I was 18 years old, and my life was over.
My folks and I moved to this small town in the rural South called, of all things, Watley. I should've been pissed off about that move. I was heading into my second year in junior college, turning 19 soon. Most of my friends had already left for big universities; if I'd bothered to get better grades in high school, I probably would be off on my own somewhere, too, I guess.
The first days there, I was in total culture shock. I admit that the Decatur, Illinois suburban area is not New York City, but compared to Watley it's a metropolis. I wasn't leaving much behind, but I was still pretty stunned. Everything happened so suddenly, so quickly that I didn't really have time to be mad. In less than a month I was in a different state (really different), with a new house, new room, new college coming in September (we moved in June), and a very new town. I felt like I was a tourist, and if you'd asked me, I might've said I was expecting that after we were done visiting that we'd be going home. That's what it felt like: I was just a guest. What I did and how I acted didn't matter very much, because I was going home, somewhere else.
The first weeks, I didn't do much. I read a lot, and I wrote a lot, mostly diary-style essays about moving and the town, just to try and stay sane. I watched satellite TV sometimes, once we got it installed. I didn't have a working cell phone, or I'd have talked to my friends. (There was no cell coverage; my Android phone had just become an expensive MP3 player with a few game apps.) My dad couldn't get us Internet, for some reason.
I stayed in my room a lot with the door locked. I did have my laptop, so I spent a fair amount of time surfing the porn collection I kept on it, and fapping. Outside it was unbearably hot, and the humidity made Illinois air seem dry. The Suicide Girls, whose nude images I'd collected over the years on the laptop, seemed like angels of deliverance.
—
There was a big sign at a street corner that I noticed one day during one of our trips into "town." Our house was actually about a mile outside of this so-called town, and apparently, a lot of other people's houses were as well. Anyway, I saw this sign about a holiday picnic, and my mom saw it, too, and was going on about how nice and quaint it was that a place like this would have a thing like that. I didn't have anything to do—I would've been on the Internet full-time by that point, but even three weeks after we moved, we still didn't have a connection—and I was going crazy sitting in my room. So, I quietly decided to myself that I was going to that picnic. I have no idea why, but it seemed better than doing nothing, and if I went without my parents, maybe it would actually be cool. Maybe.
The picnic was on the day before the Fourth of July. I remember getting up that morning, and it was humid before it was 9 AM. And I was thinking: it's amazing that we actually have air conditioning in a buttfuck town like this. Jesus Christ, population 378?! How is that even a "town"?
I got up and got dressed—if you call a t-shirt and some old cargo shorts "dressed"—and just started walking. I didn't tell my parents anything. I just left.
What surprised me was the size and the commotion of this picnic. Yeah, maybe there weren't even 400 people living here, but apparently they were all in the downtown park that day. There was music—at first I thought it was just someone's iPhone playing through a P.A. system, but actually it was a live bluegrass band—and all sorts of activity: impromptu games, clusters of people in earnest conversation, big, sweaty men tending grills on wheels. I was standing there, trying to figure out if there was any organized activity or what, when I noticed this one group.
They were mostly female. They were at the left edge of the park, and they got my attention because they were loud and they were all in these really pretty dresses. All the women in Watley (and the whole area) wore the same style of really old-fashioned-looking dresses, but these women stood out. I don't really know what a "pretty" dress is supposed to mean, at least officially, but I do know that these girls and women looked especially nice. They were all playing with balls, tossing them back and forth, screaming and whooping and laughing, like they had the biggest party at the party. And yet it was obvious that they were not really trying to attract attention; they were just having a really good time.
That was the thing: they were having a good time. They, themselves, obviously family, were having fun, together. I'd never had that, not even close. I liked my parents, but we'd never really, uh, partied.
They had picnic blankets laid out, and I noticed that there were lots of smaller kids there, and some babies. I moved closer to where they were, nonchalantly.
Right about then, a ball came rolling up near me. I didn't pay it much notice, but then a little girl, about five years old, trotted up, looked at the ball, looked at me, and said, "You could've thrown it back."
It took me a second to answer her. She was a pretty little girl, in a nice miniature-sized blue dress, blonde hair sweeping over her shoulders, with a serious look on her face.
"You're right," I said. "I should have. Sorry."
She grinned at me, suddenly, then grabbed the ball and ran off.
And that's about when everything changed for me.
I looked over to see where the little girl went, and she was with a woman. Well, OK, she was a girl about my age, but it's kind of weird to call a five-year-old a "girl" and then call someone who's about 18 a "girl," too. The little girl was talking to this, um, young woman, and pointing to me. The girl/woman stood up straight and looked right at me, and I had never been so stunned and smitten in all my life.
Her hair might've been the first thing I noticed. Or maybe it was her face: soft and sweet and beautiful, slightly round and kind of heart-shaped. She was serious when she looked at me, but she had the kind of face that would seem to smile even if she was frowning. Her long, blonde-brown hair drifted over her shoulders and across her face in the breeze as she stared at me.
I noticed that she had on a light blue country-style dress—pretty much just like all the other girls and women around, but I really liked the way it looked on her. It was obviously supposed to make her look modest, but it didn't completely succeed. It didn't hide the swell of her hips, or her slim waist, or the pronounced curve of her bust. And, though it was a long dress, it didn't entirely hide her ankles the way the other women's dresses did. Somehow, that tiny bit of exposed skin was sexy. The lower part of the dress had a light flower pattern, very fetching on her. I noticed that her sleeves ran past her elbows.
I wouldn't have thought that I would ever like that sort of long, country dress seemingly from a century ago—but I did, on her, at least.
"Hey!" she shouted at me, suddenly, and I remember actually feeling frightened, like I'd done something wrong. I started to point to myself, but she was already shouting, "You playing?"
—
"I'm Lila," she said to me. I'd walked over her direction, having no idea what to do otherwise. "This is Shirley," she told me, indicating the little blonde girl.
I bent to shake the little girl's hand first. "Hi, Shirley," I said, kindly. "My name is Billy."
"Hi, Billy," said the little girl, and for the first time, I recognized how Southern her accent was. Shirley pointed, announcing, "That's my Auntie Lila!" Then she grabbed the ball and ran off.
Lila was laughing as she turned to me, saying, "Sorry, yeah, I'm 'Auntie' Lila." Although she pronounced her name "Lie-luh," her cute, slightly slow drawl made it sound kind of like "Lah-luh."
