7. Dottie
7
DOTTIE
Age Thirteen
I love summer. It's my favorite season of the year. The air is warm, the creek is cold and refreshing. There's no school, which means there's plenty of time to spend outside practicing dance routines and perfecting back handsprings in the grass with Kira, just like we did all day today. Cheer squad tryouts are in three weeks, and we're both totally making the team this year. My back handspring is flawless, even if I pretended it wasn't this morning so Stephen would spot me.
I pretended for him. He likes to feel useful, and I like how proud he looked when I ‘finally’ got it right, and the way he picked me up off my feet when we hugged. That's a new development, this summer. He didn't used to be able to pick me up. I think when he had his growth spurt, he must have gotten a little stronger.
What I don't love about summer is my mom's stupid rules about what I should and shouldn't be doing. During the day while she's at work, I can sneak out and hang out with my friends, but I have to be back in my room and working on my summer reading list before her car pulls up at 5:30 p.m. If it was just Kira I was with, she wouldn't care, but she doesn't like me hanging with the boys. She says it’s not ladylike to spend time with the boys while they play sports, and it's especially heinous that I like to join them in throwing whatever ball around.
But, because summer is the best, the sun stays out much later than it does during the school year. Which means there's still plenty of time to hang with Stephen in the evening, so long as I'm sneaky about it.
Like right now. I have my bedroom door cracked, watching the light from the television flicker from the living room. I can hear the muffled dialogue from The Bachelor fading into a commercial for car insurance, and the tell-tale snore, no doubt from Mom’s open mouth.
I peek my head out through the crack, and sure enough, Mom is fast asleep, drool dripping from the corner of her mouth and onto the couch cushion. A glass sits on the floor next to the couch, her hand dangling over it like she'd fallen asleep on the way to pick it up. Condensation pools on the carpet as the ice inside the glass melts and dilutes the peachy-pink color of the cocktail. The bottle of gin on the coffee table is about halfway full. A good sign, since I watched Mom open it a few hours ago at dinner. If she drank that much tonight, she likely won't be awake any time soon .
I quietly close my bedroom door and stuff a blanket against the crack at the bottom. I wheel over my desk chair and prop the back up under the knob, making it nearly impossible to open the door from the outside. It's probably unnecessary. Mom never comes in my room at night, but I like to be careful either way.
I arrange my pillows under my blanket to resemble a sleeping lump, and then I slowly inch my window open. I heave myself over and out, landing softly in the pile of mulch that used to be a garden, thankful that my bedroom is on the first floor. I stand and close the window behind me, leaving it open just enough to slide my pinky under and push up to get back in. Then I run across the yard and hop the fence to the Hudson's backyard.
"Took you long enough," Stephen says as I cross the yard. The sun is practically gone, but the sky is that kind of pretty, dusky blue you only see after nine at night in August. Fireflies flicker all around as the crickets sing. There's a soft hum in the air, like the earth itself is too excited about the beautiful night to be quiet about it.
"I got out as soon as I could. C'mon, I want to see if we can see Mercury from here. It's in Cancer right now." The guy on the six o'clock news said the planet should be naked to the visible eye tonight if there isn't too much light pollution, which isn't really a problem here in Fox Hole.
We walk through his backyard to the trees that separate our lawns from the sprawling wildflower field, the way that leads down to the creek. Stephen takes my hand and leads me through the thickets, holding branches out of my way so that I can make it through relatively unscathed. Once in the clearing, he lays down the orange flannel blanket he carried with us and we sit down next to each other, palms flat on the ground behind us as we gaze up at the sky.
"Right there!" I exclaim, excited but quietly, as I point to the bright white spot shining in the middle of the sky. Stephen squints, and I shove his shoulder with mine.
"You need to wear your glasses," I chide. He got them at the beginning of last school year and refuses to wear them.
"They make me look like a dork," he says, the same way he always does when I bring them up.
"They make you look handsome," I say, surprising myself.
Huh.
I don't think I've ever thought of Stephen as handsome. I don't think I've thought of any boys as handsome, except for Zayn from One Direction. There are cute boys at school, but Stephen isn't one of them. Not to me.
He's just Stephen. Stephen, whose glasses make him look handsome, apparently.
He doesn't say anything, just brushes his hair out of his face with his hand. He's been growing it out this summer, and it's always in his eyes. I teased him about it earlier when he claimed the hair was the reason that he couldn't catch the footballs Dean threw his way. But the truth is, I like his long hair.
"Your hair is handsome, too. Even if it gets in the way of your future football career," I reach out and muss the mop on top of his head, and I'm pleasantly surprised at how soft it feels. I didn't think boys had soft hair. All the boys at school always have too much gel in their hair, making it look crunchy. Or even worse, there's the boys whose hair always looks greasy. It's usually the same boys who always smell like they just came from gym class.
Not Stephen, though. His hair is soft, and he smells like the Old Spice deodorant I noticed sitting on the edge of the sink in his bathroom once, and a little bit like grass.
In the low light of the moon, I can see the apples of Stephen's cheeks turning red, and I realize I've still got my hand in his hair. I quickly whip my hand back, crossing my arms across my chest. He makes a noise under his breath.
"You can braid it now, if you want," he says, referring to earlier today when I jokingly made the offer to style his hair, so that it wouldn't impede his football-catching abilities any longer. He scoffed at me then, but now, his cheeks still rosy from his blush, I think he might want me to.
"I can?" I ask, reaching out and twirling a lock of his floppy hair around my pointer finger.
"Yeah, you can. Braid my hair, please?" he asks. His voice sounds sincere, not teasing like it had been earlier when I'd asked. It's almost as if he wants me to braid his hair and he’s not just letting me to appease me. He turns his back to me, tilting his head back slightly. I finger brush his hair before separating it into messy sections, braiding lock after lock, then brushing through them before repeating the process.
We talk as I work, discussing the upcoming school year and whether we think eighth grade will be a lot harder than seventh. At some point, Stephen lays down, falling asleep with his head nestling down onto my shins as I continue to tie tiny braids in his hair. I watch his chest rise and fall in the moonlight for much longer than I should, and before I know it, the moon is high in the sky.
I reluctantly shake him awake, and he walks me all the way back to my window, never letting go of my hand even after we've made it through the trees.
I slip through my window and into bed, and even though it's late, I can't sleep. Not when there's a barrage of butterflies waging a war in my stomach. I can't quite put my finger on what it was, but something changed tonight. I can feel it in my bones.
The next day, when my mom leaves for work and I head next door to meet up with my friends, Stephen is wearing his glasses. And there is a single braid tied into a lock of hair on the side of his head.