Old Palmetto Drive, page 7
“You know, Rian, this has been the worst few weeks of my life. I still can’t believe my Mama is gone… But, with you and Aunt Tori here, it feels like maybe we can have a home again.”
I swallow hard. I hate knowing how sad Sam has been. I mean– who can blame him. “Tell me about what she was like, your Mom.” And he starts talking about her, the way she laughed, her constant list of projects around the house, the way she made pancakes on Saturday morning. It’s nice to hear him talk about his mom. I close my eyes and paint a picture of what their life was like in my head. And Sam’s words are the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.
I dream about the panther and her kitten.
They are chasing me. No, they are running next to me.
“Rian, you need to escape, you need to run away from the swamp, it’s dangerous,” Mother panther pleads.
I run harder and faster but I'm lost. I scramble and look around, searching for something to guide me until I see the bronze Alice and Wonderland statue in Central Park on the East Side, a place I’ve been a thousand times. A place that I’ve sketched and used as inspiration for a hundred different drawings.
“Where are you?” I shout to mother panther.
But she’s gone.
And I’m alone and it’s cold.
God, why are dreams so annoying?
Eventually the sun starts peeking up over the far edge of the swamp and makes its way through the trees. The gentle warmth on my face wakes me. I’m disoriented. I expect to see the underside of the bronze mushroom. But, when I pull myself up, I’m not in Central Park, I’m in a hunting blind. Sam is sitting peacefully across from me, I’m not sure he ever slept. We climb down the ladder and head back to the house walking in silence. I feel like I was part of something special last night and if I say anything it will disappear. Sam must feel the same way, because he doesn’t say a word either.
As soon as we cross the threshold of the house, he follows his nose to the kitchen, and I lug my tired body up the stairs to my room and crawl into my bed and fall asleep for half the day. I wake up feeling hungry and something else…
A strange feeling, something I wasn’t expecting.
It’s like a cross between excitement and appreciation. Like when you see all of the presents under the tree on Christmas morning. There’s anticipation and happiness and magic wrapped up. Before I can dissect these new feelings any further, I smell something delicious wafting up from the kitchen. “Mmmm. Is that cinnamon?”
12
A Million Acres?
Every morning for the next week, I wake up bright eyed and throw off my crisp white sheets, excited for what the day might bring. As soon as my feet slide out of bed and hit the ground, I’m in a race to get dressed, brush my teeth and head outside to find Sam or Travis. Because hanging out with Mom while she works on her computer and talks on the phone about business license agreements and blah, blah, blah does not sound appealing to me. It sounds like torture.
So that means I’ve had a whole week of exploring Cullier Manor House and the property with my two cousins, who I’ve decided aren’t so bad after all. They did save me from falling into the swamp our first time fishing. Not to mention the crazy night with Sam watching animals and hanging out in the tree blind.
They’ve shown me all eighteen buildings on the property, including two garages, Travis’s workshop and an old 1790s barn. My head’s been spinning with how big it is. I’m not sure I’ll ever learn everything there is to know about this place… There are even secret passageways in the kitchen!
After grabbing a banana nut muffin from the kitchen and stepping outside, I lean up against the stone arch, trying to catch my breath. From getting ready so fast, and from the freaking heat. Now that’s something I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. I eat my muffin, savoring every warm homemade bite, looking out at the big fountain in the middle of the driveway, watching as a flock of tiny birds swoop in and splash in the water. I’m about to walk over and see if I can get a better look at the little birds when I hear the ATV come flying around the corner of the yard. Sam and Travis are already covered in mud.
“Out early?” I ask and laugh.
“Did you know the Everglades is over a million acres,” Travis says when I get into the ATV next to him after Sam hops in the back. I’m not into maps or anything, but I’m pretty sure a million acres is a lot bigger than Manhattan. “Yup. Everything west of Old Palmetto Drive is owned by our family.”
“And apparently it’s mostly mud and swamp.” I reach a finger over and wipe a big chunk of gooey dark mud off his cheek and flick it.
