The summer of the yellow dress.
“Do you remember when you dumped that red slushie on me at the fair?”
“Kind of.”
I’m lying, I remember that summer quite well, it was the summer of the yellow dress. Your mom got it for you when you guys took that trip out to the city. She’d bought you that frozen lemonade and you guys walked up and down the streets, window-shopping and smiling and laughing. You said you loved your mom’s smile, because she had the straight, white-teeth you always wanted but had ruined with years of sucking your thumb.
You only set foot in a boutique once, and it was for the yellow dress you’d seen slung off the shoulders of some plastic mannequin, who was feature-less except for a pair of big blue eyes. She reminded you of your older sisters, all thin and identical, pale and blue-eyed, all married to their high school sweethearts and living within walking distance from their family’s church. In the store, you’d tried on the dress, and it didn’t fill out quite right because you weren’t as tall or busty as the ‘girl in the window’. But your mom promised that by the end of summer, it’d look just fine with your July tan and the natural highlights you used to get from the sun.
That was the same summer that I first started noticing the slope of your neck or how your collarbones were perfectly symmetrical. Every time you wore that dress, it’d show off your ribs between budding breasts or your bony shoulders that never held up the straps right. We used to lay out on the grass, your knees would peek out from underneath the flowered-hem and I can still feel the softness of your calves against mine.
You used to tell me all the thoughts in your head, how one day you’d hitch-hike your way across the country and meet all sorts of people with all sorts of stories. How you didn’t want to die twenty miles away from where you were raised. Fourteen years old, and all I could think about was football and girls and trying to impress my dad. And there you were, telling me you were going to pack up your yellow dress and drive around with strangers until you found yourself. And I fell in love with you because your curiosity made you something I’d never be: excitable and free.
Your mom was right, by Home Days in late August, that sun dress couldn’t have looked better on anyone else. The June and July months had been good to you, you’d gone from awkward limbs to slender and graceful. It’d taken a whole summer for me to gather up the courage to kiss you. When I finally did it, it was between the elephant-ears and frozen lemonade stands, the air was thick with grease and laughter and the sounds of rings being tossed on empty milk jugs and I was so nervous I nearly dropped the cherry slushie I’d just bought us to share. We kissed, and your mouth tasted like cotton candy, and I thought you’d pull away but you didn’t. And it was enough to make me feel like I was a man.
Later that night, I was holding your hand and occupying my mouth with that red drink, because I knew that if I didn’t do something with my teeth I might try to kiss you again too soon or something. We were quiet and everything was dying down, the stars were hung up above us and when we reached the baseball fields, the sounds of the fair were just a hum in the distance. Other couples were kissing in the rafters, and when I turned to kiss you, you looked away.
“I don’t want to be a couple of big blue eyes.” And it took a minute, but when I finally understood, my eyes had adjusted to the night and I could see that you weren’t looking at me. You were looking at the stars above us and commenting on how beautiful and infinite they were, how you wanted to be strung up in the sky amongst them. How you hated being from this nothing town where people hung around from birth to death; how even their ghosts still walked the streets or creaked on porch-swings.
I knew right then and there, that you thought I’d be that ball-and-chain, keeping you from big cities and coasts. In a jealous rage, I found myself emptying the remainders of my drink all over the front of your yellow dress. Even in the night, that slushie looked like blood across your chest and down to your knees. As I took off running, back towards the fair, back towards home and my friends, I hoped I had ruined your stupid yellow dress.
