annashay 
by A.J. Miller
I. While Camping During Summer Weekends at Better Days Campground and Fish Park, 1984
Jody Better in a white tube top, cut-offs, red lipstick, jelly kitten heels; short hair, the color of root beer fizz, held tame at each temple by green plastic butterfly barrettes. She was eleven like me, with a younger brother like me, but where my brother and I looked nothing alike, Jody and Joseph had the same dark eyes, fat lips, bruises on elbows, knees, and cheeks.
‘You’re new here,’ Jody said. ‘We saw you pull in.’
I nodded. We had noticed them standing by the soda machine outside the campground office.
‘That’ll be one dollar then.’ She held out her hand.
‘For what?’ I asked.
‘To go all the way. You want to see the boat, dontcha?’ The four of us looked toward the end of the dock where a small rowboat was tied, bumping gently against the weathered decking.
‘Pay up or get punched in the kisser,’ Joseph said, a mean looking boy with a pot belly and sandwich crumbs on his face. ‘Don’t get in the boat either or I’ll punch you in the gut.’
‘Ta ta, guppies!’ Jody waved us away.
Jody’s family owned the campground and lived year-round in the apartment above the office. My family lived about thirty minutes from the campground and we’d go up on summer weekends. Jody wasn’t someone I’d hang out with at my school but she was the only other girl our age so we stuck together. My mom didn’t approve of her, said she was too wild and had no manners. But Jody knew things I didn’t and it was fun to know the gossip around the campground.
Their dad, the handyman, always wore a ball cap with a picture of a winking fish grinning and the words “Nice Bass.” I never met their mom. She stopped talking years ago and never came out to chit chat with the campers like Miss Vonny did. Instead she stayed in the apartment and made hanging macramé plant holders. Jody and Joseph would pile them in a red wagon and go around selling them to the campers. Everyone who bought one hung them outside their place, on awning rails or tree nails or flag posts. My mom said crafting was Jody’s mom’s way of communicating. I always imagined Mrs. Better as the twisted knots of ropes and beads, hanging there at everyone’s campsite, swaying in a lake breeze that smelled of dead fish and worms, either saying hi or hey or help.
Miss Vonny, the youngish woman who worked the office checking in guests, selling bait, and giving out change for the pinball machine had long creamsicle-blonde hair teased big and sprayed stiff, her eyeshadow was bright blue and pink, and her lips were always scarlet red and wet; she looked like one of the soap opera actresses she watched on the little corner TV. She chewed gum like her jaws were a Singer sewing machine, and everyone’s business was hers, but God help you if you asked where Jody and Joseph were.
‘Who do I look like? Their mama? Absolutely not! Those little sardines are probably out causing trouble,’ she’d snap. Disgusted, she’d pitch her gum in the trashcan and pull out a compact mirror, reapply her lipstick and dab a finger under each eye. Then she’d yell, ‘Larry! Oh Larry! Your kids happen to be missing again.’ Soon Jody’s father would appear, licking his lips, looking not mean as usual but amused. He’d shoo us out of the office and Miss Vonny would waggle her fingers and say, ‘Ta ta, guppies.’
II. While Starving in a Booth at Frisch and Chips Carryout & Bait Shop and Losing My Crush, 1986
I handed Jody three dollars, from my babysitting stash. She counted the bills slowly, like it was a stack of twenties and her life savings.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘His name is Patrick. He’s fourteen. He’s camping with his grandparents for two weeks.’
I rolled my eyes but handed her three more dollars.
‘He has brown eyes. He’s smart. He’s rich.’
I handed her another dollar —’Tell me if you kissed him.’ I really hoped she hadn’t because I wanted to kiss him first.
‘That information costs ten dollars, a whole ten dollars, not ten in ones.’
‘Ugh!’ I said and handed her my last dollar. ‘Tell me something I don’t already know.’
Jody thoughtfully tapped a red painted fingernail against her red lips. ‘Hmmm…Oh! Vonny’s pregnant!’
Four of us squeezed into a booth at Frisch and Chips, waiting for Jody’s order of one cheeseburger and two fries. Jody had bribed her brother with food and told him this was a double date. Since she had all my money, I wasn’t eating unless Joseph shared his fries, and Joseph wasn’t sharing his fries unless I held his hand. I kicked him each time he tried.
Jody liked sitting (practically) on top of Patrick, squishing her boobs against his arm, and feeding him shoestring fries while I watched. When Joseph tried to feed me a fry, I slapped it out of his hand and it landed in Jody’s frizzy hair. Jody was pissed after that and started making innuendos about her and Patrick’s secret rendezvous the night before, but I pretended I couldn’t stop laughing about the fry.
Jody dared Patrick to kiss her in front of us and the whole time they were kissing, him with his hand slipped up her shirt, she had her eyes opened looking at me.
