It’s a beautiful morning. Hazy and humid. The kind of day where you can see the dust, flickering and sun-touched, like lazy unhurried promises floating in the air. I strip off my clothes, which I’m not wearing much of to begin with, and wade into the sparkling pond. The cool water feels amazing on my hot, dusty skin. I don’t usually do stuff like this: like stand naked in a swimming pond all out in the open. In fact, I never do stuff like this. Today’s different, though. Today is where it all starts. Today’s the day I can start making my own rules and following my own road.
Straight to Nashville.
I stand there thigh-deep, splashing handfuls onto my arms and my bare breasts. Wading further, I let the icy-fresh water rise over my stomach. To my nipples. I watch as they bead into tight buds. I brush my fingers against them, and the light caress sends a small jolt of warmth through my body. God. I never even really realized how good it feels to be this aware of your own body. To not be watched or controlled. To feel this wild and this loose.
I turn, laying on my back, floating under the shimmery sun.
I don’t need to look around to make sure I’m alone. I know I’m alone. I’m all the way on the far side of our property. The big farmhouse next door is empty and hasn’t been lived in for over a year, my mother never ventures far from our house, and my two older sisters who still live at home are still in bed, even though it’s almost noon.
Frannie didn’t finish her shift at the Main Street Bar and Grill until after midnight. And Daisy’s still upset about her boyfriend spending more time with his band than he does with her, even after he knocked her up. So she’ll be sleeping off her sorrow, or at least trying to. Last night I stayed up late with her, to keep her company as she waited for him to answer her calls and texts, but he had a gig so must’ve been busy.
My sisters have a way of inviting a whole lot of drama into their lives. Not me. I’ve got a plan and I’m sticking to it, no matter what. Daddy used to call me determined and I guess that’s one word for it. There’s more to it than that, though. They say I’m a dreamer but the thing is, it feels like a sure thing. It just does. I know where I’m going and what I have to do to get there. Make my way to the city, start auditioning and get myself heard. People tell me it’s too competitive but I know I’m good enough. I can feel the deep pool of my own grit like molten fire, waiting and mixing there, starting to boil over.
I spent all morning driving around. We live just outside a small town called Nowheresville, Tennessee. Population: 6,128. It’s not really called Nowheresville but it might as well be. We’re sixty-nine miles east of Nashville, and the last four are on dirt roads. Daddy’s old pick-up truck is running hot and slow these days and still smells like his cigars. Just the faintest hint of it, like a memory. We all miss him, Momma most of all. She sort of lost something when he died. Like a piece of her died along with him. I wish it hadn’t, I’ll be honest. I wish my Momma was stronger. She wants to be, deep down. I can tell. But there are more days than not when she just sort of fades out, lost in her own grief. Like it’s quicksand. After Daddy died of a sudden heart attack five years ago, Delilah got angry, Daisy cried a lot and Frannie got on with things, like she always does. As for me, I felt that little seed of determination start to grow. Maybe it’s for him I want to make it happen for myself, as much as anything.My little songbird, he used to call me.
That feels like a long time ago.
I had to pull over twice to let the engine cool, but I managed to get those flyers delivered to every mailbox within a five-mile radius before lunchtime. I’ll clean people’s houses for the summer, and save up enough money to get a room in the city. All I need to do now is wait for someone to call.
While I wait, I might as well enjoy a swim and the heat of the summer sun.
I do a lap all the way across the small pond then swim back to the middle. The cool, rippling current on my skin feels sensual somehow. Weirdly sexy. Like my solitude and my nakedness are triggering new, erotic tendencies. I float there for a while, letting it build. Damn. So this is what freedom feels like.
Today it’s a hundred and two in the shade. School’s finished for good and I still can’t believe it.
Today, I feel more like myself than I ever have. Like I can start discovering the real me right here in this moment. Hot, determined, a little crazy: I guess this is the new me. And reckless. I have this weird craving to do something I shouldn’t be doing.
Maybe I’ll sneak over to that farmhouse next door, and finally see what the inside of that place looks like. I saw it listed in the paper for more than a million dollars. I guess it’s worth it. It’s by far the nicest house around, and has a thousand acres attached to it.
I might even see if I can break in, just to try out my new rebellious streak, which I can feel but am still adjusting to.
St. Mary’s was over-the-top, we all knew that. My mother used up literally the last of the money to send me there. Whatever inheritance Daddy might have left us, it all got siphoned directly into the bank account of the strictest Catholic high school in Tennessee, which happens to be about twenty miles from where we live, in an old convent. It’s either that or I lock the four of you up until you get a proposal, she’d said.