“No, not all of it. There’s a lot of farmland and trees too. It’s practically a forest around here,” he says and points to a cluster of palm trees in the distance. I laugh.
I remember the closest thing to a forest I’d ever been to in New York. “You know me and Ava tried walking around Central Park once. It’s six miles all the way around. We only made it halfway before she called her driver to come get us.”
Sam stifles a laugh and I turn around and smack his arm.
“You could walk all day and not reach the edge of our land,” Travis says proudly. I hang on to the roll bar as he steps on the gas and we go skittering down the gravel driveway. We fly by the cluster of palm trees that seemed so far away only moments ago.
I look out over the land, and try to imagine walking for an entire day. I shake my head, he can’t be serious. Can he? “So what are we doing today?” I lean over an yell over the growling engine.
“Huh?” Travis looks at me and puts his hand up to his ear.
“I said, WHAT ARE WE DOING TODAY?”
He slows down to a stop, near a twisted tree with low hanging branches, and turns off the ATV. “You don’t have to shout.”
I elbow him. He’s such a smart ass! “Seriously, what are we going to explore today?”
Sam jumps out of the back, he’s wearing long cargo pants, which makes me suspicious and he points into the trees. “You get to choose. If we go left, we can find the Native American ruins. If we go right, there’s the wreck from Black Beard’s pirate ship.”
“Pirates?” I get out and put my hands on my hips, before swatting away the mosquitos. Oh shit, I forgot to put on bug spray. I’m going to hate myself tonight when I’m covered in red welts.
“You know what pirates are famous for, right?” Sam smirks.
“Killing? Looting? Raping women?” I’m not amused.
“No! Treasure. There’s a secret buried treasure, somewhere out there. Our family has been searching for it for years.” Sam sounds like he really means it.
Before I can respond, Travis begs, “Oh come on Rian, it’ll be fun, once we hack down the saw palmetto bushes with a machete, and climb through the vines, it’s only a three or four mile hike.”
“Excuse me? Machetes? Climbing? Hiking? I’m wearing $700 sandals and shorts.” I roll my eyes and climb back into the ATV. “I think I’ll stick to a peaceful drive today.” I shake my head. First of all, I’m not a teenage detective on the hunt for buried treasure. And second, I’m not interested in ruining any more of my designer clothes.
“But aren’t you bored with exploring and driving around the property yet?” Travis asks.
“There’s so much to see, how could I be bored?” I think about my day yesterday. Sam and I drove on the ATV for three hours, stopping so I could sketch pictures of strange twisted trees while he demonstrated all the bird calls he could do with his hands. It was impressive.
“But there’s so much more out there you haven’t seen yet.” Travis points into the wide unknown, then he lifts his cowboy hat and slicks back his hair.
Bzzzz…
“Agh!” I smack my neck. I’m being eaten alive. “Can we go now? I don’t want to go looking for some stupid treasure.” It’s easy to slip back into my regular old self. “I just want to go back to the house and draw, is that okay?” The words come out of my mouth a lot harsher than I mean them to, but it does the job, Travis and Sam get into the ATV and we drive back to the big house without another word.
I slam the front door, thankful to be in the air-conditioned house.
“Rian? Honey is that you? Do you want to come have some tea with me?” Mom yells from the other room.
“NO!” I shout and stomp up the stairs to my room.
My weeklong high from seeing the Panther and her kitten was bound to come to an end. And apparently today was the day.
“Pirates? Treasure. What a load of shit.” I kick off my shoes and throw myself onto the bed and pull my white sheets over my head. Maybe tomorrow I’ll sleep in. I mean, what have I been thinking, waking up early? Going on adventures with my cousins? Like I’m going to stay here, like this is my home. It’s not. And I can’t forget that I’m a New Yorker. We don’t go on swamp adventures.
13
Backwoods Barbie
“RIAN! That’s a double dribble.”
“Shove it.” I keep bouncing the ball. We are in the old hayloft of the barn. Which I learned is where the hay used to be stored on the second floor, back when they kept farm animals here. They don’t have farm animals anymore–which I’m glad about. Do you know how smelly goats and cows are? Gross.
