I'm so good at pointless stuff...
I didn't ask her first about things, she tended to throw tantrums even if that was what she was going to do anyway. After deflating and peeling the floaties off of her arms, I opened up a package of candy for her, all the while keeping a mental eye on the other kids.
"You guys want to play anything?" Greg asked.
"Like what?"
While Greg thought, his brother ambled over to where Paula was sitting, and pointed at the neat pile of rocks on the grass beside her.
"What are those?"
"Rocks I found."
He picked up a nice smooth black one, and ran his finger along the edge of its one flat side.
"This is a great skipping rock."
Paula's eyes widened a bit. "I found them for my Mom."
He obviously didn't understand the significance of this, because before she even finished her sentence, he turned and whipped out over the water. He didn't even skip it very well. One sluggish hop, and then it sank with a sick plunking sound. Greg obviously noticed his brother's ineptitude, because he went over and picked up the next rock on the pile.
"You suck at this."
His flat reddish rock sailed much better than his brother’s, skipping twice and almost a third time before sinking. Paula began to pick up her favorite rocks and hold them in her lap, as Greg's brother fought to regain his dignity by trying again. He chucked that next rock a little better than the first time, and Greg turned to glance back at Hannah.
"You know how to skip rocks?"
"Yeah," she said defensively.
She went to stand with them at their rock-throwing outpost, but didn't reach down to steal one of her sister's rocks. Not yet anyway. Greg skipped another one with three good hops, and his brother almost did the same. Then it was Hannah's turn. As she went to reach down to pick up a stone off of the quickly dwindling pile, Paula looked up and pointed down toward the water's edge.
"There was a whole bunch of good flat rocks down there. I just picked up the lumpy ones."
Hannah obliged, Paula stole back a few more of her rocks, and Greg followed Hannah toward the water. Greg's brother wanted another fruit snack, so he went after Hannah as well. I sat with Julia, spreading out the remaining towel like a picnic blanket, and huddled under my buttery towel with my snacks. After a few minutes, Paula scooted over with her refugee rocks, and we all watched Hannah and the boys skip rocks for a while.
Skipping rocks turned into chucking rocks, which turned into finding branches and pieces of bark to throw into the water. I wanted to go back to Uncle Mark's house and warm up in the sun.
Eventually Hannah grew tired enough of the boys again to hike back up to us, and start gathering our things. Greg yanked a handful of leaves off of the nearest tree and sprinkled them in the water, until he noticed that my sister wasn’t standing by him anymore.
"...You leaving?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Where you going?"
"Back up to our uncle's house. Mom's probably wondering where we are."
"Are you going to be around later? There aren’t any kids at the campground."
"Uh. I dunno. We're going to be around for a while, I guess, before we gotta go home."
"Would your uncle mind if we came with?"
We all kind of looked at each other, but had nothing to protest with. I almost told him that there were always kids at the campground, but I had a feeling that he meant girls especially. Hannah fumbled for a moment, but finally relented.
"I guess not. He's got a big yard."
And so the brothers invited themselves along. We scooped up all our stuff, and set off up the path. We each wore our towels like ceremonial capes, except for Paula who took her mostly unused cape and wrapped her rocks with it instead, like a bag of treasure. The sun was lower low, the air a little cooler. It reminded me of dinner time, even though I was pretty sure that it was still too early for that. The hike seemed far longer, as well, as we towed the weight of unfamiliar company along with us. Hannah turned and glanced to Greg as a thought came to her.
"Won't your parents wonder where you are?"
"Nah. They just said for us to be home by dark."
"You sure you shouldn't go ask them if it's alright?"
"I know they won't care."
It was a nice try, anyway. Soon enough the trees lightened until the grassy yard took them over and the house came into view. I have always wanted to live in a house like Uncle Mark's. There was room to run in the yard, but the big old trees scattered around still covered most of it in shade. Every once in a while, my parents would talk about possibly moving, and I always voted for a house like that. They promised that they would try to find one like that eventually, if they ever moved, but it had never really come close to happening. I still held onto the hope though. There would be some day that I would have a yard covered in trees, right near a creek.
My parents were hanging out by the picnic table near the house, and we waved when they caught sight of us. Julia took off running to Mom, but Paula was stuck with us, because her rocks were too heavy to run with. Mom waved back as we got close.
"You guys brought friends back?"
