Memories
Anya was still comforting Rochelle when I entered the room, so I was alone. I shut the door behind me and lay down on my bed, staring at the ceiling with the lights off. I let my eyes loose their focus and thought of the times when I was younger.
I think I was fifteen when I realized the full extent of Carl’s attraction for me. I was a sophomore. It was Easter dinner. My mom was downstairs in the living room playing the happy hostess while my dad was watching a rerun of the Super Bowl with my uncles. Only my dad’s side of the family was there that year. I remember knowing that I should stay downstairs in full view of the adults so Carl wouldn’t be able to do anything but, as always, I though he would be different this time. That maybe he would realize that I would never respond in the way he wanted me to and he would just give up.
I honestly felt bad that I didn’t like him as a cousin. I felt bad that I would desperately try to get out of any family occasion when I knew he would be there. So I guess I would try to like him. I was naïve, I thought he would just stop, I thought he would stop being my creepy cousin. But he didn’t, he would never stop.
So, like the idiot I am, I was alone with him in my room, sitting on the floor. We were looking through our freshman yearbook. He was telling me which girls he thought were hot and I was giving my opinion of them. It was a tradition; we have done that since we started going to school together. We flipped to the page of our Freshman Social and scrutinized the pictures for people we knew. I placed my fingers on a picture of the president of our class (she was the prettiest on the page) and asked Carl’s opinion of her.
“She’s okay,” he shrugged with a grimace. “She’s a little too ‘in-your-face’ for me. Anyway, I can see a much prettier person on the page.” I picked up the book and brought it closer to my face, looking for the mystery girl.
“Where?” I asked. He chuckled and leaned over my back to point to a picture on the opposite page. There were two people in the photo. It was of a guy and a girl with crowns on their heads, dancing. The guy was wearing a dress shirt that was rolled up to his elbows and the girl was wearing a light colored halter topped dress with a low back. Both the people were smiling, and the girl had her head resting on the guy’s chest. The caption under the picture said, The King and Queen of the Social, Peter Solomon and Isabelle Bailey.
I swallowed hard as I realized what he was saying. Being myself, I tried to make light of the situation and remove the tension. “Oh, so you swing that way.”
“Huh?” He brought his eyebrows together in thought. His chin was resting on my shoulder.
“Come on, you think Peter is hotter than our president?” I asked.
“No,” he grumbled. I looked out of the corner of my eyes and saw his ears were getting red. “I’m talking about the girl.” He put his arm around me and shifted to my left side. “She’s very pretty, don’t you think?”
I took a shaky breath and shut the book. “Okay, yearbook time is over.” I walked over to my feeble bookshelf and placed the green yearbook in its place. When I turned back around, Carl was playing my cell phone.
“Hmm,” he quizzically said. “Who is this?” I softly walked to him and sat across from him, crossing my legs, like a kindergarten student. I reached for the phone. It was a picture of five or six of my friends. “The horse-faced one.”
“That’s Allison,” I said, with an insulted face. “That’s a horrible thing to say, she’s very pretty.” He made a sound and grabbed the phone. He continued his search through my pictures.
His face lit up and he locked his blue eyes on mine. His eyebrows started dancing.
“What?” I asked. His eyebrows continued the exotic dance as he turned my phone to me. It was a single picture of me alone in a store dressing room. I was in a pink lacey bikini. I sent that picture to Allison to get her opinion on it and never deleted it. “No more phone for you,” I grumbled, snatching the phone from his hands.
Carl scooted over to my left side, and sat with our arms touching. I put the phone on my right side and was hiding it while I deleted any other picture of me.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I mumbled. He laughed that breathy laugh and wrapped himself around me so his face was at my right ear. I quickly closed the phone and closed my eyes, trying to calm down.
They say when one of your senses are cut off, the others become heightened. My sight was shot and my sense of touch and hearing became acute. I felt the throb of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, I heard the spit in his mouth cling to his teeth as he opened his lips, I heard his sigh as he angled his head towards my ear and finally felt his teeth. His line of front teeth grabbed my earlobe and he lightly bit down four times.
My reaction is stupid, inappropriate, and totally justifiable. I giggle. Yes, I laughed when he nibbled my ear. It tickled and whenever I’m faced with an awkward situation, I laugh. And he got the wrong impression. He slid his hands down my arms and breathed on my neck. I jumped up and walked out of the room, shutting off the light, and went down into the living room.
After four grueling hours of football, everyone left. I hugged everyone goodbye and tried to sneak up to my room before Carl noticed me. Right as I was about to place my foot on the first step, a pair of flabby arms that smell like oatmeal encased me from behind and trapped me in an inescapable snare. I cringed and held my breath.
“Goodbye, Isabelle, I’ll see you in school,” he whispered. I didn’t move as I felt his arms loosen their grip, or when I heard the door slam. Once I heard the hired help clearing the tables and cleaning the rooms I continued my walk to my room.
Seriously what was wrong with me? I was so foolish, so naïve. How could I possibly think he would change?
I lay on my bed trying to block out my memory. Some part of my subconscious had another idea. I was suddenly thrust into a pool of visions of me and Carl. When had it all began, what happened? What were the rules of the game again? The questions bounced through my mind and finally one memory snapped into view. It wasn’t a memory of a picture or of a sound, it was just two words. The two words spelled out the name of who used to be my favorite Disney princess, Sleeping Beauty.
“It’s a game, Isabelle,” a child’s voice filled my mind. It was a boy’s voice ringing with immaturity and coercive charm. “I made it up. It’s called Sleeping Beauty. You get to be Princess Aurora and I get to be Prince Phillip. Will you play with me?”
Pictures came toward me. Carl and I playing the game in a fort, he said we had to keep it private so it looked like the tower. Carl carefully pressing himself against my body and wrapping his hand around my neck, lifting my head up off of the pillow and slowly leaning toward me…
“New Chick, what are you doing?” Anya’s voice shattered the pictures.
“What do you mean?” I softly asked, sitting up and pushing my hair from my face.
“You were sitting there crying,” she said. She spoke to me like I was a stupid person. I put my fingers up to the corners of my eyes and felt the warm tears oozing out of them. “Are you okay?” she asked out of obligation rather than concern.
“Nothing- It was just nothing- I was… day dreaming,” I slowly said. I was so ridiculous. I was trying to convince myself that none of those memories actually happened- but, they did. And I had this little growing bump to remind me.
“Who are you trying to convince? You or me?” she asked, sitting down on her bed near mine.
“I don’t know,” I whispered.
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Months passed by quickly in the shelter, and before I knew it I was in my second trimester. Kristie was ready to blow, what with being seven and a half months pregnant and all, and Anya was just a little farther than I. Rochelle and I never talked, but the rest of my group and I were never apart. I finally felt like I belonged.
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Thanks for reading! Criticism is always appreciated
~Dommy
