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Time In The Sun

Jo Newman


 

There was no better place in the world. 


You couldn’t argue with that. Or, at least, you couldn’t argue that point with 15-year-old Ellie Cavill. She took this argument very, very seriously. To her, it was a place that dreams were made of. The skies were a blue so pure that it almost felt fake- like it had been mixed in a studio four hours away in Hollywood. The mountains soared into the sparse but puffy clouds, and the lake was what she hoped heaven would look like. The banks of sand, the freshest air, the super, super cute boys who showed up in surf shorts and paddle boards… that was Ellie’s Lake Tahoe. 


When her parents, Ronnie and Randy, came bounding down the stairs to interrupt their children’s committed summertime TV watching to announce that the family was going there for the week, Ellie jumped up and hugged them each in a way that she hadn’t since she’d turned fifteen. To Ronnie, this was reason enough to take the trip.


Ellie raced back up the stairs and locked the door to her bedroom. Weeks ago, after much deliberation, she’d bought a new bikini at Pacific Sun at the Mall. It was unlike anything that Ellie had ever owned and was too cool, too stylish to wear to the local community pool. But that didn’t stop Ellie from trying it on every night before she went to bed and analyzing the look in her full-length mirror. To Ellie, this bikini was so much more than a bathing suit, it felt like a costume. She remembered how she felt in her first-grade school play when she landed the starring role as The Little Red Hen in The Little Red Hen. She’d felt utterly transformed when she put on her red feathered cape and saw herself not as six-year-old Ellie but as a hardworking member of the poultry family. Her mother had the brilliant idea of stuffing Kleenex into the fingers of yellow dishwashing gloves and slid those on as chicken feet. Ellie felt like a star.


Unfortunately or fortunately, The Little Red Hen was the first and last theatrical accomplishment of Ellie’s life. It turned out that public speaking was not her forté and she had a minor panic attack on stage before the Hen could even announce to the audience with the writing’s intended self-righteousness, “Then I will plant the wheat myself.” Since then, she’d shied away from the spotlight. Now, she had to wonder, was this the piece of the puzzle that her life was missing?


Putting on that brand-new bikini was the first time in her life that she’d felt surprised by her own appearance. Tying those straps around her back and neck turned Ellie Cavill into someone that she barely recognized. It was the material. It was the cut. It was the vibe. Or, maybe, there was some kind of grown-up magic threaded in the weaving of the suit. Because, not gonna lie, that’s how Ellie felt. 


She folded it up into her grey duffel bag along with fourteen extra outfits including six pairs of cutoff jean shorts for the five-day trip. Being fifteen requires a lot of planning. And options. And shorts.


As Ellie sat in the backseat of her parent's Volvo SUV, she turned up Jason Derulo on her iPod Mini and watched the California landscape roll by, she wondered about her future. So many of her peers seemed to have such a clear idea of who they were and where they wanted to go. And, it was always something big. Her best friend Mateo wanted to go into politics. Her next-door neighbor was dead set on moving to LA and becoming an actress. Even Kyle, her brother, seemed to think that he had a potential future in the world of competitive trick skateboarding. Ellie couldn’t imagine any of this. First of all, she broke her wrist the only time she’d ever gotten on Kyle’s board and also, she couldn’t imagine wanting a job, for, like, the rest of your life, where you lived as the center of attention. That’s because she’d really never been the center of attention if you didn't count the hen.


This realization came to Ellie as the family car made its way through the national forest, passing Blue Canyon to Crystal Lake. Ronnie passed the insulated Igloo bag filled with her “famous” turkey sandwiches. Ellie unwrapped one but barely tasted anything. Her mind was elsewhere.


Why had she never been in the spotlight? Did she purposely avoid it? Or, worse, was she just not good enough to stand out? And why oh why oh WHY had this thought never occurred to her before? Was this why she’d never had a boyfriend? 


At the same moment as this cavalcade of intrusive thoughts steamrolled through her brain’s amygdala, Ronnie glanced in the rearview mirror, catching a glimpse of her daughter’s panicked face.


“What’s going on there, Popeye?” When Ellie was three years old and first fell in love with being in the water, she used to make her family watch her flex her biceps after every swim. So, the nickname stuck.


Ellie met her mother’s gaze. Her brother was deep into his video game, his weirdly large headphones blocking him from reality, and her father was listening in on a conference call for work. Ellie felt ok with being honest.


“Why do you think that no one notices me?” Ronnie’s face fell as if she were on one of those elevator rides at Six Flags. Parenting a teenager was full of these heartbreaking moments. 