That part of her plan had sort of backfired. My oldest sister Delilah was already married (shotgun) to a motorcycle mechanic in Jackson who owns his own garage. He has big, oily muscles and lots of tattoos and the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen. They had their baby back in February, a little boy named Billy Joe. Delilah seems happy enough but who can tell, with all that crying going on. My second-oldest sister, Daisy, is head over heels in love with a bass player who’s promised he’ll marry her but he hasn’t had a chance to get her a ring yet. She only found out she was pregnant six weeks ago, so there’s plenty of time for a wedding before she really starts to show, she said. And Frannie’s being chased by a long list of eligible and not-so-eligible bachelors. I know she’s not a virgin because she tells me everything, in … well, in vivid detail.
As I float, I can’t help thinking about something Frannie told me the other day.
And as I do, my new rebellious streak is sort of manifesting itself as a light, sweet throb right between my legs, where the cool water laps. God. I let my legs open a little wider.
I couldn’t believe what Frannie’s boyfriend did to her. It’s absolutely the wildest thing I’ve ever heard. She’s been dating him for a few weeks and he’s really into her, calling her all the time and hanging around. And the other night, she said, he kissed it. And then he licked me, there, until … well, you’ll find out soon enough.
I couldn’t believe that! I couldn’t even imagine it.
Ever since then, I’ve felt sort of strangely edgy. Like I’m still blushing at the scandalous things she described.
We didn’t tell Momma but as soon as we heard that Daisy was pregnant, Frannie and I drove ourselves down to the free clinic and got ourselves a couple of prescriptions for birth control pills. All they have to do is breathe in our direction, Frannie said. If Delilah and Daisy are anything to go by, it’s practically true.
I guess it just shows that all you need to do to bring out the promiscuous tendencies in a girl is to lock her up and tell her to resist every temptation known to womankind. As soon as she breaks free, there’s only one thing she’s going to want to do.
It’s true that we’re sort of famous. Or infamous. The Faraday sisters, they call us, like one collective unit. We all have blond hair and light blue eyes and apparently the sort of voluptuous bodies that get the attention of men. Whenever we walk down the street, people stare. Being barely eighteen and just released from boarding school, a.k.a. prison, I’ve been the least visible, I guess you could say. So I haven’t really had a chance to figure all that out yet. To test it.
It’s strange, though: I want to test it. Now. I feel wild in this sunny, perfect heat. My body is young and lush. Naked. Wet and hot and fiercely alive, maybe for the first time ever. I want to act on that feeling.
It’s probably a good thing I can’t. Because now that I’m on my way to Nashville (almost), I’ve got to stay focused.
The problem is, this small, sultry hunger, if you could even call it that, isn’t going away. This morning when I was driving, I heard a song on the Nashville radio station that got me even more agitated. It’s by some hot new solo act they keep playing, and I can see why. He’s got one of those voices that’s sexy in a way you can feel. And I did: I could feel it. Right there. My panties, as I was driving along, got all clingy and wet. All because of that song and that husked, manly voice, singing so sweet. Like he was singing just for me.
I swim to the edge and make my way out of the pond. I climb onto a big, flat rock that’s warm from the day, not bothering to put my clothes back on. It’s too good to be loose like this. And completely alone. I can’t even remember the last time I was alone.
I lie here, and that song plays through my head. I think of that gravelled husk. How deep his voice was. I feel the memory of that melodic rasp as a strange flush on my skin. I let my hands rove my body. I’m illuminated by sparkly, jeweled diamond-drops.
The heat of the sun seems to center in a particular place. Like a slow, curling pulse. I lay still for a while, letting that pulse take hold. I think of trying to put it out of my mind, like I should. I think of trying to resist its licking heat. But it’s too sweet, this little promise, deep inside my own body.
You’re a wild, wild girl, and I know what you like. I know how to tease and I know how to please.
I just lie there, not moving at all for a while. Just feeling the heat of the sun on my skin and the glow of my own blooming femininity. I feel ripe, like a sun-sweet peach. Brimming.
I imagine his strong hands as he strums his guitar.
He kissed it.
What would that feel like? It’s hard to even imagine.
When I stretch languidly, I feel strange. I feel beautiful. More beautiful than I’ve ever felt. Slowly, I stand up. I walk down to the water’s edge. Gently, I wash myself. The water is cool. I splash water onto my breasts. My nipples, which had softened in the sun-warmth, contract into tight little peaks. I bend down and cup some water into my hand, to splash lightly onto my face.
Then I see something. Movement in the near distance. Over the fence.
Oh, my God.
A man.
Watching me.
His dark hair is glinting with a gold halo in the sun and he’s big, even in this open landscape. Tall and broad. Shirtless and sun-bronzed and strong. I see the glint of his belt buckle. He might be in his early twenties or even twenty-five. Even through my shock it registers that he is insanely handsome, in an edgy kind of way. He’s standing there and he looks as stunned as I feel. There’s more to it that, though. Something darker. Hungry, that’s how he looks. Lusty.
My heart lurches into an up-tempo beat. How much had he seen? I grab my sundress and pull it over my head.
I disappear behind a row of trees and I run away.