Delia

Then

We’d been swimming all afternoon, and a few kids had stayed on the dock long after the classes were over, enjoying the orange sun melting toward the forest. I was bent over my sketchpad, my palms covered in charcoal. I was upset that I covered five new pages with things I didn’t want to show to anyone, and I had a project due the next morning. I just didn’t like my results. Oscar was reading next to me, and without warning, he reached over and touched my forehead right between my eyebrows. I smoothed my brow, not even having known I was so tense.

“What’s the matter?”

“I can’t find inspiration!” I said and wondered at the pitch of my own voice.

“What’s the focus?”

“Beauty,” I said, making a face.

He seemed to think about it, but just for a second or two before his hand wandered to my curls. I watched intently, fascinated by his smooth and pale skin that contrasted against my black mane of hair as he wrapped it around his index finger.

“Have you ever done a self-portrait? I’ve never seen hair like yours,” he murmured.

I guffawed, but inside I was so happy. Oscar thought I was beautiful. I couldn’t remember when anyone besides my family said that, and they had to believe so. In fact, I hadn’t thought of myself as that at all. I was taller than most of the boys I knew, except for Oscar, who was exactly my height. I was flat as a board, and I didn’t think I had anything girly about me . . . well, except for my black curly hair, which Oscar was admiring. I beamed at him.

“I think that is called narcissism, not beauty,” I said.

He shrugged and lowered his hand.

“Wait.” He paused and waited as the flash of inspiration took root. “Give me your hand.”

He complied, and I held his hand for a little while, our fingers intertwined. I sketched something with just my right hand and then flipped the sketchpad closed before he could see.

“Hey! Isn’t there some rule about the subject getting to see the final product?”

“When it’s done, I’ll let you see it, but right now we have to go. They are going to start the bonfire soon.”

I stood and held my hand out to help him up. Giving me a look that told me he knew he would never see the sketch, he grabbed my hand and then let go just as quick so he could scoop up his book.

Much later, I fell asleep on the sketch of hands holding each other, my cheek smudging a portion of the charcoal over the night. But my teacher really liked it, and when I finally showed him, Oscar did as well.

Another day, another sunset. The sun was still pretty much burning our skin, and some kids mentioned they’d seen a deer the other day, and we went searching. All we found were squirrels, worms, and a few other truants. We’d been running for what seemed like hours, and we stopped to take a breath. Oscar’s golden eyes met my dark ones, and then his puckered lips were coming toward me. I puckered my lips too, and closed my eyes. And so, I got my first kiss, standing under a kind August sun and holding hands with the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen. It could have lasted a minute or an eternity it was over, my lips felt funny, as if they were a little moist. When I sucked them in, they had a new taste on them, like the wind and the sun and everything else Oscar was made of. I touched my fingers to my lips and smiled at him from beneath my fingers.

“I’ll never forget you, Dellie,” he told me, and I believed him with all my being.

“I’ll always love you, Oscar,” I told him, and I believed myself with all my being.

He pulled at my hand and started running.

“Come get me!”

I chased the perfect boy through the clearing and the forest, down our trail and past the pond . . . all the way to cabins, which is where we both collapsed on the grass, gasping for breath.

That was the first of our kisses, and I hoped it wouldn’t be our last.

It wasn’t, and he stole them from me as often as I stole them from him, neither of us concerned at all about the thefts.

The day before he left, the rain was gushing around us like a bad omen. We had played hooky from a workshop, choosing to trek through the woods, as it had become our habit in the past few weeks. We’d heard the music blaring from the speakers in camp, a distress signal calling all students back to the mother ship. When we got close to the pond, he stopped abruptly and offered me that secret smile in the corner of his mouth.

“There’s nobody around,” he said.

I looked left and right, not sure what he was getting at. I felt the pull of his hand against mine right before feeling his lips on mine again. My eyes closed at that taste of sunshine he always seemed to be wearing on his lips. Even through the thickest rain curtain, I could feel the promise of warmth spreading like delicious fire through my veins. Our hands squeezed together, glued from the slickness of the rain. I was never letting go.