“Sweetheart, people do notice you. They notice your intelligence, your independence, your intellect. And you are one of the top rowers on the Crew team.”


Ellie tried to take the compliments. Her mom was being sincere. But it felt like she just didn’t get it.


“Yeah, ok, but mom, none of those things matter to other fifteen-year-olds.” Ronnie pursed her lips and shook her head.


“Look, everyone has their time in the sun. And, I know how hard it is to believe your old mom, but I promise you, if your time in the sun is when you’re fifteen, it's a waste.”


Ellie nodded. She knew from so many movies that the nerds in high school ended up being happy as grown-ups and that the mean girls ended up drunk and angry like in Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion.   But what was she supposed to do? Close her eyes and will the next three years to go by? That didn’t seem like a valid option. 


I guess that’s the thing about life… thought Ellie, feeling wise beyond her years, you just have to live it.


Ellie closed her eyes and faded into a daydream about people quoting her brilliant words. She was half asleep when Randy pulled the family car into the cabin. It was a perfectly cozy, 100-year-old place that had been handed down through three generations to some old friends that Ronnie had known since college. Ellie hopped out of the car while it was still running and dashed to the side door which was always open.


She loved the smell of the cabin, a sort of comforting old-ness mixed with Pine-Sol and sunshine.


“I call upstairs!” she yelled for zero reason. Kyle undoubtedly still had his headphones on and wouldn’t hear her.


Not like he hears me with uncovered ears, she thought to herself, bursting into the queen room with a happiness usually reserved for college acceptance letters and puppies.


It was ok, Kyle was a dude. Nothing seemed to faze him. And even though he was pushing 6’2”, he didn’t seem to care about sleeping in a twin bed.


Ellie dumped her backpack on the worn quilt and opened up the creaky windows to let that fresh mountain air in. It was hotter than usual. The cold lake would feel incredible.


“Can we go swimming now?” Ellie called downstairs.


“Absolutely!” Ronnie yelled back. “Your father will be off his call in a minute. Why don’t you and Kyle put the boat on the roof?”


Now, the “boat” was an army green rowboat that had probably been made before the advent of color TV. It could fit two adults comfortably and three adults uncomfortably. They’d been calling it “Turtle” since before anyone could remember. Ellie loved it. She hopped down the stairs two at a time, and found Kyle still glued to his game. She punched him squarely in the arm to get his attention. It worked. That was the thing about being on the crew team. You got really, really strong arms. 


“OW!” Kyle was not happy about this. 


“Help me with the boat.” Kyle scrunched his face at his sister and rubbed his bicep.


“You can obviously lift it by yourself.”


“Come on Kyle. Let’s go. It’s perfect out.” Kyle nodded. As much as he loved Call Of Duty, he also loved the lake.


Soon, the family was parking in the trees and carrying Turtle down to the water.


Ronnie and Randy laid out the beach blanket, set up their chairs, and each pulled out their New York Times Bestsellers that had been sitting unread on each of their respective bedside tables since the beginning of the summer. Kyle rolled up his towel and fell asleep in the sun before Ellie had even finished applying her tanning lotion with the precision of a neuro-scientist (or the precision of a 15-year-old girl.). She looked around the beach. There was a group of very, very cute guys chatting on their towels about 30 feet from the family. 


“Popeye, go enjoy yourself,” her mother said without looking up from her novel. 


As Ellie stood there in her new, brightly colored, crochet bikini, she felt the worst kind of invisible. And that’s Uninvited Invisible. And it can sting worse than the giant horseflies in August. She craned her neck and squinted her eyes. How was it possible that literally zero eyes were on her? Was this her lot in life, her future? Was she destined to be the human version of dusty furniture in the forgotten room of life’s mansion? Ok, that was a little dramatic. But that’s how she felt.


Without anyone noticing (of course,) Ellie pulled Turtle out into the lake. The crisp water made her feet feel like she could run up and down the beach a hundred times. Oh, how Ellie loved it here. She climbed into the little green boat and rowed away from the shore, her arms falling into the familiar rhythm before her brain told them to. 


The lake was glassy and calm, reflecting the bright sun and the Hollywood-set blue sky. Nothing could be more perfect. Sure, she could not be battling a major and potentially life-altering identity crisis but the weather and the vibes were nice. Ellie rowed and rowed. She steered the boat close to the shore and then further out, following schools of tiny fish and the shadows of the sparse clouds gathering at the peaks of the mountains. This was the thing about rowing: Ellie could completely disappear. She didn’t know if she’d been out on the water for twenty minutes or an hour, that’s how deep the meditation went. And, possibly why she didn’t notice the group of guys swimming out to her and Turtle until they were practically hanging off the side of the boat. 