Sam and I are shooting baskets in a hoop that Gramps put up for Mom and Aunt Kris when they were kids. The wooden plank floors are uneven, which makes bouncing the ball harder than it should be. But I don’t care, it’s still fun.
“Foul!” He shouts when I push past him.
“What? You’re just jealous of my sweet moves,” I reply, spinning and twisting with the ball. I don’t know what a double dribble is or a foul. I’m just happy I can bounce the ball at all. I’ve never been very good at sports. Sam runs forward and swipes the ball from me.
“No fair!” I shout and fold my arms over my chest. Then Travis surprises the hell out of both of us and rushes at Sam. He takes the ball easily from him, leaps up in the air and dunks.
“It’s the boots, they give me wings.” He laughs and kicks his cowboy boot heels together.
I let them fight over the ball and try to dunk on each other and I go climb onto the wooden swing that’s on the highest rafter. Another one of Gramps installations. I wonder how often my mom sat in this very spot and who she watched playing ball. I’d ask her. But, she’s off the property today. She left me a note this morning, she was heading to town to take a look at the manufacturing plant where they make the fishing lures. Of course she didn’t even ask if I wanted to go and see the place.
I pull out my phone and turn on some music. I start singing along and pumping my legs on the swing. Sam and Travis don’t say a word, which means, they don’t think my voice is bad– or they are being polite.
It’s freeing.
I would never ever, like never, sing in front of Ava or Maggie or Gina. We regularly laughed at people from our class who posted singing videos on TikTok and couldn’t wait for the epic fails on American Idol. God, why were we such bitches?
I watch Sam and Travis for a while longer. But, it’s getting hot in here and I need some fresh air. “I’m bored and hot,” I whine.
“Let’s go fishing,” Travis suggests. So we all climb down the ladder.
“I need a few minutes to change,” I tell the boys and head for the Big House. Today feels like a day for my red and white striped Valentino swimsuit. I love its vintage feel.
One thing I’ve discovered is that lazing in the sun is a totally acceptable way to spend the day at Cullier Manor House. If I told Sam and Travis I wanted to spend every day on the boat and they could fish, the answer would be a resounding yes. Mrs. Day would look like a peacock and tell me how proud of me she is, watching me spend time with my cousins and embracing the southern ways. After changing and getting a towel from my room I rush back downstairs. Now, where did I put my tanning oil and my little spray water fan? “Mrs. Day?” I push open the door to the kitchen, expecting to see her purple hair and lipstick teeth telling Mrs. Paula her meal plan for the week is terrible. (They seem to fight over the menu all the time). Instead it’s someone I haven’t seen since my first day here.
“She’s gone.” Justine looks up from her spot at the kitchen table. She’s flipping through a magazine. She puts it down and takes a drink of her sweet tea. I recognize the cover. Last month's Vogue. Interesting.
“Hey Justine. I was looking for my tanning oil and fan. They aren’t in my room. I thought maybe Mrs. Day put them somewhere.” I glance around the table and counters. I don’t see them anywhere.
Justine looks me up and down.
“You look good.” Then she goes back to the magazine. “Use sunscreen. Keep that skin of yours from burning. I use SPF 50 everyday.”
I open my mouth to say something, like mind your own business, I’ll use tanning oil if I want too. But, then, wait, what was the first thing she said? I look good! I close my mouth. What does she mean by I look good? Like she thinks I look good, or she likes this swimsuit, or…
“RIAN, COME ON!” It’s Travis out in the front hall.
“RELAX!” I scream back.
“You better go, the boys hate to be kept waiting.” Justine has a smile on her face but she doesn’t look up from the Vogue.
“Yeah, and I thought I was the spoiled one,” I say. Justine laughs and the sound hits me in just the right spot and makes me long for more.
“Do you want to come out on the boat with us?” I ask her. This time she looks up. Her eyes glitter.
“I’ve got plans,” she says. “But maybe another time.”
