Jeanelle Ü
"You've got to be kidding me."
"What?" Taylor asked, coming up behind me with a bottle of pink Vitamin Water. She took a long gulp, screwed the cap back on, and looked at me.
"I am not sleeping in a crib!" I whined, dropping my bags on the blue carpeted floor.
Taylor stood on her tiptoes and peeked over my shoulder into what was supposed to be our shared bedroom. "What the -"
"Yeah, there's no way this is happening."
"Well I think Dad brought some single person air mattresses. I can just grab one of those, and you can have the crib. You'll still fit, right?"
I glared at her. "You wanna go find Dad before I deck you in the nose job?!"
She put her hands on her hip. "This is not a nose job, Jeanelle! I was born with a naturally perfect nose!"
I coughed loudly. She smacked my shoulder. "Shut up!"
"Okay, Miss Priss. Calm down!" I laughed, ducking before she could smack me again.
"I'll be the mature adult here and go get Dad to get the freaking crib out of here. Kay!?" she snapped. I chuckled as she stomped down the hall and out the front door to the driveway. These were the times I was really glad Taylor was my sister.
****
It was a little after four in the afternoon, and frankly, I was exhausted. It had taken half an hour to get that crib taken apart and put away in the hall closet, not to mention figuring out the air mattress instructions that were apparently in a completely different language, and another hour to unpack. Then Taylor found a spider in the bathroom, causing chaos with all the females in the family. Somehow the tiny black spider escaped through the crack under the bathroom door and found its way onto the kitchen counter, so that when Mom started chopping up lettuce for a dinner of chicken salad, she nearly sliced her finger off. I guess you couldn't exactly say it freaked out all the females in the house - Rebecca and me were standing in the doorway to the kitchen laughing hysterically as Mom screamed and Taylor hopped around the room, afraid to get within a five-foot radius of the tiny thing. Dad was choking back a laugh as he smacked the counter repeatedly with a rolled up magazine, completely missing the spider seventy percent of the time. After ten minutes he finally squished the little bugger and then it was into the trash can and back to preparing a salad. As you can imagine, we very nearly had a national emergency.
"Jeanelle! Get out of the shower! I need my makeup bag!"
I could hear Taylor banging on the door and yelling at me as I conditioned my hair with her (shh) favorite coconut milk shampoo. I rolled my eyes, rinsed, and shut the water off. "Taylor, why the hell do you need makeup? We're not going anywhere!"
"Jeanelle! Watch your mouth!" Mom called from the living room. I couldn't exactly be sure, but it sounded like she was in the middle of a game of Scrabble with Dad and Rebecca. "Rebecca!" she shouted. "That was not a twenty two point word! Learn to count!"
I heard Becky's cries of protest, and Dad, as always, playing Referee. "Come on guys, it's just a game..."
"We're going for a walk around," Taylor said from the hall. "I would rather not look like I just rolled out of bed."
I rolled my eyes again and stepped out of the shower. "What, just in case there's a hot twenty year old lifeguard patrolling the beach?!"
"No!" she snapped back, "Mom just said the Carters are here! I think Logan's sixteen now!"
I pulled on my old red soccer shorts and a cami. "Am I supposed to know who that is?" I stuck my tongue out at my reflection in the mirror. Then I crossed my eyes, puffed out my cheeks like a puffer fish, and pretended to bite my nails. All imitations of Taylor, of course. I laughed quietly to myself.
"Um...yeah? We've only known them since we were seven!" she was almost yelling now. "Now give me my makeup bag!"
I ignored her, and quickly tied my dripping hair in a messy bun on the side of my head. Makeup and going for a walk to meet cute sixteen year olds? Psh. The only place I was going was the kitchen to get a cherry Popsicle and then the living room to watch Wife Swap. Taylor could glam it up all she wanted, it's not like it was unlike her.
"Jeanelle!" she screeched. Sighing heavily, I grabbed her pink and purple flowered makeup bag off the counter, yanked the door open, and thrust it into her waiting arms. "Kay?" I said sarcastically. She rolled her eyes and walked off to our room.
"Jeanelle?" Dad called from the living room. Ugh.
"What?" I answered, turning back into the bathroom and searching the cabinets for my bobby pins. Where the heck had Taylor left them!?
"Are you ready to go?"
I froze. "What?"
"You're not staying here all by yourself. We're all going for a walk around. Are you gonna be ready in five?"
I groaned. Well so much for the Popsicle and reality TV.
"Oh stop pouting Jeanelle," Rebecca said smartly from the other room, "We're going as a family."
What was it, exactly, about twelve year old weirdos and family time?! I rolled my eyes and walked down the hall and into my room where Taylor was sitting on the floor; she was holding a tiny mirror in front of her face with one hand and applying mascara with the other. Her hair was in a high ponytail with a huge poof in the front (well I guess I found my bobby pins...) and she was wearing a pink tank top, white shorts, and MY favorite checkered flip flops. She glanced up at me as I walked in. "Ooh, how cute Nel!" she cooed sarcastically, then smiled at herself and went back to her mascara. I looked in the mirror at my messy hairdo and summertime PJ's. Yeah, I may be a sporty girl but there was no way I was going out in public looking like this. I grabbed some navy shorts and a white polo out of my drawer and put them on. Then I made a point of grabbing Taylor's brand new white flip flops out of the closet, slipping my feet into them, and then returning to the bathroom before she could say a single word. Two could most definitely play this game.
