Chapter 4 What Are You Doing on My Jeggings? #2
“Is that your camera?” Ethan asked, and I grinned proudly. He smiled at me like it impressed him. For a second, I felt guilty, but his expression was so warm and soft. The longer I looked at him, the more my insides felt like a microwave mug cake.
“Can I put some music on?” Ethan asked, pointing to an alarm clock sitting in the center of the bed.
I unraveled the cord and wiped the docking station clean with my sleeve before plugging it into the outlet near my feet.
Immediately, it came to life, glowing, beeping, and angrily blinking “12:00 AM” at us until Ethan silenced it by pressing his iPod into the docking station.
He selected a playlist called “happier stuff,” which was a lot of newer indie folk music like Bon Iver and the Decemberists, with the occasional appearance of men my dad listened to, like Johnny Cash and Leonard Cohen.
None of it was markedly joyful, and since there wasn’t a playlist called “sadder stuff,” I assumed that the rest of his music collection was deeply depressing.
They asked us where we’d moved from and other new-kid trivia.
Laurel and I asked about Petey’s and Ethan’s ages and hobbies.
Petey was older than Ethan and starting high school but still a grade below Laurel.
Ethan liked music and playing street hockey, but Petey took hockey much more seriously.
His dad was the coach of his summer league.
“I wanna play in the NHL,” Petey told us.
“I’m applying to a boarding school up north, and if I get in, my coaches will be actual former NHL players.
It’s gonna be sick.” He didn’t sound boastful or like he was trying to impress us.
He was sharing something essential about himself.
Even so, Laurel did look a little bit impressed.
“Do you wanna go see something cool?” Ethan asked us.
“Yes!” Laurel agreed on instinct, just as I responded, “What do you mean?”
“I thought we were eating hot dogs,” I added, to take a bit of the sting out of the fact that I did not want to go to a second location with a couple of boys I’d just met, even if they were starting to grow on me.
“I can’t. I can’t eat hot dog buns or anything the buns might’ve touched. Bread makes me sick.”
“Why didn’t you say anything earlier?” I asked.
“Yeah, bro. Why didn’t you?” Petey swiveled his head toward Ethan like this was a familiar disagreement between the two of them.
He shrugged. “I’m fine. I didn’t want to make it a thing.”
“We can climb out the window,” Laurel suggested, like it wouldn’t be at all alarming for our parents to find the bedroom empty when they popped back in with a plate of hot dogs and potato salad.
“It looks painted shut,” Ethan observed.
“I have a knife,” Petey offered without missing a beat.
“You’ll need swimsuits,” Ethan told us, and Laurel instantly swiped a one-piece from the wreckage of her suitcase explosion.
“Where are we going?” No one answered me. “Why are we climbing out of the window?” I asked, trying again for any explanation.
“It’s fun,” Laurel finally responded from the closet.
She was changing into her one-piece while Petey chiseled at the window frame, and Ethan was keeping watch for our parents at the bedroom door.
This group was already a runaway train. “And this way, we won’t need to explain to Derek that we don’t want his performative Sitcom Dad lunch. It’s a win-win.”
“But…” My head pinged between the three of them, heart racing. “We’re going to get into trouble.”
Laurel emerged from the closet in a tie-dye swimsuit and denim shorts. She rolled her eyes at me. “Our dad left us to film a movie about penguins for two years without so much as a Skype call. I think we’ve banked enough paternal guilt to sneak out in broad daylight.”
My heart smarted at the casual mention of how easy the two of us were to abandon. I looked for Ethan’s reaction, but his eyes were on the hallway.
“Jesus, enough with the knife,” Laurel instructed Petey, her new partner in crime.
He laughed. “You’re sort of mean,” he replied, visibly pleased. Together, they jerked the window open with an ear-piercing CREAK.
We all froze.
One second passed. Two. Then Ethan mouthed, Go .
—
They’d never told us where we were going, but by that point, it was too late to ask. We rode through the backwoods of town on a dirt path that was only slightly wider than a bike wheel, me standing on Ethan’s bike pegs and Laurel sitting on Petey’s handlebars.
“You can hold my shoulders,” he’d told me, so I had. I could feel his shoulder bones under his cotton T-shirt, and this close he smelled like powdered sugar.
The trail was mostly flat until the very end. Ethan struggled up the hill before I finally hopped off. He didn’t have time to get too embarrassed because Petey and Laurel toppled over in slow motion about a second later, and then we walked the bikes up the hill like that was the plan all along.
“Welcome to the falls,” Petey said when we arrived at a lake surrounded by trees and a few houses we could just barely make out in the distance.
A pile of bikes had been dropped at the base of a treacherous trail that led up the side of a waterfall with a sign reading: Lake Lewellen.
No climbing, diving, or ice luging. A giddy squeal at the top of the hill followed by a splash signaled that the people of Lewellen were comfortable taking their chances with at least two out of the three.
