Chapter Eleven: September
It is ever so perplexing to dwell on the things which might have ever been, but Laurie espies the stranger in the mirror, and wonders if she could ever measure up to Judith.
It may have been thirteen years ago, but her sister's beauty remains an ageless memory. Laurie had come across a family photo, framed, and sitting on the third shelf of the living room bookcase when she was five. Judith, her hair a golden wheat field, Bette Davis eyes, had her hand on Michael's shoulder, the believably innocent boy, whose older version of himself is now a hardened, emotionless shell. Five year old Laurie didn't know who the boy was, until her mother told her two years later on a Halloween night that she'd had two elder siblings. One that was dead. And another that wasn't better off.
But, oh, Judith was pretty.
As Laurie walks past it, the picture is gone and she thinks her memory must be failing her, because she swore she'd seen it last week on her way out to school, but maybe her mother had moved it elsewhere, or maybe it was never there to begin with.
Her dress sways with every step drawing closer to the front door. Her mother opens it before Laurie's hand reaches the handle.
"Oh my!" Her mother exclaims.
Laurie blushes instantly as she is dragged out by her hand to the front yard. Her mother heckles her into taking a picture, but as absurd as it may seem to Laurie, she thinks to have her image captured, so that she may be as ageless as Judith. Golden wheat fields. Bette Davis eyes. But not quite so.
When her mother disappears into the house in search of a camera, Laurie hears a yell and spins around to a child whose ball is rolling towards her. She picks it up before it comes to a stop and looks at the little boy across the street. His hands shield the sun from his eyes and he asks for the ball back.
Laurie prepares to throw it when she hears the door open then close.
As she throws the ball, the boy goes solemn, his young face drains of color, but Laurie doesn't see this. She only sees the child visibly stiffen before he sprints in the opposite direction back into his house.
The ball lands where he had stood.
Laurie expects her mother to be standing on the porch with the camera when she turns around.
But Laurie is wrong and her heart experiences a shudder, as though it can feel fear.
His bare feet flattens the grass from where he stands. The sun is on his back and his shadow stretches towards her. Laurie gulps, skin tingling, a shiver shakes her bones. Her dress is the object of his attention. Her brother doesn't bother to lift his gaze from her midsection.
"Ah! There you two are!"
Her mother comes barrelling down the porch steps.
"I am not letting you go until you get your picture."
Awkwardly, Laurie stands, her hands clasped in front of her, her gaze, hooded. She focuses on everything but the camera.
The sky is clear. The birds are singing. And beneath the shade of her mother's straw hat, there is a maternal frown meant for her. The camera lowers.
"Come now, Laurie. Why don't you stand closer to your brother?"
Laurie hardly reacts fast enough to feel his palm mold over her shoulder. Like that she is lured into her brother's warm side and when she looks at Michael, he doesn't give her the time of day. His eyes are angled to the ground.
"Smile!"
Laurie looks up in time before the flash of a camera burns into her retina.
She doesn't see her mother's appraising smile as she looks at her children through the lens of the camera.