The Beginning of Summer - Greg Welch (best books to read all time TXT) 📗

When I was twelve years old I was tall skinny, and covered in freckles. My uncle used to tease me by telling me that I had swallowed a bunch of pennies when I was a baby and that was why I had so many tiny brown blemishes on my pale skin. I never believed it, but it didn’t make it any easier to accept the fact that they were there. Every morning they were still there.
That summer my father had begun to dig up our backyard to make room for our new in ground pool. This had been a dream of mine and my older sister’s for as long as we could remember. Nothing makes a kids life more complete than owning a pool of their very own. In my mind I could picture all of the popular girls asking to come over and swim. I could also see limitless possibilities involving parties and all sorts of other social improvements thanks to that cement hole and the chlorine scented water inside of it.
The digging and installiaton of the pool only took about two weeks, but at the time it seemed like it had taken a year before that water began to flow and all of those tractors and workers had left our yard for good. My father had overseen the construction of the pool and because of his finicky nature it had taken longer than originally thought.
“You may be satisfied with just wanting it done, but I want it done right,” he told me when I began complaining. I never said anything else about it.
The day that it was ready my sister had christened it herself before I had gotten home from school. She was a senior in high school and got out about two hours before me. She was lying by the pool in a fold out lounge chair tanning when I walked in through the gate in my swim trunks. I can still remember how the sun glared off of the water causing me to squint.
“How’s the water?” I asked.
“Its cool, but you’ll get used to it after a while. Just dive in. That’s the best way to do it,” she said.
I walked over to the deep end and dove in head first. The water felt like cold rays of light shooting through my body. I refused to come up right away. Instead I swam underneath the water until I felt my body temperature begin to adjust to the frigid water. I finally came up right in front of where my sister was tanning.
“Its freezing, you liar,” I said.
“Don’t be such a puss, Curt,” she said. Her head was tilted back and she wore a smirk from tricking me. I swam away kicking my feet behind me and splashing water on her feet and legs.
“Cut it out, or I’ll go get Dad,” she said.
“I didn’t do anything,” I said. I now wore the same smirk that she had worn moments ago. I swan around the pool for about ten minutes and then I began to grow tired. I got out and sat on the chair beside my sister and let the sun dry me before I went back in.
“Has Les seen the pool yet?” I asked. Les was my sister’s boyfriend. He was a big funny guy who always loved to wrestle with me when he was over. I liked him and hoped in my young mind that he and my sister would get married one day soon. What a good brother in law he would make, the brother that my parents never gave me.
“No, he’s probably gonna come by tomorrow. I invited him and Dana to come over and swim.”
“Dana? Why is that loser coming over?”
“That loser is my best friend, and you had better be nice to her.”
“Whatever,” I said. Dana wasn’t bad, but she was always making jokes that I didn’t understand and laughing about them to herself as if only she understood what they meant.
“Well, I invited Nick to come over too,” I said.
“Ohh, that’s just great. That’s all I need is you and your nerdy friends hanging around us all day.”
“Oh please. Don’t flatter yourself. We really don’t need to hang around you and your loser friend to have a good time. I’m surprised that Les hangs around you. I think he’ll find someone better one day.”
“Whatever, Curt. Why don’t you get back in the pool and see how long you can stay at the bottom.”
Conversations like this were very common between me and my sister. We loved each other very much and if anyone else had said some of the stuff to one of us that we said to each other, then there would have been trouble for that person, but this was just how we communicated. We had gotten into a routine of insulting when we were young and had been stuck in it ever since. I think it came from my Dad. He always loved to tease and couldn’t stand it when someone just stood there and took it. He loved the light hearted ribbing that went on between me and my sister even though he always complained about our arguing.
I jumped back into the pool and swam around until the sun began to dip behind the tree line nearby. The sky had turned that florescent pink color that only makes appearances in a summer sky. My sister had returned to the house at some point while I was under the water. The more I swam the hungrier I became and I craved hotdogs for some reason. Either hotdogs or Sloppy Joes. I still crave those to this day when I go swimming. I don’t remember what we had that night for diner, but it wasn’t either of those things.