“Well, you know where to find me.” I let out a small nervous laugh before leaving the kitchen. I don’t know what it is about Justine, she kind of infuriates me, but I also kind of want to get to know her better.
“I thought you said it would only take a few minutes?” Sam and Travis are waiting for me right outside the front porch with the ATV. I smile and jump in the back seat and buckle up. Justine strolls out and I watch her walk across the property. She looks over at me and I raise my hand to wave but Travis jerks the wheel and we go spinning around a stump so I have to hang on instead.
We spend the afternoon bobbing around in the water on the boat, soaking up sun and fishing. We talk and listen to music. I discover Sam’s favorite subject, New York. And for some reason, it doesn’t hurt as bad talking about home, when I’m telling Sam while we are on the boat. He asks about everything. The architecture, the music, the art scene, the food.
“So you’re tellin me, that they charge $25 for a piece of toast with an avocado on it?” Travis interjects when I’m telling Sam about my favorite restaurants and food.
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty stupid when you say it like that.” I laugh. Then I tell them about the real NY cheesecake, acai bowls, sushi and oysters rockefeller. I tell them there is a bagel shop and hot dog stand on every corner. Not to mention all the pizza places.
“What about all the TV things?” Sam asks.
“What TV things?” I ask.
“You know, like that big Christmas tree or the ball dropping on New Years. You ever seen them?”
“Ohhh! Yeah, I’ve been to both.” So I tell them about going to Time Square with Ava and Gina for New Years last year and drinking champagne and kissing some strange girl in the crowd when the ball dropped at midnight. Then I tell them about going ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza during Christmas break with Arthur Guinney and how he fell and broke his ankle and we had to sit under the Christmas tree and wait for the medics to come take him. All the tourists were yelling at us to get out of their stupid pictures. So me and Arthur started flipping them off, it kept him from crying in front of me and then I kissed him before he went to get a cast.
“Rian, can I ask you something?” Travis asks. He attaches a shiny green lure on his pole.
“Sure thing.” I sit up from my slumped position in the seat, the boat isn’t big enough to lay flat for suntanning, but I’m stretched as far out as I can.
“Do you date guys or girls? Not that it’s my business, and I don’t care. But, my friend Chase wanted to come hang, and–” Travis stumbles over his words. Then he drops the lure. “Shit.” I slide my sunglasses up so I can get a better look at him. His cheeks are flushed and he lets out a long breath.
My sexuality was bound to come up sooner or later.
“And what?” I ask, when he doesn’t finish what he was trying to say.
“And nothing. That was it. I texted a picture of you to Chase and he thought you were hot. But, you just talked about kissing a girl at New Years and then kissing some dude who broke his ankle.” He won’t look at me, instead he hyper focuses on getting the lure on the line. I smirk. I’m sure he never normally has this much trouble.
I laugh. “Yeah, I am pretty hot. I mean, I don’t blame your friend Chase for wanting to meet me.” I fake fan myself.
Travis’s head snaps in my direction. “Better cool off there, cous. We wouldn’t want you getting a big head.” He leans over the edge of the boat and splashes water at me. I scream and reach over my side of the boat and splash him back.
“Seriously though, I’m not really into labels. I just like who I like. I guess the easiest way to explain it is that gender doesn’t matter to me.” I don’t know if Travis will get it or not, but I am not going to hide who I am. I reach for my tanning oil, which I spot wedged between the seat and the metal cup holder. “Ah there you are,” I say to ease the silence that has taken over. I put some on my legs but, after Justine’s comment, I sort of wish I had sunscreen. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Day if she can order me some.
“That’s cool.” Travis shrugs after a few minutes.
“Yeah, I can see that about you. You like what you like. Simple enough,” Sam adds.
Phew! Thank god they aren’t going to make it weird. Because I will not stay in Florida if I find out my cousins are phobic intolerant pricks. I’d walk back to New York on foot if I had to.
“So, you haven’t told me. Who are you two dating? Seriously, are you ever going to bring your swamp girlfriends around to meet me?” I laugh.