"Yeah, can they stay for a while and play?"
Dad took over then. "Did they ask their parents if it was okay?"
Hannah parroted Greg's response to this. "He said his parents wouldn't mind, as long as they were back before dark. They're over at the campground."
"I guess it's alright, but we're going to be eating dinner soon."
"Okay."
With the paperwork done, and playing could now begin. Tag, the staple of all vacation days, was the first to break out. Even Paula wanted to play, now that we were on home ground. Unfortunately, so did Julia, fighting to get away from Mom so she could come play with the big kids. Nobody was going to tag her though, that was for sure. You never tag little kids like that, because they can never catch anybody, and then they cry, and sometimes even tattle, and completely ruin the game. The worst thing was to have your parents make you play a ‘quiet game’ or ‘one that Julia can play too.’ So, Julia ran feebly around while we played, but we worked to make her seem as though she was accomplishing something.
Greg was the fastest of course, but every once in a while, me or Hannah were able to catch him, pushing ourselves and stretching our legs to compete with the older kid. He obviously played some sort of sport, by the way he dodged and twisted and ran circles around us most of the time. That was one of the worst things about trying to play with older kids. They were faster and stronger and generally not as nice as kids your own age.
The idea of hide and seek was brought up, but there were too few trees and too much space. And it was still too light out. So, we hung around and tried to think of a new game, ignoring the fact that Julia still wanted to play tag. Then, suddenly reaching down, Greg's brother found a good arm-length stick, which we then used to take turns trying to hit pinecones like baseballs for a while, until someone tried the same thing with small rocks, and one almost hit Julia. Thankfully none of the adults had seen it. My dad and uncle had gone around the side of the house to grill, while my mom stayed on the front porch to keep an eye on us. Luckily, her eye was mostly on the book she was reading. By then, the sun was setting and lightning bugs were beginning to blink around the yard. Dad had showed us long ago how to catch lightning bugs without hurting them, after we found that keeping them in your hand or in a jar for too long killed them. Other kids never seemed to know how to do this however, or even have a thought to.
Julia sometimes still killed them, but that was just because she was still so little. She didn't know any better, and luckily she was still too slow and clumsy to easily catch them.
She went running squealing around the yard, hands eagerly out in front of her, and was baffled every time their greenish yellow light faded out. They became invisible to her then, forcing her to change targets.
The other boys, however, still seemed intent on showing off their great and many skills to my sister. First they ran around and caught as many lightning bugs as they could in one hand. Greg won this game of course, finally opening his hand and showing off his prizes when they started to crawl through his fingers every time he added another one to the collection. Some were still crawling around, but many were sluggishly laying on their sides, limp antennae glued to his sweaty palm.
I was hoping their dumb game would be over then, until the boy noticed that one of the lightning bugs in his hand was continually glowing. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that its abdomen had ruptured, letting air in-- which Dad had once explained to me was how they glowed in the first place.
Greg took hold of the partially smashed lightning bug and shook the other bugs off his hand. In horror, I watched as he rubbed the bug across his arm, leaving a brightly glowing line.
"Cool! It's like glow-in-the-dark paint!"
My lightning bugs, little sacred faeries of summertime, were being desecrated. They were supposed to be like dragonflies-- beautiful and untouchable. They were meant to float around in the evening air. Killing them should have been some sort of crime, especially intentionally.
To these boys, they were free toys.
His brother, ever eager to show him up, raced to catch the nearest lightning bug, and then proceded to smash the poor thing in dots across the leg of his swim shorts.
"Warpaint!"
Greg laughed and sacrificed yet another lightning bug, putting a matching stripe across his other arm.
Hannah was not impressed.
"That's not nice!" she protested, and then immediately paused. "...Julia! No!"
Following her gaze, I grimaced. Julia had a lightning bug, probably one of the ones that stayed on the ground when they blinked, and was smashing it across the stomach of her bathing suit with a proud grin. Her smile faded when she was yelled at though, looking up in hurt confusion.
The boys were laughing.
I was the closest, so I jogged over to her, making her wipe her hand off in the grass.
"Julia, that's not nice. Don't do that, okay?"
She nodded, though I knew she didn't understand.
I stayed with Julia after that-since I seemed to have been babysitting her most of the day-while Hannah tried to deal with the boys. Over by one of the largest trees, she watched in mild distress as they tried to write what was probably meant to be their names on the bark of the tree.