The next morning Nick came over bright and early with a towel draped around his neck and a back pack slung over his shoulder containing a change of clothes. He wasn’t as tall as me, but he was one of the few kids our age that was already beginning to have muscular arms. He lifted weights with his older brother a lot and his body was beginning to show it. He had dark blonde hair that grew lighter each summer. Nick was on the verge of becoming very popular in our junior high. The next year we started the eighth grade and everything changed for him socially.
“Hey man, where’s this big new pool?” he said. I pointed out of the window at the back of the house when we passed it on our way to the kitchen. I had just woken up and wasn’t in the mood for a lot of talk just yet. I needed some cereal before I did anything.
“Man, that’s a big one,” Nick said.
“Regulation size,” I said. I poured myself a bowl of Rice Crispies and listened to the popping that it advertised as I poured the milk into it.
“Are we gonna head out there after you eat?” Nick asked.
“Yeah. Mia said that Dana and Les were coming over too.”
“Oh yeah? That’s gonna be nice.”
“What’s so nice about it?”
“Man, don’t take this the wrong way, but your sister is hot. It will be nice to see her in a bikini. And Dana too. Man, have you ever noticed how big her rack is? I can’t wait to see that.”
Most kids my age would get offended when someone would talk about their sister the way that Nick was talking about Mia, but I was used to it. She and her small circle of friends were the talk of all of the boys my age. We had just began to notice girls, and now that they had seemingly appeared out of nowhere in all of our everyday lives we all had become very critical and complimentary of what a ‘hot girl’ should look like. However, I had known Dana all of my life and I didn’t look at her like that, and I definitely couldn’t see what all the fuss was over Mia. To me she was the pesky girl who hogged the telephone and the bathroom and left dripping wet towels on the floor.
When I was done with my cereal I headed to my room to change into my trunks, Nick had sat down in the den with my parents as my Dad grilled him about what sports he planned to play when we reached high school and my mom asked him how he thought he had done on the final exams so far. The next week would be our last week of school and then it was a pool filed summer followed by the eighth grade. My parents seemed to love Nick. I always thought that he was just what they wanted from me. He was always a lot more athletic and did a little better in school, but when we hit high school his grades would start to dip and we would drift apart more and more. By our senior year we were just a part of the faceless mass in the halls to one another.
Nick and I headed to the pool with excitement. I could tell that he was looking forward to this. His voice went up to a really high pitch when he looked forward to something. Nick was always very easy to read. I often wonder what happened to him. Last I heard he had gotten married and moved to Charlotte to work for his father-in-law’s car lot.
“Man, your yard looks totally different now,” Nick said.
“Yeah, I’m still not used to it yet.”
We swam for hours, but at the time it didn’t seem like more than just a few minutes. The water had been cold when we had gotten in but as the sun beat down on us we could feel the water begin to warm. I watched as Nick seemed to turn a darker shade of brown and his hair a lighter shade of gold. I was protected by the gallon of sun screen that my mother had made me apply before I left the back door.
Nick challenged me to a race around the pool. Before I accepted I knew what the outcome would be. The race would consist of three laps around the entire pool. I dug and did my best and came very close to the win, but of course Nick won. I wasn’t upset about it. I knew that there were just some things that others were better at than me and Nick was better at just about everything than I was. It was something that made me admire him while at the same time holding a silent grudge that I wasn’t even totally aware of. A part of me waited for him to screw up and when he began to in high school years later, I must say that that part of me relished it.
After working up an appetite we went inside where my mother had made us grilled cheese sandwiches and fries for lunch. We ate as if we had just crossed some great desert. While we sat at the table my sister walked in. She had our portable phone in her ear. She was wearing her bathing suit top and had a towel wrapped around her waist. Her hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail.
“Hey, Mia,” Nick said. He was throwing obvious glances at her chest, but I don’t think Mia paid him enough