I swallow hard. I hate knowing how sad Sam has been. I mean– who can blame him. “Tell me about what she was like, your Mom.” And he starts talking about her, the way she laughed, her constant list of projects around the house, the way she made pancakes on Saturday morning. It’s nice to hear him talk about his mom. I close my eyes and paint a picture of what their life was like in my head. And Sam’s words are the last thing I hear before I fall asleep.
I dream about the panther and her kitten.
They are chasing me. No, they are running next to me.
“Rian, you need to escape, you need to run away from the swamp, it’s dangerous,” Mother panther pleads.
I run harder and faster but I'm lost. I scramble and look around, searching for something to guide me until I see the bronze Alice and Wonderland statue in Central Park on the East Side, a place I’ve been a thousand times. A place that I’ve sketched and used as inspiration for a hundred different drawings.
“Where are you?” I shout to mother panther.
But she’s gone.
And I’m alone and it’s cold.
God, why are dreams so annoying?
Eventually the sun starts peeking up over the far edge of the swamp and makes its way through the trees. The gentle warmth on my face wakes me. I’m disoriented. I expect to see the underside of the bronze mushroom. But, when I pull myself up, I’m not in Central Park, I’m in a hunting blind. Sam is sitting peacefully across from me, I’m not sure he ever slept. We climb down the ladder and head back to the house walking in silence. I feel like I was part of something special last night and if I say anything it will disappear. Sam must feel the same way, because he doesn’t say a word either.
As soon as we cross the threshold of the house, he follows his nose to the kitchen, and I lug my tired body up the stairs to my room and crawl into my bed and fall asleep for half the day. I wake up feeling hungry and something else…
A strange feeling, something I wasn’t expecting.
It’s like a cross between excitement and appreciation. Like when you see all of the presents under the tree on Christmas morning. There’s anticipation and happiness and magic wrapped up. Before I can dissect these new feelings any further, I smell something delicious wafting up from the kitchen. “Mmmm. Is that cinnamon?”
12
A Million Acres?
Every morning for the next week, I wake up bright eyed and throw off my crisp white sheets, excited for what the day might bring. As soon as my feet slide out of bed and hit the ground, I’m in a race to get dressed, brush my teeth and head outside to find Sam or Travis. Because hanging out with Mom while she works on her computer and talks on the phone about business license agreements and blah, blah, blah does not sound appealing to me. It sounds like torture.
So that means I’ve had a whole week of exploring Cullier Manor House and the property with my two cousins, who I’ve decided aren’t so bad after all. They did save me from falling into the swamp our first time fishing. Not to mention the crazy night with Sam watching animals and hanging out in the tree blind.
They’ve shown me all eighteen buildings on the property, including two garages, Travis’s workshop and an old 1790s barn. My head’s been spinning with how big it is. I’m not sure I’ll ever learn everything there is to know about this place… There are even secret passageways in the kitchen!
After grabbing a banana nut muffin from the kitchen and stepping outside, I lean up against the stone arch, trying to catch my breath. From getting ready so fast, and from the freaking heat. Now that’s something I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to. I eat my muffin, savoring every warm homemade bite, looking out at the big fountain in the middle of the driveway, watching as a flock of tiny birds swoop in and splash in the water. I’m about to walk over and see if I can get a better look at the little birds when I hear the ATV come flying around the corner of the yard. Sam and Travis are already covered in mud.
“Out early?” I ask and laugh.
“Did you know the Everglades is over a million acres,” Travis says when I get into the ATV next to him after Sam hops in the back. I’m not into maps or anything, but I’m pretty sure a million acres is a lot bigger than Manhattan. “Yup. Everything west of Old Palmetto Drive is owned by our family.”
“And apparently it’s mostly mud and swamp.” I reach a finger over and wipe a big chunk of gooey dark mud off his cheek and flick it.
“No, not all of it. There’s a lot of farmland and trees too. It’s practically a forest around here,” he says and points to a cluster of palm trees in the distance. I laugh.
