By this point, I realize that there have been more questions than answers presented, and that anyone who was not present that summer is probably as confused as though they began reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace right in the center. Not that I’ve ever read it; I was far too busy for such a long book, though it’s been on my reading list since I was twelve. I won’t explain too much, because I do feel like everyone deserves to tell their own story, which I’ve tried to let Cody and Catherine do thus far. I recognize that I take for granted that you know the histories of everyone, though, despite that I’ve never introduced you to some of the people whose names have been popping up frequently.

Michael you have probably figured out for the most part. My older brother, he had just turned nineteen that summer and completed his first year at the community college in Corpus Christi. He hoped, after two years, to make it into the University of Texas in Austin and study engineering. He and Zane both were always good with the numbers, whereas I still have to add double digits on napkins or the backs of receipts. Summarizing our relationship as siblings is ‘bad storytelling,’ but suffice to say that we were about as close as most teen siblings are, I suppose. We spat at times, and we had best friends outside of each other, but there were a number of unspoken understandings between us. We looked out for each other’s best interest; we shared the same social circle. He treated me more like a peer than a little sister most of the time, but there were moments when we’d play rock-paper-scissors to see who had to take out the trash, or see who could hold their breath the longest to decide who had to mop the kitchen floor. He played football in high school but didn’t enjoy it enough to pursue it in college. It wound up not mattering anyways.

Timothy had grown up in Hideaway where he lived with his parents, who were both charming and kind and normal. Typical middle class family. His father was a dentist and his mom a teacher. He had a sister who, eight years his senior, he was never close with; she was off at college in California where she stayed after graduation. He had been seventeen that summer and just about to start his senior year of high school; as he shared, he wound up joining the navy.

Zane was my first and, really, only boyfriend. He came to Hideaway for a summer when he was thirteen to help his aunt and uncle who owned a tour skiff, but wound up spending most of that and the subsequent summers running around with us. He and I began dating when I was fifteen, he a year older, and it was that sappy puppy-love type thing that seems to accompany everyone’s first experience in the world of romance. We spent almost every day together that summer, then talked daily on the phone when he went back home to San Antonio. Every chance he got, which was usually a weekend a month, he came back to Hideaway to visit, and for spring break I went to San Antonio and we ate Mexican food on the Riverwalk until we were both sick to our stomachs. I’m not sure how you’ve pictured Zane in your head, and I realize that what little has been said of him has probably already left you with a bad taste in your mouth whenever his name comes up. I suppose that’s unfair because at one point I was excessively crazy about him. At one point in time, he wasn’t sex-crazed or interested in drugs and alcohol. He was tall, dark and handsome, a poet and a guitarist in a garage band that never went anywhere. He wrote the sappiest poems for me and did things like meet me at the busstop with flowers or write ‘Jemmalyn is the moon and I the stars in worship of her’ in icing on a cake he made me for my sixteenth birthday, which the two of us ate alone in the treehouse. That was perhaps also the first time he ever suggested taking our relationship to a more physical level, but when I insisted I wasn’t comfortable with it, he readily agreed and apologized for even mentioning it. He was a romantic, and I fell for him, plain and simple. Apparently I wasn’t the only one, if you haven’t picked up on that yet.

Alex was . . . Alex. I still struggle to pin him down, which you may have noticed, because he remains such an idea in my head. I never quite figured out what we were or had or might have had, though you can be sure I spent plenty of nights in Wisconsin trying to figure it out. The facts, though, are that Alex lived with his single father in Corpus Christi, some kind of specialist doctor that made a lot more money than Alex ever felt comfortable admitting. He saw his mom on some holidays; after his parents divorced when he was seven, she remarried and moved to Phoenix where she started another family and wound up having three more kids, aside from the three she already had. Alex had two older sisters, but both hated Hideaway, hated fish, hated the ocean. They were nice enough and I got along with them just fine, but they spent as little time at their grandmother, Mama Loula’s, as possible. Alex, however, hated the city, hated the medicine profession, and wanted nothing more than to spend all day out on the ocean. His grandfather had always been a fisherman, and that was the profession he himself always aspired towards. He spent every weekend and all holidays from school in Hideaway, and became Michael’s number one friend when the two of them got stuck in a storm on a fishing boat together when they were only ten. I don’t mean that they were alone; our grandfather was a fisherman as well and best friends with Mama Loula’s husband, so it only followed that their grandsons would be the best of friends. He died only a few months before my own grandfather died, one of the many funerals I didn’t attend as I hid from the reality of death. It was always joked about that Alex had a thing for me, though I was never certain of it until that summer, but perhaps I should have recognized it. It would have shed light on just why he disliked Zane so severely, though I suppose their personalities were just too clashing, as well. Zane said everything with far more flowery words than necessary; Alex could never think of the right words at all.

As I mentioned, Michael and I both had our best friends, and though I was close with Alex and close with Catherine while she was still Cathy, my best friend took the form of Kelly Bedivere, probably the sweetest girl I have, to this day, ever met. I’ve said a little about her already, that she was the oldest of six children –well, what wound up being seven actually, because her mom did wind up having one more after that summer. Her mother was a third grade teacher, which should have given her enough of children. Her dad was perpetually unemployed and filled all manner of odd jobs around Hideaway, but initially he had been a carpenter, I believe. Kelly herself was gentle and willing to go along with whatever, though she also seemed a bit older than all of us, due to the number of responsibilities thrust upon her by a crowded, poor family.

I made friends with her when I was seven and visiting with my dad and Michael. It was raining outside and Michael refused to splash in the puddles outside with me, so I put on my raincoat and boots and went out by myself. Kelly was walking home from the grocery store but when I asked her to play with me, she wouldn’t say no. So we played all afternoon, and by the time she got home she was in serious trouble for straying from her errand. Sort of like Little Red Hooding, I had thought at the time. I felt awful for being the Big Bad Wolf and begged her parents not to be mad at her. She was thrilled to have a friend who felt so sincerely about sticking up for her. From then on, she was the girl I huddled over girlie magazines with, painted nails with, and played dress up in Grandma’s attic with as we fantasized about our futures. She wanted to be a doctor; I wanted to be an ice skater.

For a reason never made clear to me, Kelly’s nickname was Lily. Aiden’s middle name is Michael.

And there you have it.

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