What the...


Ellie felt her heart try to escape out of her mouth. Oh, wait, that was her lunch. All that “famous” turkey.


Before she could find her bearings, the guys were chattering at her a million miles an hour. They were excited, their faces elated, their voices indistinguishable from one another. They were energetic and clearly super fun. And cute. And good swimmers. And - There was only one problem: Ellie didn’t have a fucking clue what they were saying. Because it was all in French. Ellie didn’t take French, she studied Latin.


Great,  she thought to herself as the most handsome of all of the dudes pointed to the beach and made some gesture that she could not interpret,


So happy I took Latin. In case I want to flirt with a guy from… Ancient Rome.


Amidst all the excitement and katzenjammer and long vowel sounds, all Ellie could comprehend was that they were all asking her something. And she got the feeling that they all wanted her to say, “Yes.” Which was great because it was basically the only word that she knew in French.


“Oui!” Ellie answered with her most “come-hither” smile on her lips.


“Oui?!” The second most handsome one answered back. He looked thrilled. He also looked like he would want to hold hands and walk on the beach during sunset and-


“C’est vrai?!” Said another who wasn’t the most handsome but with abs like that, who needed to look at his face anyway? He gestured to his chest. He didn’t need to. She was already staring.


So Ellie nodded away, clearly making these guy’s day. They thanked her in English (she assumed that ‘thank you’ was the only phrase that they knew) and watched them swim back to shore, their tan skin glistening as a metaphor for the perfect day.


Ellie shook her head,  Of course, I can’t even talk to the hottest guys on the beach…  ‘Est pessium,’ and for a moment, she thought that the Latin phrase summed up the moment quite accurately. 


She turned Turtle around and slowly made her way back to shore, broken from the concentration of her methodical rowing, now just sort of drifting towards her family. Soon she was close enough to see her parent’s face. They were not happy.


“Ellie, ELLIE, POPEYE!!!!!” her mother screamed, waving her arms and some wild gesture that was either ridiculous or obscene. 


Since Ellie had no idea what her mother was trying to communicate, she couldn’t differentiate between the two. Her father, on the other hand, stood there on the beach silently, his face a shade of red that no one would ever want to see standing out in the sun.


“COVER UP!” Ellie could finally make out her mother’s words. She quickened her pace and paddled closer to the shore. She knew she wasn’t burned. She’d put on a shit ton of sun lotion. She looked at her shoulders just to make sure. But her shoulders didn’t have a chance of getting her attention. 


Because that's when she finally noticed that her adorable crocheted bikini top was not where she had put it on when she had left the beach. Nope, it was somewhere else. The triangles had migrated to her armpits and her boobs were on full display for all of Lake Tahoe with eyes. She dropped her oars and grabbed at her crocheted fashion statement. Her eyes darted to the spot on the sand where the handsome French guys had set up camp, begging the universe for them to be looking at something else. It turns out, she didn’t need to worry. 


Because something else, even less appropriate was happening at that very same moment.


As Ellie got closer to shore, she heard the racket. The beach had erupted with commotion. There were angry fathers, hysterical mothers, and horrified children. People were yelling and screaming, and no, there wasn’t a bear. There was, however, the group of French guys playing beach volleyball. 


And they were all buck-ass-naked.


It took Ellie an entire minute to piece together her role in this unraveling drama. What had the dudes been asking her? Why were they so happy?


Oh…


The French guys wanted to know if Lake Tahoe in Northern California in the United States Of America, was a nude beach. And they’d asked Ellie because she was unknowingly topless. And they were all so excited because French People loved nude beaches (this may not be true for the whole country, but it was definitely true for these five guys.) 


Horrified, Ellie ran to her family’s blanket, dragging Turtle along behind her.


“Ellie! That suit is inappropriate!” Her mother chastised.


“That’s nothing compared to the naked guys!” Her father choked out.


“Maybe we should get going?” Kyle was now embarrassed enough to have woken up and be in problem-solving mode.


“UM YES!” Ellie grabbed her towel and sunscreen and every single family member’s beach bag, running to the car in her bare feet. She dropped it off at the end of the parking lot and hid behind the side of the car and waited for her family to catch the hell up.


“You know I’m going to have to tell everyone about this?” Kyle said as he slowly opened the back seat of the baking hot car.


Ellie nodded. She knew. She also now knew that going unnoticed was not always a bad thing. And she was fine waiting for her time in the sun. 


Sweet Dreams


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