I remember the closest thing to a forest I’d ever been to in New York. “You know me and Ava tried walking around Central Park once. It’s six miles all the way around. We only made it halfway before she called her driver to come get us.”
Sam stifles a laugh and I turn around and smack his arm.
“You could walk all day and not reach the edge of our land,” Travis says proudly. I hang on to the roll bar as he steps on the gas and we go skittering down the gravel driveway. We fly by the cluster of palm trees that seemed so far away only moments ago.
I look out over the land, and try to imagine walking for an entire day. I shake my head, he can’t be serious. Can he? “So what are we doing today?” I lean over an yell over the growling engine.
“Huh?” Travis looks at me and puts his hand up to his ear.
“I said, WHAT ARE WE DOING TODAY?”
He slows down to a stop, near a twisted tree with low hanging branches, and turns off the ATV. “You don’t have to shout.”
I elbow him. He’s such a smart ass! “Seriously, what are we going to explore today?”
Sam jumps out of the back, he’s wearing long cargo pants, which makes me suspicious and he points into the trees. “You get to choose. If we go left, we can find the Native American ruins. If we go right, there’s the wreck from Black Beard’s pirate ship.”
“Pirates?” I get out and put my hands on my hips, before swatting away the mosquitos. Oh shit, I forgot to put on bug spray. I’m going to hate myself tonight when I’m covered in red welts.
“You know what pirates are famous for, right?” Sam smirks.
“Killing? Looting? Raping women?” I’m not amused.
“No! Treasure. There’s a secret buried treasure, somewhere out there. Our family has been searching for it for years.” Sam sounds like he really means it.
Before I can respond, Travis begs, “Oh come on Rian, it’ll be fun, once we hack down the saw palmetto bushes with a machete, and climb through the vines, it’s only a three or four mile hike.”
“Excuse me? Machetes? Climbing? Hiking? I’m wearing $700 sandals and shorts.” I roll my eyes and climb back into the ATV. “I think I’ll stick to a peaceful drive today.” I shake my head. First of all, I’m not a teenage detective on the hunt for buried treasure. And second, I’m not interested in ruining any more of my designer clothes.
“But aren’t you bored with exploring and driving around the property yet?” Travis asks.
“There’s so much to see, how could I be bored?” I think about my day yesterday. Sam and I drove on the ATV for three hours, stopping so I could sketch pictures of strange twisted trees while he demonstrated all the bird calls he could do with his hands. It was impressive.
“But there’s so much more out there you haven’t seen yet.” Travis points into the wide unknown, then he lifts his cowboy hat and slicks back his hair.
Bzzzz…
“Agh!” I smack my neck. I’m being eaten alive. “Can we go now? I don’t want to go looking for some stupid treasure.” It’s easy to slip back into my regular old self. “I just want to go back to the house and draw, is that okay?” The words come out of my mouth a lot harsher than I mean them to, but it does the job, Travis and Sam get into the ATV and we drive back to the big house without another word.
I slam the front door, thankful to be in the air-conditioned house.
“Rian? Honey is that you? Do you want to come have some tea with me?” Mom yells from the other room.
“NO!” I shout and stomp up the stairs to my room.
My weeklong high from seeing the Panther and her kitten was bound to come to an end. And apparently today was the day.
“Pirates? Treasure. What a load of shit.” I kick off my shoes and throw myself onto the bed and pull my white sheets over my head. Maybe tomorrow I’ll sleep in. I mean, what have I been thinking, waking up early? Going on adventures with my cousins? Like I’m going to stay here, like this is my home. It’s not. And I can’t forget that I’m a New Yorker. We don’t go on swamp adventures.
13
Backwoods Barbie
“RIAN! That’s a double dribble.”
“Shove it.” I keep bouncing the ball. We are in the old hayloft of the barn. Which I learned is where the hay used to be stored on the second floor, back when they kept farm animals here. They don’t have farm animals anymore–which I’m glad about. Do you know how smelly goats and cows are? Gross.