When was dinner going to be ready? I wondered momentarily if they would even understand if Dad tried to tell them why they shouldn't kill lightning bugs. In the dimming evening light, the lightning bugs looked like scattered stray christmas lights, blinking by the dozens all across the yard. The hearty smell of the grill was traveling all the way to this end of the yard, and I could see the smoke wrap around the corner of the house in an inviting gray blanket.
After a few minutes, Hannah turned her body to stand with her back against the tree, probably trying to keep Greg from killing any more bugs against its bumpy skin. I watched them closely then, so closely that it felt like the hair was raising on the back of my neck and my stomach was tightening into a ball. No one normally stood that close to my sister. Then he, that devilish older boy, reached out with another lightning bug and tried to write on her face with it.
"Here, you should have some warpaint too."
"Stop!"
For an instant, I felt as though I went blind. Something washed up over my brain, and I was over there in moments, my feet stomping hard across the ground. There was something under my skin, something growling and coiling, and it threw my hands forward to shove his arm away from Hannah, hard. The much bigger boy pushed me back immediately, but I dug my heels into the ground as soon as I caught myself.
And I just stood there, meeting his eyes. Everything had changed and happened so fast. Inside I felt frantic and afraid, both of this larger boy and of myself, who I felt I did not know very well right then. But, there was nothing I could do. I was already there, staring him down like a guard dog, and he met my eyes with a hesitant anger.
I had no idea what to do next. I didn't have an idea of what I was doing in the first place. It just happened.
"...Hey, kids! It's time for dinner! Say goodbye to your friends."
We didn't say goodbye to them. Hannah just stood there looking spooked, and I forced myself to glance away and back toward Mom up by the porch. Greg just sort of stepped back after a moment and motioned for his brother to follow, and they turned to head back toward the mouth of the path.
"See ya."
That night, once we were home again, happily exhausted and wrapped in pajamas, sad that the day was over but also glad we were safe in our rooms, Mom caught Hannah playing with a little piece of paper.
“What’s that, mi amor?”
“Greg’s number.”
I had no idea when he had given her his number. Sometime while we were hanging around in Uncle Mark’s yard, maybe. The most inexplicable thing about the whole day however, was that, a week later, she actually called him.
"You guys want to play anything?" Greg asked.
"Like what?"
While Greg thought, his brother ambled over to where Paula was sitting, and pointed at the neat pile of rocks on the grass beside her.
"What are those?"
"Rocks I found."
He picked up a nice smooth black one, and ran his finger along the edge of its one flat side.
"This is a great skipping rock."
Paula's eyes widened a bit. "I found them for my Mom."
He obviously didn't understand the significance of this, because before she even finished her sentence, he turned and whipped out over the water. He didn't even skip it very well. One sluggish hop, and then it sank with a sick plunking sound. Greg obviously noticed his brother's ineptitude, because he went over and picked up the next rock on the pile.
"You suck at this."
His flat reddish rock sailed much better than his brother’s, skipping twice and almost a third time before sinking. Paula began to pick up her favorite rocks and hold them in her lap, as Greg's brother fought to regain his dignity by trying again. He chucked that next rock a little better than the first time, and Greg turned to glance back at Hannah.
"You know how to skip rocks?"
"Yeah," she said defensively.
She went to stand with them at their rock-throwing outpost, but didn't reach down to steal one of her sister's rocks. Not yet anyway. Greg skipped another one with three good hops, and his brother almost did the same. Then it was Hannah's turn. As she went to reach down to pick up a stone off of the quickly dwindling pile, Paula looked up and pointed down toward the water's edge.
"There was a whole bunch of good flat rocks down there. I just picked up the lumpy ones."
Hannah obliged, Paula stole back a few more of her rocks, and Greg followed Hannah toward the water. Greg's brother wanted another fruit snack, so he went after Hannah as well. I sat with Julia, spreading out the remaining towel like a picnic blanket, and huddled under my buttery towel with my snacks. After a few minutes, Paula scooted over with her refugee rocks, and we all watched Hannah and the boys skip rocks for a while.
Skipping rocks turned into chucking rocks, which turned into finding branches and pieces of bark to throw into the water. I wanted to go back to Uncle Mark's house and warm up in the sun.