Ethan and Petey nodded and fist bumped other kids all the way to the top as we followed behind. They told the kids our names too, but their voices could barely compete with the sound of water beating against the lake’s surface in a frothy collision of waves.
“Why did you bring that big dorky camera?” Laurel said into my ear while we hiked up the steep path.
I didn’t say anything but continued toying with the stiff strap so the camera would fall just so on my hip. As soon as I got it right, I wasn’t sure where my hands should go and the process started over again.
“Hey,” Laurel said, grabbing the hand that wasn’t swinging the way a normal person’s does because I’d made the fatal mistake of thinking about its swing.
“They’re just boys, Charley, and we’re two fascinating enigmas .
” Laurel had learned the word “enigma” watching Top Model reruns and it’d become the only way she described herself.
But this was the first time she was using the word to describe me .
Even though I still wasn’t convinced she was using it properly.
“They’re more afraid of us than we are of them. ”
I nodded and kept walking, feeling a little steadier with my sister’s hand in mine.
Laurel could be like that sometimes. Though she mostly treated me like an embarrassing appendage, she could transform into a fiercely protective older sister at the first sign of a threat.
Petey wanted to jump first when we got to the top, which ignited Laurel’s competitive streak.
It wasn’t that high up, but when I looked down at the lake, the bodies cooling off at the bottom looked like bugs to be crushed.
There was no railing or lifeguard. No regulation high dive.
It was a cliffside the Lewellenians had discovered through potentially deadly trial and error, the angry water foaming white beneath like a rabid dog.
“Wanna take pictures instead?” Ethan’s head pointed to the camera dangling at my hip. “We don’t have to jump today.”
“I’m not wearing a swimsuit.” He nodded as though he knew that wasn’t the real reason I wasn’t jumping but wasn’t going to push it.
So we took pictures. At first, I pretended to know how to use the camera, but I gave up the act as soon as he noticed I’d forgotten to turn the camera on.
“It’s cool you’re teaching yourself photography. I taught myself how to play guitar.”
“My dad’s teaching me photography. He’s a filmmaker, mostly documentaries.
We used to travel with him on shoots all over, and now he’s teaching at the college.
” I didn’t tell him the part about all the times he didn’t take us with him, because as an experienced “new kid,” I knew that maintaining mystery was key.
“That’s so cool. I’ve never left Minnesota. My parents own the Donut Barn.” He leaned his back against a tree and squinted up at the sun. “It doesn’t give us a lot of freedom to go anywhere new.”
“Do you have somewhere you want to go?”
He shrugged. “Anywhere, I guess.”
He closed his eyes and lifted his chin like a dog stretching into the sun while I took more pictures.
I liked the way the sun glittered on the water and made it look like a lit sparkler.
The way Petey sliced his feet through the air like he was on ice skates as he plummeted to the water.
The way the tips of Laurel’s hair floated on the surface and surrounded her like she wore a crown.
If there weren’t people around, it might’ve made for more aesthetic photos, but the messy scenes most accurately captured the feeling of it.
The start of summer and all the endless potential in the lengthening days.
With the camera, I felt outside of myself. Like I could exist in the present and still know I was making memories. The camera filtered the afternoon in sepia tones. It was one of those rare, perfect instances when I knew I was living in a moment I’d always remember while it was still happening.
The timer was running on our life here. Dad would leave, and then so would we.
Maybe we’d follow him a little while, but eventually school and money would get in the way and we’d have to stay behind someplace that he’d promise to visit and then never would.
I wouldn’t have lazy Saturdays by the lake much longer, but with pictures, I could take it with me.
I was playing with the zoom when Ethan’s shoulder nudged its way into the frame.
“How many freckles do you have on your arms?” I asked, zooming in and out. “Some of your moles aren’t even moles. They’re, like, clusters of freckles.”
“Dunno.” Without warning, he collapsed to the ground like a rag doll. “Count them. I’ll wait.”
The goofiness of this boy belly-flopping to the ground caught me so off guard that the spit-laugh I tried to hide from new people sputtered out from between my teeth.
Ethan smiled like it pleased him to elicit something so embarrassing from me.
I always figured there were only so many kinds of smiles, but I’d never seen a smile exactly like Ethan’s. I wanted to take a picture of it again.
“I’m not sure I could count them if I tried. It’s destined to be one of the great mysteries of the universe.”
“I hope there’s more out there to discover than my freckles.” He sat back up. “I like that you’re a girl Charley. The only one I know is the guy who owns the hardware store, but he mostly goes by Chuck.”
“My dad says I was named after portrait artist Chuck Close, but I don’t think that’s actually true. No one’s ever called me that at least.”
“Okay, now I only wanna call you Chuck.”
It was hard to explain what happened next. It was as though the air shifted. Something passed between us that seemed real enough to hold in my hands, like I’d look back later and identify it as the exact second Ethan Powell became my friend.
I lifted the camera and took a picture. I wanted to be sure I could take this feeling with me to the next place.