III. While Sitting at the End of the Dock Where the Old Rowboat Is Moored, a Summer Storm Gestating, 1988
As the mid-morning sun struggled to make an appearance above shoreline trees in the muted gloom, darker clouds thickened in the west; thunder rumbled low in the distance, sounding like a god clearing his throat. Sitting cross-legged on the dock, into the water we tossed chunks of stale bread and watched as channel catfish fought over each piece. When the bread was almost gone, Jody pulled out a wad of cash and waved it like a fan. Jody always seemed to have money but never said where she got it; I suspected some of the older boys around the campground were down a few dollars in their piggy banks.
‘Is that enough?’ I asked.
‘Should be. Bud can get an advance if needed.’
‘When will you be back?’
‘Probably late next week,’ she said but shrugged.
‘I’ll be gone.’ I hadn’t told Jody yet but my parents planned on selling our camper. They didn’t like the way things were being run anymore and complained that “management” was too busy with family issues, said the place had gone downhill ever since Mrs. Better moved out and Miss Vonny and the kid moved in. ‘What about school?’
She snorted. ‘They’ll call my dad and he’ll be pissed that I skipped as usual.’
‘And then what?’
She gave me an annoyed look that said she didn’t care. ‘Maybe I can get a doctor’s excuse,’ she said sarcastically. She lit a cigarette and took a long drag. ‘Bud said he’d drive me to my mom’s place—if I wanted—but I don’t really have anything to say to her. She’d just flip out but not talk anyway. Bud said I could stay with him.’
We sat in silence and watched the clouds darken and swell. Jody pulled a sandwich bag out of her purse. ‘Can you believe I still have this?’
She held up the sandwich bag that contained an envelope. Inside the envelope there was a letter from Patrick, written last summer before he was scheduled to come and spend an entire “lame and grody” month with his grandparents, wanting to make sure Jody was still “available” and into “fun and fast times,” to which she had promptly written back she was.
As the storm loomed nearby, the air cooled and for the first time I thought it was beginning to feel like summer was really over. We had run out of bread but the catfish still flopped on each other as they surfaced, mouths opened, fighting, nudging, begging for a treat.
We had a little time before Jody had to meet Bud so I said, ‘Tell me about the boat.’ I had always wondered about it but it just wasn’t something that had come up. We knew we weren’t allowed to get into it or take it out on the lake, but it never occurred to me to ask who it belonged to. It was just an old boat tied up to the dock.
She held out her hand expectantly.
‘Bitch,’ I muttered and she laughed and I pulled out a wadded bill from my pocket. ‘All I have is a five.’
She snatched the five and said, ‘No changies.’
The tethered boat belonged to Jody’s mother’s old boyfriend, from back when she was our age and had dated a summer boy. This was back when Jody’s maternal Papaw and Granny ran the campground.
‘They would row out to the middle of the lake and have picnics and watch the sunsets. And sometimes they did it, but it was always romantic and nice. They loved each other.’
‘So what happened to him?’
‘His parents sold their camper, moved to some place far away. He grew up, met a beautiful woman, married her, had lots of kids. And they lived happily ever after.’
‘Really?’
‘My mom always said he was the one that got away. Pissed my dad off big time.’
‘Why’d your mom marry your dad?’
‘Because,’ she said shaking her head like I should already know the answer, ‘she was pregnant with me.’ We both sat quiet in our own thoughts for a moment until Jody blurted, ‘God, can you imagine Bud as someone’s dad?’
‘Nope!’ We both laughed and started gathering our things. Bud would be by the office to pick up Jody in a few minutes to take her to an appointment in the next state over. She had a story about how they were going into town for the day if her dad or Vonny asked about her whereabouts.
Jody zipped her purse and said, ‘I thought about maybe having Bud take me by Patrick’s house. I looked his address up on the map, he only lives about two hours from here. Do you think he’ll be happy to see me? He told me he would miss me last time I saw him.’
A big crack of thunder startled us and we both screamed and laughed and jumped up from sitting, ready to run. Splotches of clouds morphed into a growing gray menace.
‘Let’s go before it pours!’ I shouted, glad for the interruption from her last question. Patrick wasn’t the sort of boy who missed girls like Jody, but I didn’t want to be the one to tell her that.
I started back down the dock towards the campground but Jody told me to take her things. She loaded my arms with a purse and small canvas satchel with her clothes, a cardigan. She ran over to the dock piling that held the tethered boat and untied the old fraying rope and tossed the end into the rowboat. The first drops of rain fell. The catfish breached the surface, mistaking the rain for food. I thought about how easy it was to do that sometimes, mistake one thing for another.
Jody gave the rowboat a hard shove. For a second it looked like the boat might head out into the open water and there was something exciting about that; maybe it would float away, finally free after all these years. It might even witness another sunset like the old days. Until someone salvaged it for junk, at least.
But a huge gust of wind whipped up then and pushed the boat back towards the dock. The clouds broke open and the rains came fast and hard. Jody grabbed her belongings from me as we both squealed and ran for cover, each going in a different direction.
oOo
A.J. Miller is a freelance editor and writer. Her stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Every Day Fiction, Flash Flood Journal, and Outlook Springs. Her work has been nominated for Best Small Fictions. She loves supporting writers and the literary community. AJ lives in Florida with her husband, daughters, and two dogs. You can check out her writing and editing services at www.storyprepediting.co