Eventually Hannah grew tired enough of the boys again to hike back up to us, and start gathering our things. Greg yanked a handful of leaves off of the nearest tree and sprinkled them in the water, until he noticed that my sister wasn’t standing by him anymore.
"...You leaving?"
"Yeah, I think so."
"Where you going?"
"Back up to our uncle's house. Mom's probably wondering where we are."
"Are you going to be around later? There aren’t any kids at the campground."
"Uh. I dunno. We're going to be around for a while, I guess, before we gotta go home."
"Would your uncle mind if we came with?"
We all kind of looked at each other, but had nothing to protest with. I almost told him that there were always kids at the campground, but I had a feeling that he meant girls especially. Hannah fumbled for a moment, but finally relented.
"I guess not. He's got a big yard."
And so the brothers invited themselves along. We scooped up all our stuff, and set off up the path. We each wore our towels like ceremonial capes, except for Paula who took her mostly unused cape and wrapped her rocks with it instead, like a bag of treasure. The sun was lower low, the air a little cooler. It reminded me of dinner time, even though I was pretty sure that it was still too early for that. The hike seemed far longer, as well, as we towed the weight of unfamiliar company along with us. Hannah turned and glanced to Greg as a thought came to her.
"Won't your parents wonder where you are?"
"Nah. They just said for us to be home by dark."
"You sure you shouldn't go ask them if it's alright?"
"I know they won't care."
It was a nice try, anyway. Soon enough the trees lightened until the grassy yard took them over and the house came into view. I have always wanted to live in a house like Uncle Mark's. There was room to run in the yard, but the big old trees scattered around still covered most of it in shade. Every once in a while, my parents would talk about possibly moving, and I always voted for a house like that. They promised that they would try to find one like that eventually, if they ever moved, but it had never really come close to happening. I still held onto the hope though. There would be some day that I would have a yard covered in trees, right near a creek.
My parents were hanging out by the picnic table near the house, and we waved when they caught sight of us. Julia took off running to Mom, but Paula was stuck with us, because her rocks were too heavy to run with. Mom waved back as we got close.
"You guys brought friends back?"
"Yeah, can they stay for a while and play?"
Dad took over then. "Did they ask their parents if it was okay?"
Hannah parroted Greg's response to this. "He said his parents wouldn't mind, as long as they were back before dark. They're over at the campground."
"I guess it's alright, but we're going to be eating dinner soon."
"Okay."
With the paperwork done, and playing could now begin. Tag, the staple of all vacation days, was the first to break out. Even Paula wanted to play, now that we were on home ground. Unfortunately, so did Julia, fighting to get away from Mom so she could come play with the big kids. Nobody was going to tag her though, that was for sure. You never tag little kids like that, because they can never catch anybody, and then they cry, and sometimes even tattle, and completely ruin the game. The worst thing was to have your parents make you play a ‘quiet game’ or ‘one that Julia can play too.’ So, Julia ran feebly around while we played, but we worked to make her seem as though she was accomplishing something.
Greg was the fastest of course, but every once in a while, me or Hannah were able to catch him, pushing ourselves and stretching our legs to compete with the older kid. He obviously played some sort of sport, by the way he dodged and twisted and ran circles around us most of the time. That was one of the worst things about trying to play with older kids. They were faster and stronger and generally not as nice as kids your own age.
The idea of hide and seek was brought up, but there were too few trees and too much space. And it was still too light out. So, we hung around and tried to think of a new game, ignoring the fact that Julia still wanted to play tag. Then, suddenly reaching down, Greg's brother found a good arm-length stick, which we then used to take turns trying to hit pinecones like baseballs for a while, until someone tried the same thing with small rocks, and one almost hit Julia. Thankfully none of the adults had seen it. My dad and uncle had gone around the side of the house to grill, while my mom stayed on the front porch to keep an eye on us. Luckily, her eye was mostly on the book she was reading. By then, the sun was setting and lightning bugs were beginning to blink around the yard. Dad had showed us long ago how to catch lightning bugs without hurting them, after we found that keeping them in your hand or in a jar for too long killed them. Other kids never seemed to know how to do this however, or even have a thought to.
Julia sometimes still killed them, but that was just because she was still so little. She didn't know any better, and luckily she was still too slow and clumsy to easily catch them.
She went running squealing around the yard, hands eagerly out in front of her, and was baffled every time their greenish yellow light faded out. They became invisible to her then, forcing her to change targets.
