Content/trigger warning: This story contains bullying, homophobic language, and non-consensual sexual acts, but they are integral to the plot and character development so please take them in context.
1. JESSE
The dead grass is limp and soft under my bare feet, and I hum a little to myself despite the crippling summer heat. Crippling summer humidity, I correct myself: it's the humidity that makes the Southern summer so unbearable, not the heat. Eight months, eighteen years, or even eighty, I don't think anyone ever really gets used to it, but I suppose at eighteen years and a native "Georgia peach" from birth I'm about as used to it as anyone ever could be.
I reckon the heat would be just bearable if you were somehow able to scuttle like a beetle from air-conditioned home to vehicle to building back to vehicle back to home without time in between locales to let the heat crush you like an endlessly increasing ball of winter coats suffocating you for eternity in hell. But hardly anyone around here can afford anything like that level of air conditioning. Pretty much just the mayor, the town doctor, and the town's only defense lawyer. Everyone else makes do with a cheap plastic convenience store fan in the living room and one in the kitchen, and windows open to catch any hint of a breeze.
My humming shifts to a bit of a grumble when I remember that the reason I wasn't able to get out earlier before the worst of the heat/humidity is because Maebelle and Lissa would not stop fighting over that damn dolly. By rights it is Maebelle's since Ms. Lucille, our neighbor, gave it to her last Christmas, but she never knows where it is because she leaves it lying around any time she's playing with it and gets distracted by something else - which is often, as that girl has the attention span of a fly. Lissa is obsessed with that doll and hunts high and low for it every morning as soon as she wakes up and hosts elaborate tea parties with it, and play dates, and superhero escapades, and I don't know what else. So in terms of buckets of TLC lavished on it Lissa definitely deserves it more than Maebelle. As I walk I think that there must be actually quite a large percentage of the world's population who have not heard the sound of two young children screaming in perfect stereo, one directly in their left ear and the other directly in their right, particularly as they're being held apart, one with a body's left hand and the other with a body's right, so that they don't rip each other to shreds like rabid dogs.
Anyway, I squint at the dim cracked screen of my ancient hand-me-down phone and see that it's just about noon, so it could be worse I suppose. A good four hours before I have to be back. My cut-off jeans and faded t-shirt were soaked through with sweat about a second after I started walking to the lake, and my drawstring bag on my back not long after that. I have to remind myself for the umpteenth time that I won't cut my curly black hair any shorter than it is because I refuse to look like them, even if it would be a bit cooler shorter, and besides, I'm almost there anyway. These last ten minutes to the lake I swear I'm continually wiping the sweat that drips off my face with my soaked shirt, which I've taken off by that point, but the sweat is pouring down so much that drops catch on my glasses anyway and I have stop occasionally to try to wipe them off. Lord, oh Lordy, is it HOT.
Finally, I'm there, and it's only a matter of seconds before I'm down flat like a marine and wriggling through the undergrowth, pushing my bag ahead of me. The lake is always crowded during the summer (crowded is an underestatement), but Blue had gone chasing a possum early in the summer and we'd found this little hidden spot weeks ago. Just a few seconds more and finally I'm standing, brushing off dead grass and leaves and surveying my little bit of paradise.
I guess you'd call it a cove. It's covered on all sides by long marsh grass and fallen trees, except for a sunken bit in the middle. It's perfect. I couldn't have designed a better spot if I'd tried, and when I first saw it I literally almost sunk down to my knees and thanked the Lord. Surely He must have seen me, recognized all I had to do for my family, all I'd suffered through at school, and pitied me, to provide me this place.
I mentally tally up its perfections like I've done so many times before as I quickly shrug off my bag and my threadbare cut-offs and briefs and dump my glasses onto the ground. Not that wide in terms of how far away the far end is from the shore, but long enough to get a good swim in end to end. Perfectly hidden from the rest of the lake and from the nearest bit of dirt road. Away from my daddy. Away from all the little ones grabbing at me and fussing with everything and getting into everything all the time. Water not cool really, but a damn sight better than sitting roasting like a Christmas turkey in that noisy house or trying to hide away in a dusty field somewhere or under a scraggly tree.