Sam and I are shooting baskets in a hoop that Gramps put up for Mom and Aunt Kris when they were kids. The wooden plank floors are uneven, which makes bouncing the ball harder than it should be. But I don’t care, it’s still fun.
“Foul!” He shouts when I push past him.
“What? You’re just jealous of my sweet moves,” I reply, spinning and twisting with the ball. I don’t know what a double dribble is or a foul. I’m just happy I can bounce the ball at all. I’ve never been very good at sports. Sam runs forward and swipes the ball from me.
“No fair!” I shout and fold my arms over my chest. Then Travis surprises the hell out of both of us and rushes at Sam. He takes the ball easily from him, leaps up in the air and dunks.
“It’s the boots, they give me wings.” He laughs and kicks his cowboy boot heels together.
I let them fight over the ball and try to dunk on each other and I go climb onto the wooden swing that’s on the highest rafter. Another one of Gramps installations. I wonder how often my mom sat in this very spot and who she watched playing ball. I’d ask her. But, she’s off the property today. She left me a note this morning, she was heading to town to take a look at the manufacturing plant where they make the fishing lures. Of course she didn’t even ask if I wanted to go and see the place.
I pull out my phone and turn on some music. I start singing along and pumping my legs on the swing. Sam and Travis don’t say a word, which means, they don’t think my voice is bad– or they are being polite.
It’s freeing.
I would never ever, like never, sing in front of Ava or Maggie or Gina. We regularly laughed at people from our class who posted singing videos on TikTok and couldn’t wait for the epic fails on American Idol. God, why were we such bitches?
I watch Sam and Travis for a while longer. But, it’s getting hot in here and I need some fresh air. “I’m bored and hot,” I whine.
“Let’s go fishing,” Travis suggests. So we all climb down the ladder.
“I need a few minutes to change,” I tell the boys and head for the Big House. Today feels like a day for my red and white striped Valentino swimsuit. I love its vintage feel.
One thing I’ve discovered is that lazing in the sun is a totally acceptable way to spend the day at Cullier Manor House. If I told Sam and Travis I wanted to spend every day on the boat and they could fish, the answer would be a resounding yes. Mrs. Day would look like a peacock and tell me how proud of me she is, watching me spend time with my cousins and embracing the southern ways. After changing and getting a towel from my room I rush back downstairs. Now, where did I put my tanning oil and my little spray water fan? “Mrs. Day?” I push open the door to the kitchen, expecting to see her purple hair and lipstick teeth telling Mrs. Paula her meal plan for the week is terrible. (They seem to fight over the menu all the time). Instead it’s someone I haven’t seen since my first day here.
“She’s gone.” Justine looks up from her spot at the kitchen table. She’s flipping through a magazine. She puts it down and takes a drink of her sweet tea. I recognize the cover. Last month's Vogue. Interesting.
“Hey Justine. I was looking for my tanning oil and fan. They aren’t in my room. I thought maybe Mrs. Day put them somewhere.” I glance around the table and counters. I don’t see them anywhere.
Justine looks me up and down.
“You look good.” Then she goes back to the magazine. “Use sunscreen. Keep that skin of yours from burning. I use SPF 50 everyday.”
I open my mouth to say something, like mind your own business, I’ll use tanning oil if I want too. But, then, wait, what was the first thing she said? I look good! I close my mouth. What does she mean by I look good? Like she thinks I look good, or she likes this swimsuit, or…
“RIAN, COME ON!” It’s Travis out in the front hall.
“RELAX!” I scream back.
“You better go, the boys hate to be kept waiting.” Justine has a smile on her face but she doesn’t look up from the Vogue.
“Yeah, and I thought I was the spoiled one,” I say. Justine laughs and the sound hits me in just the right spot and makes me long for more.
“Do you want to come out on the boat with us?” I ask her. This time she looks up. Her eyes glitter.
“I’ve got plans,” she says. “But maybe another time.”
“Well, you know where to find me.” I let out a small nervous laugh before leaving the kitchen. I don’t know what it is about Justine, she kind of infuriates me, but I also kind of want to get to know her better.