The other boys, however, still seemed intent on showing off their great and many skills to my sister. First they ran around and caught as many lightning bugs as they could in one hand. Greg won this game of course, finally opening his hand and showing off his prizes when they started to crawl through his fingers every time he added another one to the collection. Some were still crawling around, but many were sluggishly laying on their sides, limp antennae glued to his sweaty palm.
I was hoping their dumb game would be over then, until the boy noticed that one of the lightning bugs in his hand was continually glowing. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that its abdomen had ruptured, letting air in-- which Dad had once explained to me was how they glowed in the first place.
Greg took hold of the partially smashed lightning bug and shook the other bugs off his hand. In horror, I watched as he rubbed the bug across his arm, leaving a brightly glowing line.
"Cool! It's like glow-in-the-dark paint!"
My lightning bugs, little sacred faeries of summertime, were being desecrated. They were supposed to be like dragonflies-- beautiful and untouchable. They were meant to float around in the evening air. Killing them should have been some sort of crime, especially intentionally.
To these boys, they were free toys.
His brother, ever eager to show him up, raced to catch the nearest lightning bug, and then proceded to smash the poor thing in dots across the leg of his swim shorts.
"Warpaint!"
Greg laughed and sacrificed yet another lightning bug, putting a matching stripe across his other arm.
Hannah was not impressed.
"That's not nice!" she protested, and then immediately paused. "...Julia! No!"
Following her gaze, I grimaced. Julia had a lightning bug, probably one of the ones that stayed on the ground when they blinked, and was smashing it across the stomach of her bathing suit with a proud grin. Her smile faded when she was yelled at though, looking up in hurt confusion.
The boys were laughing.
I was the closest, so I jogged over to her, making her wipe her hand off in the grass.
"Julia, that's not nice. Don't do that, okay?"
She nodded, though I knew she didn't understand.
I stayed with Julia after that-since I seemed to have been babysitting her most of the day-while Hannah tried to deal with the boys. Over by one of the largest trees, she watched in mild distress as they tried to write what was probably meant to be their names on the bark of the tree.
When was dinner going to be ready? I wondered momentarily if they would even understand if Dad tried to tell them why they shouldn't kill lightning bugs. In the dimming evening light, the lightning bugs looked like scattered stray christmas lights, blinking by the dozens all across the yard. The hearty smell of the grill was traveling all the way to this end of the yard, and I could see the smoke wrap around the corner of the house in an inviting gray blanket.
After a few minutes, Hannah turned her body to stand with her back against the tree, probably trying to keep Greg from killing any more bugs against its bumpy skin. I watched them closely then, so closely that it felt like the hair was raising on the back of my neck and my stomach was tightening into a ball. No one normally stood that close to my sister. Then he, that devilish older boy, reached out with another lightning bug and tried to write on her face with it.
"Here, you should have some warpaint too."
"Stop!"
For an instant, I felt as though I went blind. Something washed up over my brain, and I was over there in moments, my feet stomping hard across the ground. There was something under my skin, something growling and coiling, and it threw my hands forward to shove his arm away from Hannah, hard. The much bigger boy pushed me back immediately, but I dug my heels into the ground as soon as I caught myself.
And I just stood there, meeting his eyes. Everything had changed and happened so fast. Inside I felt frantic and afraid, both of this larger boy and of myself, who I felt I did not know very well right then. But, there was nothing I could do. I was already there, staring him down like a guard dog, and he met my eyes with a hesitant anger.
I had no idea what to do next. I didn't have an idea of what I was doing in the first place. It just happened.
"...Hey, kids! It's time for dinner! Say goodbye to your friends."
We didn't say goodbye to them. Hannah just stood there looking spooked, and I forced myself to glance away and back toward Mom up by the porch. Greg just sort of stepped back after a moment and motioned for his brother to follow, and they turned to head back toward the mouth of the path.
"See ya."
That night, once we were home again, happily exhausted and wrapped in pajamas, sad that the day was over but also glad we were safe in our rooms, Mom caught Hannah playing with a little piece of paper.
“What’s that, mi amor?”
“Greg’s number.”
I had no idea when he had given her his number. Sometime while we were hanging around in Uncle Mark’s yard, maybe. The most inexplicable thing about the whole day however, was that, a week later, she actually called him.