Rosalyn.”
“What’s
she like?”
