my proof.”
I put my phone back in my pocket, keep our secret. Watch everyone looking at me, at Brooke, as we rotate around our sun.
“You two are sisters?” Mercy asks.
Brooke says, “Yeah,” so matter-of-fact that no one says anything else about it. Natasha looks at me and, with my eyes I tell her I’ll explain it all later.
Standing here with a handful of Brooke’s hair in my palm makes me wonder what it would have been like to grow up with a little sister. Natasha has two younger brothers who she helped teach how to read and tie shoes and throw punches on the playground if someone was messing with them. I think about how even though I have Mom and plenty of cousins and friends, I don’t know what it’s like to have a sibling.
Maybe it would be like this. Me doing her hair and chaperoning sleepovers, me making sure she knows which way to walk, how to get where she’s trying to go. Me knowing that I would do anything to make sure she is safe.
Just before the campers board the bus to leave, Brooke turns to me and whispers, “Don’t forget to send me the picture,” with a smile stretched across her face. She takes my phone and puts her number in it. When she gets on the bus, she sits with Robin, and as they leave they wave big elaborate goodbyes. I wave back until I can’t see them anymore.
I take out my phone to text Brooke the picture, but when I look at the photo, I realize it is blurry and Brooke is not even looking at the camera and half of the woman’s face is cut out of the frame so you can’t really tell who we’re standing next to. I text the photo to Brooke anyway because I promised I would. It’s not the proof we thought we’d have, but we’ll always have this memory; we’ll always be able to tell the story.
I head back to my cabin. The wind has settled and the branches of the black cottonwood trees are still. There are no snow-seeds blowing furiously in the sky, but remnants from last night’s storm cover the damp ground. The sweet fragrance from the fallen fluff fills the air.
I breathe it in, sing Grandma’s song.
“Hurry up, Cam,” Myron yelled from the other side of the door. “It’s not like staring in the mirror is gonna make you any prettier.”
“Five more minutes,” I said as I checked myself out once more. My fade was a little higher on the sides than I liked, but still good. I’d convinced Myron to take me to the barbershop first thing that morning. Usually I hated going to the barbershop in South Carolina. It was always noisy—way louder than my usual barbershop back in Texas—with a lot of old men talking over each other, arguing about stuff I didn’t even care about, and telling me how good kids like me and Myron had it now. But today, none of that bothered me. The three-hour wait was totally going to pay off.
My clothes were brand-new, too. I’d bought them a month ago but was wearing them for the first time today. Everything looked great—except my shoes. After leaving the barbershop, Myron took me to the mall and convinced me to splurge on a pair of all-white retro Air Jordans. I’m sure they looked good on other sixteen-year-olds, but not on me. They made my already large feet seem extra huge. And they were super expensive compared to my usual Vans.
But they’d be worth it if they impressed Jessica Booker.
I hadn’t seen Jess since last year. I had liked her for a long time, and had always hung out with her and her sisters during my summer vacations at Grandma’s house here in Franklin. Last year, I promised myself that I wasn’t going back to Austin without making a move. It took me up until the last day of vacation before I was able to summon up the courage, but I finally gave Jess a quick peck right on the lips.
It was the best kiss I’d ever given a girl.
It was also the only kiss I’d ever given a girl.
But then, before I could run off, Jess grabbed my hand and pulled me in for another kiss.
And that was most certainly not a peck.
If I had known kissing could be like that, I would have tried a long time ago.
But that was the high point of our romance. We’d tried to keep in contact over the school year—sending texts and messages through Facebook—but by Christmastime we’d lost touch. Well, if I was being honest, she dropped off. It took me about two weeks of additional texting before I finally realized she wasn’t going to reply back with anything other than wooden, one-word replies.
I pulled out my phone and took a quick snapshot of my shoes to post on Instagram and Facebook. Then I texted my friends at home and told them to like and comment on the photo. Petty, I know, but the more likes I had, the better chance I had of my post showing up on Jess’s feed.
Myron knocked again, then opened the bedroom door. “Come on, Cam,” he said. “You know how Grandma is. If we aren’t out the door by nine, she won’t let us go anywhere.” Then he looked me up and down and shook his head. “The kicks are nice, but you still look corny.”
“Takes one to know one,” I said, which was kind of a weak comeback, but it was the best I could do on short notice. But he did look just as goofy as I did, with his bright blue shoes. Myron usually wore Jordans, but today he was sporting a pair of KD 10s. “The finals edition,” he’d bragged when he first showed them off.
Uncle Greg—Myron’s dad—and my dad were twins. After college, Uncle Greg returned to Franklin to take a management job at the auto plant while Dad took an engineering job in Austin, Texas. For as long as I could remember, Mom and Dad would send me back to spend the summer at Grandma’s house—and I loved it. Myron and I usually got along, and there was always a bunch of other kids running around the neighborhood.
Like Jessica Booker.
That was one of the biggest ways that Franklin was different from my neighborhood back in Austin. At home, the only time I hung with my friends was when they came over to my house to play video games or watch movies. We never went outside—Arpit was allergic to everything, and I didn’t like the hot weather. But here, kids hung out everywhere. On people’s front porches. At the strip mall. In the parking lot of Hardee’s. Everywhere.
Maybe I was wrong—maybe kids back at home did that, too. Maybe me and my friends were the only ones stuck inside.
I followed Myron down the hallway and into the den. Grandma sat in front of the TV, flipping between stations. She worked at the small community college—she was still in her slacks and a button-up shirt, though she’d left her heels at the door. She eventually settled on a news show, then turned to us.
Or rather, she looked at our feet.
“Cameron, you’re buying those horrible shoes, too?”
“They’re retro, Grandma,” I said.
“Hmph. Some things probably need to stay in the past.” She shook her head. “But I’m betting those new clothes and shoes have more to do with trying to impress Eileen Thompson’s granddaughter than