Ten minutes and a messy ponytail later, the five of us were walking down the dirt road leading to the beach. Taylor walked in front of the group, biting her nails and looking like a mini Paris Hilton in her gigantic black sunglasses, with Rebecca at her heels who wouldn't shut up about the position of the sun in relation to the seasons. I was in the middle, twirling my now-wavy, still-wet hair between my fingers and singing along to my iPod. Mom and Dad were behind us, talking about boats or something. So far, no Carters.
The beach was really pretty; the sun was just beginning to set over the trees, and the sky was splashed with pink and orange and purple, the clouds blurring the fading sunlight and casting streaks of brightness over the water. Miniscule waves quietly lapped the sandy shore, and there was no noise at all. It was silent and peaceful.
I sat on the edge of the dock with Taylor, looking up at the sun and for some reason thinking of Will. Short, crazy, adorable Will with his floppy brown hair and warm chestnut eyes and the beat up black skateboard that never left his hand. I closed my eyes; it would be a lie to say I didn't miss him, even though it had only been two days since I'd last seen him. We'd been together for going on five months; I don't think I've ever had a boyfriend that was as fun to be around as Will. He was outgoing and funny, always making people laugh so hard tears streamed down their faces. His addiction to skateboarding was admirable if not cute, because he was so completely committed to it. Sometimes it seemed like it was taking up a little too much of his time, but then again, I'm an athlete too. Sports has been a passion we've shared since even before we met. But at the same time, he's the kind of guy that always knows exactly what to say to make me smile, and when we're together it's like nothing else is even there. Just like our first date - he came over in January to go skiing down the huge hill in our backyard with me and Taylor, and when we went inside to make hot chocolate I opened the pack of cocoa power and completely missed his cup when I dumped it in. And it's been me and him ever since.
I looked up at the pinkish clouds and let my mind wander. Taylor was humming next to me and swinging her feet over the edge of the dock. Rebecca had left her sandals on the beach and was splashing around like a moron in the warm, shallow water, and Mom and Dad were sitting at a picnic table watching her.
Taylor nudged me. I jumped a little, opened my eyes, and looked over at her. "What?"
"Your shoe is floating away."
I glanced down at the water beneath us. Sure enough, the white flip flop was bobbing in the water a couple inches away from my foot. Taylor was trying to hide a chuckle as she watched my face. No way was I going in that water - it was far above my knees. I pulled my earphones out of my ear and handed them, along with my iPod, to Taylor. Then I scooted forward on the old wooden dock and leaned towards the water, stretching my arms out as far as they would go. I fell about two inches short. I scooted a little more forward, leaned a little harder. Nope. By now Taylor was laughing hysterically as I leaned over like a sandwich trying to get that damn flip flop out of the water. And she had a reason to be laughing, because about three seconds later I found myself falling off the edge of the dock and faceplanting the turquoise lakewater. Splash. And I was in.
Taylor cracked up, Rebecca pointed and laughed from her spot in the shallows, and Dad glanced over at me and shook his head. Mom was definitely smiling, I could see it from where I stood, waist deep in water, my one bare foot sinking into the soft sand underneath me. I waded over, snatched the sandal out of the water, and threw it onto the beach. My shorts were soaked, shirt splashed and splattered with icky who-knows-what, and my half decent hair already becoming sticky. I turned and glared at Taylor, who was still sitting on the dock in hysterics. And when I turned back to the beach, it wasn't just Becky and Mom and Dad anymore. There were four more people. I stared. Two adults, a man and a woman, were talking to Mom and Dad. A tall, tan woman probably in her twenties with short blonde hair pulled back into a messy ponytail was sitting on the beach with a cell phone to her ear. And then when I saw the equally tall and tan guy with dark shaggy hair and piercing blue eyes that I could distinguish even from twenty yards away, I knew I had just proven myself a complete ditz in front of what was no doubt, the Carters and their gorgeous sixteen year old son. Terrific.
*****
No matter how many times Taylor reminded me that night, I still couldn't believe i had actually bellyflopped off the dock trying to reach for my cheap rubber sandal, floating a foot away, that just had to fall off my foot. And, to make things even better, the Carters had shown up at the precise moment I fell in. It was so typical of me to do something like that, especially in front of company. Last year on Halloween I tripped over my sparkly red Mary Janes (I was Dorothy, from the Wizard of Oz) and fell on someone's lawn, sprawling my pillowcase of candy through the grass and shrubbery. Needless to say, I haven't ventured to that part of the neighborhood since. But this time I wasn't going to be able to avoid it; I was going to have to deal with it, as the Carters were staying in the house (gulp) next door for the next week! Great! Because it's every fifteen year old's dream to fall in a lake, get caught by a cute guy while IN the lake, and then have to face him for the next week.
Apparently I was the only one who found this sufficiently humiliating. Taylor said it was the funniest thing she'd seen all year, Mom and Dad made fun of me for the next hour and a half, and Rebecca went off on a tangent about the velocity of human beings falling off docks. I, on the other hand, was trying as hard as I possibly could to erase the memory from my brain. Not that it was likely that was ever going to happen - it was the first thing out of Logan's mouth when he first spoke to me, and that's not something I'm likely to forget.