“I thought you said it would only take a few minutes?” Sam and Travis are waiting for me right outside the front porch with the ATV. I smile and jump in the back seat and buckle up. Justine strolls out and I watch her walk across the property. She looks over at me and I raise my hand to wave but Travis jerks the wheel and we go spinning around a stump so I have to hang on instead.
We spend the afternoon bobbing around in the water on the boat, soaking up sun and fishing. We talk and listen to music. I discover Sam’s favorite subject, New York. And for some reason, it doesn’t hurt as bad talking about home, when I’m telling Sam while we are on the boat. He asks about everything. The architecture, the music, the art scene, the food.
“So you’re tellin me, that they charge $25 for a piece of toast with an avocado on it?” Travis interjects when I’m telling Sam about my favorite restaurants and food.
“Yeah, I guess it’s pretty stupid when you say it like that.” I laugh. Then I tell them about the real NY cheesecake, acai bowls, sushi and oysters rockefeller. I tell them there is a bagel shop and hot dog stand on every corner. Not to mention all the pizza places.
“What about all the TV things?” Sam asks.
“What TV things?” I ask.
“You know, like that big Christmas tree or the ball dropping on New Years. You ever seen them?”
“Ohhh! Yeah, I’ve been to both.” So I tell them about going to Time Square with Ava and Gina for New Years last year and drinking champagne and kissing some strange girl in the crowd when the ball dropped at midnight. Then I tell them about going ice skating at Rockefeller Plaza during Christmas break with Arthur Guinney and how he fell and broke his ankle and we had to sit under the Christmas tree and wait for the medics to come take him. All the tourists were yelling at us to get out of their stupid pictures. So me and Arthur started flipping them off, it kept him from crying in front of me and then I kissed him before he went to get a cast.
“Rian, can I ask you something?” Travis asks. He attaches a shiny green lure on his pole.
“Sure thing.” I sit up from my slumped position in the seat, the boat isn’t big enough to lay flat for suntanning, but I’m stretched as far out as I can.
“Do you date guys or girls? Not that it’s my business, and I don’t care. But, my friend Chase wanted to come hang, and–” Travis stumbles over his words. Then he drops the lure. “Shit.” I slide my sunglasses up so I can get a better look at him. His cheeks are flushed and he lets out a long breath.
My sexuality was bound to come up sooner or later.
“And what?” I ask, when he doesn’t finish what he was trying to say.
“And nothing. That was it. I texted a picture of you to Chase and he thought you were hot. But, you just talked about kissing a girl at New Years and then kissing some dude who broke his ankle.” He won’t look at me, instead he hyper focuses on getting the lure on the line. I smirk. I’m sure he never normally has this much trouble.
I laugh. “Yeah, I am pretty hot. I mean, I don’t blame your friend Chase for wanting to meet me.” I fake fan myself.
Travis’s head snaps in my direction. “Better cool off there, cous. We wouldn’t want you getting a big head.” He leans over the edge of the boat and splashes water at me. I scream and reach over my side of the boat and splash him back.
“Seriously though, I’m not really into labels. I just like who I like. I guess the easiest way to explain it is that gender doesn’t matter to me.” I don’t know if Travis will get it or not, but I am not going to hide who I am. I reach for my tanning oil, which I spot wedged between the seat and the metal cup holder. “Ah there you are,” I say to ease the silence that has taken over. I put some on my legs but, after Justine’s comment, I sort of wish I had sunscreen. I’ll have to ask Mrs. Day if she can order me some.
“That’s cool.” Travis shrugs after a few minutes.
“Yeah, I can see that about you. You like what you like. Simple enough,” Sam adds.
Phew! Thank god they aren’t going to make it weird. Because I will not stay in Florida if I find out my cousins are phobic intolerant pricks. I’d walk back to New York on foot if I had to.
“So, you haven’t told me. Who are you two dating? Seriously, are you ever going to bring your swamp girlfriends around to meet me?” I laugh.
