“You know this town—you’re the latest gossip.”
When I look back at her, she’s narrowing her eyes, staring at me. She makes it seem so natural while I know my stares would seem too…well, too something.
“You’re different,” she comments.
“Is that right?” I respond.
“Yes, that’s right.”
“Well, so are you,” I say.
The more she stares at me, the more I realize that, while she may be here all summer, I can’t hang out with her—not if I’m going to feel like this.
Asher is my best friend. Violet is his sister. The last thing any of us needs is for the boat to get rocked after ten years.
“Hopefully I see you around,” she says. With a small smile, she moves toward the bar, and I steal a glance at her ass.
Goddammit.
Violet has no idea she’s about to drag my heart through the mud and the mess.
Two
Violet
Keaton is both identical and completely different from how I remember him, and I can’t tell if that’s a good thing or a bad thing…though I think it’s safe to say it’s leaning toward being a very, very bad thing.
When I was eleven, just two days into my sixth-grade year, my brother brought home a quiet lanky boy he met in class. In our small town, you rarely see any new faces. The classmates in your kindergarten class are the same kids in sixth grade and eighth grade and twelfth, so when there’s a newcomer, they’re bound to be bombarded with questions and, most of all, nobody is exempt from my brother’s eager personality.
I remember Asher presenting this boy to our parents with pride, like he was a puppy slated for adoption. The boy simply smiled at my brother’s overenthusiasm, only speaking when spoken to and saying “Yes ma’am” or “No ma’am” to my mom whenever she asked him a question. She beamed at that while I, on the other hand, took one look at him and fled from the kitchen without a peep.
Even then, I knew Keaton wasn’t just some boy.
I took to sitting at the top of our staircase, wiping my thick-lensed glasses on my t-shirt, trying to take in the sight of Asher and Keaton sitting cross-legged on the living room floor. They were tapping on their game controllers with enough fervor to break the things. I never cared much about video games, but I did understand that something was different between how Asher played this game and how this new boy played.
Keaton was the calm presence to my brother’s wild energy. I’d hear Asher exclaim that he’d beaten him at the racing game for the third time, but Keaton would still remain quiet, nodding in agreement with a small smile, one small dimple on his left cheek deepening.
Up to that point, I’d had crushes before. One time at vacation bible school, I kissed Joey Nolan underneath the stairwell, but the butterflies were nothing—nothing like the weird flutters running through me looking at my brother’s new best friend. Keaton was unique, and I soaked him up like I’d never seen another boy in my life.
While my dad and brother kept their hair short and trimmed, Keaton’s wild brown hair curled at the nape of his neck. He tended to have a few Band-Aids on his elbows, knees, and ankles. I wore neat white Skechers; he wore untied Converses with laces brown from mud.
I watched my brother and Keaton every Saturday morning when they played video games, saying nothing. Silent as a mouse but sneaky like a fox, watching from afar. One Saturday, I leaned forward a bit too far on the top step and, in doing so, fell down the stairs, tumbling until I caught myself on the last stair, my knobby knees skinned with carpet burn and my face hot from embarrassment.
“Are you okay?” Keaton asked. After a month of coming by our house, those were the first words he said to me. I did not respond. Not only was I sprawled out in an embarrassing position, I had also lost my glasses in the fall and was left hopelessly blind. I was too scared to move, let alone pass my hand over the ground in front of me in some pathetic gesture reminiscent of Velma from Scooby-Doo.
I remember Keaton handing me my glasses, my hands fumbling to take them from him, and the first thing I saw clearly once my vision returned was his legs in front of me. They were strong, the legs of a kid who spent a lot of time outdoors.
Based on what I saw at First Stop last night, his legs are still just as strong. And, unfortunately, my stomach still flips at the sight of him. Though everything seems the same, it’s all so different as well. Keaton is more muscular than I remember. His biceps now look like mountains atop his arms, pulling his black shirt taut at every peak and letting the material settle in every valley. He’s traded his long brown hair for short locks and a rugged beard. He’s aged well, a walking cover model masquerading as your average Joe.
And I’m still just Asher’s little sister.
This is made even more apparent when I wake up in my old bedroom, startled awake by the sound of my mom rummaging around in her bathroom. Every single sound can be heard through the old home’s thin walls, but it’s always been this way. Let’s just say I didn’t sneak many guys into my bedroom in high school.
I roll over, resting my arm under my head and glancing around the room. Stuffed toys from my childhood are lumped together pyramid-style courtesy of my mom’s organization. There’s my ancient writing desk stacked with a mess of papers, no doubt used as a makeshift junk landing zone during my absence. The bookcase is filled with crochet tutorial magazines; those are not mine either.
The walls are the only areas unclaimed by my mom since I graduated and moved across the country. They serve as an archival collage of my life journey thus far. The wallpaper, barely visible behind papers and posters, is a pastel rainbow I pasted on at the age of seven when I was sure without a doubt that the Lisa Frank trend would never die. On top of that are doodles based off of Disney classics, likely traced over VHS covers, but those are covered with the top-most layer of promotional movie posters from documentary directors like Scorsese and Kopple.
These directors are prolific, and I’ve created one smash hit.
That’s it.
The name ‘Violet Ellis’ in big letters…on one poster about education reform.
I roll away from the posters only to be greeted by more on the other wall. The faces on them taunt me. Why haven’t you made more awesome movies like me, Violet?
I bury my head in the pillows, attempting to hide from my shame.
One idea. That’s all I got.
I came home to find something, anything, to inspire a new movie. Plus, my parents offered to house me while I live off the royalties from my first film.
Let’s call it a sabbatical. A working sabbatical.
While I produced the first movie on a budget, I now have more involvement and interest—interest that comes in the form of deadlines that are not self-imposed.
The buzzing of my phone next to me reminds me of exactly this.
I pick it up, seeing an email from my new backers, Sean Townsie and Dean Fratesi. Yes, those are their real names.
I quickly learned after attempting to get in touch with the two of them that Sean and Dean do not text. Their only method of communication is email. Always email. But, there’s never a greeting or signature. It’s just the message as abbreviated as possible—almost like a text, if you can imagine it.