See Jane Date
Jane smoothed down the front of her blue mini skirt and gave her sleeveless red top a couple tugs not really trying to cover her bare tummy. She gathered her thick, raven hair up tight on her head and secured the mass with a wide golden scrunchie, all before smirking at herself in the mirror.
"I grew a half-inch or more, almost as tall as Penny now and it makes this skirt look even shorter."
Almost like she was exercising, she pursed, loosened and blew out her lips several times before applying a bright, fire engine, RGB value 255,0,0 red lipstick to her pucker with as much care as anything she put on a canvas. She tilted her head this way and that, resolving to do another self-portrait soon.
When the bell bing-bonged from the front door; she had only to sling her puppy–dog backpack over one shoulder to be ready. It was juvenile, even infantile she knew but Jane liked the pack cum purse: it was cute and the popular cheerleaders had even picked up from her the habit of sporting such animal themed backpacks just that year.
She waited to head down until Penny announced up the stairs in an exasperated tone, "Jane, your date du jour is here."
Jane didn't really care that sister Penny had again left the guy waiting on the front step behind the closed door. She gave her big sister a fat smile.
"Don't wait up, sis." She advised Penny.
Penny crossed her arms. "As if I care by now. So how many guys is it tonight?"
Jane pretended to consider. "Don't know, Pen. Probably half as many guys as you're having over. Or are you into chicks again?"
She ducked under Penny's suddenly upraised hand and as she scampered to the door she called out over her shoulder, "And I, at least, am still a virgin."
She added a bratty stuck-out tongue back at her sister before she opened the door.
The guy on the front step jerked a step back the better to look Jane up and down. From habit, Jane cocked her hip and struck a pose for him.
"Hi Jane!" Jamie White gasped out. "Here, these are for you."
He thrust forward a bouquet of random flowers which probably had been minding their own business growing in several neighbors' yards just a few minutes prior. He turned to wave off an older guy—probably his father—sitting in a car and looking at his son with mildly envious regard.
"Why, thanks Jamie." Jane took an exaggerated whiff. "My car's over here." She liked the feel of her butt swaying in her new clunky sandals and was sure Jamie was enjoying the view as she led him to the beat-up blue Plymouth Satellite. Jane tried to remember if her mom or dad or both had given it to her the last time they were home, four months past or so.
"It's really cool that you have a car, Jane."
Jane managed to flash a little more than her upper legs as Jaimie opened the door to help her climb into the driver seat. She let him settle into the passenger seat before speaking.
"So, tell old sophomore Janey what it's like to be a freshman again."
JL JL JL JL JL JL
"So you see Jane, theorcratically, er, theotically, er, the quarterback could legally pass and catch the ball but that almost never happens."
He got excited, "But Brett Favre once…"
Jane looked over at Jamie White as he rattled on about a few other gridiron positions and their legal relationship to the ball then she looked out the window at the sun slowly setting across the pool of still water under their parking spot at the quarry. They were studiously ignoring and being just as intensely ignored by the occupants of several other vehicles in the tiny, make-shift parking lot.
She looked across the pool again, the sun glinting on the walls of granite and off the stones in the cemetery where Trent Lane was interred just a couple blocks away.
"Is he still my older brother if he died as a baby years before I was even born? Would he have been like Wind? Like Dad?" She wondered and not for the first time. Jane had often visited alone and cried out a few tears over the grave, never sure if those were for a little baby, for herself, for both.
Jane shrugged then leaned over and used her lips to shut Jamie up about sports and anything else but mumbles and groans. She soon discovered that he knew to use her sandals as handles.