hii. soooo, shopstie is currently working on a wonderful [terrible!] novel :)
shopstie wants to know what others think. so i'm "daring" to post a page or so...have fun!
Dellie and I were to reunite at my parents’ New England lake house four days after school let out. The asphalt in the driveway was smooth under the tires of my car as I pulled in, parking in the spot my parents always did when we used to spend the entire summer at the lake.
It had been years since my whole family stayed there together—years since our whole family had been together in the first place—but now, as I pulled my keys out of the ignition and slowly pushed open the car door, I could almost see my mother, her hair rustling in the breeze. I could almost smell the obnoxious mixture of my brothers’ colognes that seemed to follow them like a shadow. I could almost hear my father, trying to get our attention while reading a passage from a book that was published before the dawn of publishers.
It had been so long, so many years, since anyone except me had been to the lake, but still, I could remember all these things, so many memories, so clearly, it was almost as if things had gone back to how it should have been. Almost, but not quite.
I stepped out onto the hot tar, slipping out of my shoes despite the continental burning sensation I got from the bottom of my feet.
There was still no sign of Dellie, but that wasn’t unusual. Dellie had almost always been notoriously late. It had started when her mother left, really, and her father taught her that it’s okay to be late, as long as you arrived at some point. This advice was, of course, taken advantage of by Dellie, and explained how it had almost become a tradition that I arrive at the lake first every summer.
I had wandered a few more feet from my car and was inspecting a fairly new looking Adirondack chair that had somehow appeared, when I heard the smooth sound of tires pulling into the driveway. I looked up from the chair, pushing my curtain of blonde hair away and tucking it behind my ear. In the driver’s seat of the tiny silver car that had pulled in was a very beautiful girl with big sunglasses pushed up into her hair. Dellie.
I saw as she opened the car door, seeming to be in slow motion or in an advertisement, that she had changed a lot since the last time I’d seen her. The brown hair that had once reached her waist was dyed with blonde, cut just below her shoulders.
She approached me and the new Adirondack chair, a distant look on her face. “Lana!” she said, flipping her blonde bangs out of her face.
“Hi,” I replied quietly, waving and smiling.
“Your hair!” she exclaimed, taking up her role of breaking whatever ice was there. Silence wasn’t exactly part of her vocabulary, as speaking took about as much effort and thought as breathing for her. “It’s so long!”
I nodded, looking down at my feet. My role: play along with anything and everything Dellie says until I can think of something important to say.
“It looks great,” she continued, touching the ends of my hair at their new position half way down my back.
“Thanks.” I could feel my shyness creeping up on me, although I couldn’t understand why. I had known Dellie my whole life, so she was far from a stranger. I was all but used to her personality—polar opposite of mine.
Dellie had always been how she was, the definition of outgoing. I guess I didn’t know exactly who I was, always trying to be something, anything. Dellie was the one person I could be myself with, no matter how much I changed or stayed the same, no matter what ‘myself’ was. I knew I shouldn’t have been acting shy around her, because she accepted me no matter what. But still, I couldn’t quite hit the usual level of comfort I had around her.
“It’s been way too long since we’ve talked,” Dellie concluded, making a subtle move towards her car, where I saw she had popped her trunk open.
“Mhm,” I agreed, nodding. I followed her footsteps to her tiny silver car, and watched as she pulled out four good sized bags, one at a time. Once all four were on the asphalt, she lifted them a few inches off the ground together, testing their weight. Surprisingly, she didn’t seem to be struggling with the weight, instead lifting them as if they were weightless, like she had forgotten to pack and had decided to merely bring the suitcases for show.
I was bracing myself for the speed-talking, the rapid fire speech, everything I knew would naturally come to Dellie. She obviously wasn’t feeling as awkward as I was, although if she was it probably wouldn’t have shown. “What have you been up to? How’s it going? How’s work? How are Eric and Reilly? I still can’t believe how long it’s been!”
As I had expected, the speed talking had begun. Dellie was talking a mile a minute, now, and I could hardly keep track of where one question ended and the next began, never mind attempt to answer them. I didn’t make her stop though, not for a minute. The rush of words coming out of Dellie’s mouth was actually calming. It was nice to be sure that at least one thing hadn’t changed about her. I didn’t do well with change.
“Alana? Alana? Alana?”
I blinked, unsure of exactly what Dellie had been talking about at that point.
“Uh…Hmm…Wait…What? Oh! Sorry! What was it?”
Dellie smiled, unnerved that I hadn’t been paying attention. “How was your birthday? When did you get your car? Don’t you love having a license?”
This was expected, of course. Dellie could never ask one question at a time. I just hoped that I answered the questions appropriately, instead of replying “I’m fine,” to “What have you been up to?”
“It was good. I got the car from a family friend before I turned sixteen. Having a license is…Convenient,” I replied, pretty sure I answered all the questions, even in the right order. Then Dellie was back, talking a mile a minute about anything and everything that popped into her mind.
“It’s a Volvo, pretty much new…”
I was happy. Dellie was as she should be, and so was I. As she chattered, and we began walking towards the house to put our bags away, I let my mind wander, wondering why I had ever been anxious.
