Lake Story: A work in progress

It’s only when the sun falls beneath the layers and seas of evening’s wet color that the mosquitoes come out.  They come out by the millions, from the lake and all the hideous places of the world in which a person would stick their hand only by accident.  There are so many of the tiny insects that all you can do is watch them attack your body, in a frenzy leaving itching bumps all over.  Potter says, “It’s because you’re sweet.”  My father used to tell me that.  I never thought I tasted too sweet.  Wouldn’t I know if I was sweet?  Wouldn’t I have tasted it on my skin before?  I would imagine myself as a Dominos sugar cube, crumbling a little at the edges like they always do, but still ripe and mouthwatering.  The mosquitoes will never stop; they keep coming in constant brigades.  Sometimes one at a time, others two then they ambush all at once.  Every few seconds one of them comes by your ear screeching a whisper that feels like distant screams, a pin going through your brain, if you can imagine.  The dark has taken up so much of the sun’s hot remains that it’s become too cold to run screaming from the mosquito army and plunge, like a bedlam into the serene Vermont Lake, now transformed into a murky mass at night.

            Seven years ago was the first time I got naked with a boy.  I was thirteen.  His name was Lucas and we counseled together at a day camp that taught swimming, tag and “arts & crafts”.  It also enforced teamwork and sharing.  I would ask my mom to pick me up a few hours after the camp day had ended so that we could talk on the little beach while the sun passed away.  We gossiped about the kids and our fat boss.  He was the kind of guy who sits on a spinney office chair that creaks from his overflowing bulges of fat that make the poor chair teeter on its little wheels, dangerously threatening a colossal collapse.  We called him meatball because that’s what he looked like.  Gnarly looking skin with red bumps and dark craters, he was round like that.

            The circle of light from the fire where Potter fiddles with a couple of hot dogs seems to be all that exist in faint shadows of the forest rustling all around.  Phantom trees rise outside our white glow much higher than I remember in the daylight.

           By the lake when the second week of camp had closed, Lucas curled his red twizzler lips and through a half hopeful snigger said that I wouldn’t jump naked into the public beach at our feet.  I had never backed down from a dare.  Backing down from a dare, especially from a boy would be a sin. It was a June evening, just warm enough to wear a light sweater, it had been record low at 50 in late may.  A breath of wind brushed the tips of grass and the soaring ends of large oaks.  The adrenaline seized me up.  So this is the stuff of superheroes I thought as I took off my tattered red Abercrombie and Fitch shirt, the shirt I bought in 7^th grade, a shirt that had been worn through, never to be cool again.  Its faded strawberry color was still a little damp from sweat, caked in places with mud.  I kicked my jean shorts off my feet into the cooling sand.

            “It’s getting chilly.”  Potter hands me a paper plate with a smoky hotdog nestled between ketchup, mustard and canned corn.

            “Yeah.”

            “Do you want a sweater?”  Potter takes a black one out for me and cuddles into a knitted sweater that I have never seen him wear before.

            “Anything to get these mosquitoes off.”  I don’t know where he got that sweater.  I half suspect that he stole it from the clothing store in Lilidy where we bought the replacements for the hiking boots that never recovered from the swamp.  I grab the thick itchy sweater in hopes that it will soothe my pocked, irritated skin.  It feels like 1000 mosquito bites.  My record number of insect injuries in a summer is 300 and these past few nights have easily doubled that figure.

            At thirteen I didn’t look at him next to me - watching me - or I wouldn’t have done it.  His astounded face would whip me back to reality and then I would see myself, only a girl naked in front of a boy, pale in an early moon.  I could hardly feel the cold, only the hint of wind pushing at my numb nakedness.  I held my arms for support, making myself believe that by now I was almost completely covered by shadow.  Lucas rested on his back next to me, probably looking up, probably shocked, probably thinking that Cecile was still in the office and she would kill us both for this: Me glowing and him watching.  I didn’t think before the water held my body, lifted my hair and set me free from the wind, from his eyes and from the dare.

            By the fire I look at Potter for a moment.  The brown of his hair flattened by fire.  It has turned into a light, eggshell brown.  His rough hands throw onto the trembling fire what’s left of the logs we found and chopped among the dense oaks.  The dry heat forms bubbles of sweat above his lip mixed with ash and dirt.  Potter seems to mold the fire in his hands, it dances supported by his legs.  “I used to know how to make fire without matches,” he had said, but after the sun began to go down he gave up.

“Show me some other time, the mosquitoes will come out soon”, and he lit it with a match. 

It is only us.  Where did the world go?  It seemed to have been flushed out with the sun.  Our home is tonight, making fire and disregarding darkness, like every night has been and will be until I have no idea when.  A hot flood of thick anticipation and fear rushes to my head.  It is dark enough to see stars start to coil around the universe, those soul taking, blood sucking mosquitoes hover menacingly around while we swim in a fish tank of light.