Stuff

My bedroom door slams behind me, harder than I'd meant for it to, and I fall facedown onto my bed. It's a beautiful day, the first day of summer, and the world is full of possibility, but none of that matters. My dreams are crushed, my hopes ruined. What inspiration the day might have held just a few minutes before has been stamped out, left with not even a flicker.
Okay. Maybe I'm being a bit dramatic. I realize my hormonal teenage brain is made to make everything seem worse than it really is, and I'm obviously overreacting. I mean, my cousin from Louisiana coming for the entire summer can't be all bad, can it? She's the same age as me, and I'm sure she'll have lots of insightful Louisiana things to say. It might even be interesting. Lord knows I need something interesting to keep me from going even crazier in this boring place.
But this summer was supposed to be the best yet. It was so open, so full of the unknown. I was going to go on adventures, find true love at last, get experience, solve mysteries. And now my hicktown cousin is coming for the entire summer. The entire summer. She probably wears overalls and has an accent and doesn't even know what a computer is, leaving absolutely no possibility for adventure or mystery.
I sigh, deciding that I might as well make the most of the few days I have before she arrives. I roll lazily off the bed and go outside, not bothering with shoes. The late afternoon sun is still warm, and I stop for a minute and close my eyes to bask in it before making my way over to the shed.
Now, the shed, though it's called a shed, isn't really a shed. It's more of a house, complete with a kitchen, and bathroom. It doesn't have any separate rooms, just a large open area and a loft circling the outer perimeter, but I like it better like this anyway. We live on an old farm from the 1800's; our house is a hundred years old and the property is complete with a barn, a couple real sheds, and our 'shed'. I've kind of taken over this shed, claiming it as my own and filling it with my many hobbies that come and go. I enter and don't turn on any lights; the windows provide a dusky twilight that provides a mood that I like.
The room is filled with collections of art supplies, musical instruments, antiques, nicknacks, old furniture, and dried flowers. The easel my dad built when I expressed my desire to be an artist sits in the corner, still blank. Although I had discovered a talent for painting, the canvas hadn't been enough and I instead had painted a starry sky on the ceiling and a mystical forest on the walls. The piano I had found at an estate sale in town is beside the easel, covered in antique music books and metronomes. There's a surplus of abandoned farms around here, and it isn't hard to find cool old stuff hidden in rotting trunks and padlocked closets. I've acquired a collection of colorful loveseats and ottomans, a couple stained glass tables and at least six glittering lamps. I also have a rocking horse, a fiddle that doesn't work, a 1985 Fender guitar in pristine condition that I'm afraid to play, hundreds of blank diaries that I never got to in my short-lived attempt at writing, and a pair of beautifully beaded moccasins that are too small but beautiful just the same. Also, I have my books. The one acitivity I never, ever had gotten bored with is reading. Books are stacked in corners, on tables, under couches, and just about everywhere you look. Aside from a couple of giant beanbags from the sixties, courtesy of my ex-hippie father, the entire loft is covered in books. I love them because they're filled with the lives that I'm too afraid to have. Daring heroines and faraway lands, all contained in my books, and I devour every single one; they fuel my dreams and aspirations, even though I know I'm too timid and scared to ever fulfill them.
Just as I settle down with my latest novel, my mother's voice rings across the yard, calling me to dinner. I sigh, flip the book over onto the arm of the couch, and trudge into the house. As I sit down at the table I remember that I'm supposed to be mad at my parents, and quickly arrange my face into a suitably angry expression. Apparently, the look carries out its purpose.
"MayBeth, dear, what's troubling you?" my father asks. I scowl even more, wondering how many times I've asked them to call me May. To avoid answering, I shove in a mouthful of food. Over my beef stew I see my parents exchange a glance. "If it's what we talked about earlier, we hope you'll understand. Your cousin SaraJane wants so much to visit us, and from what your mother has told us about her sister, I'm sure she'll be lovely."
"You'll love her, I promise," my mother assures me in her southern twang. "You two will get along just perfectly, you'll be best friends by the time the summer ends." Somehow I doubt that. I already can't stand the few relatives on my mother's side that I have met, and I'm sure this SaraJane won't be any different. I ponder yet again the Southerners' fascination with double names. My mother's name is MaryEllen, which is perhaps the worst of them all. It's taken many years of practice to keep teachers from announcing my real name to the class at the beginning of the year, and only my parents have ever called me MayBeth.
I finish my dinner and mumble an excuse, then run outside to enjoy the remnants of sunlight. I think about going over to Chris's, my childhood friend who lives just down the road, but don't think I can stand his cheerful optimism at the moment. He'll probably say that SaraJane will be lots of fun and I'll be her best friend, just like my parents, when all I want is for someone to curse her, my parents, and the world, and share in my frustration and disappointment. Instead I retreat back to the shed, where I get lost in the world of an Indian princess whose already wonderful life has just been enhanced by the presence of a foreign prince.

A couple days later, days that have been spent moping about and reading instead of adventuring and dream-fulfilling, SaraJane arrives. One benefit of her arrival is that we get to leave our tiny Midwestern farm town for a day in the city to pick her up from the airport. As we wait for her in the terminal, I gaze at all the travelers around me, concocting exotic stories about each of them. Just as I see a particularly eccentric old man with the potential for a very interesting story, my mother tugs excitedly on my sleeve and points.
"Look! There she is! Oh, isn't she perdy?" she exclaims. "She looks just like her mother, bless her heart, if only EmilyAnn could've come too!" I turn to look at my cousin, and at first think that my mother is mistaken. This is the mysterious Southern cousin that's coming to stay with us all summer? She's not a hillbilly! She doesn't have buck teeth, or even overalls! In fact, she's beautiful, in a naive, Southern kind of way. She has long, flowing blond hair like some kind of movie or something, and perfect skin. Her eyes are sparkly blue, and her bare legs are long and smooth. As she reaches us, I see that she's a little shorter than me, but she has perfect swelling curves, as opposed to my somewhat thin, ganglier build. She's dressed in a cutoff denim skirt and pink flannel shirt, and behind her is a large black suitcase. She looks like a model from a Levi's ad.
"Hi," she says, smiling brightly to reveal sparkling teeth with a cute little gap in the middle. Up close I can see that she has a smattering of cinnamon-colored freckles. "I'm SaraJane. You must be MayBeth." Her accent is even stronger than my mother's, and she stresses the May in my name instead of the Beth. She reaches out to give me a hug, which I awkwardly return even though I'm definitely not a hug person. As soon as she's released me, my mother rushes in for an embrace, cooing about how she hasn't seen her since she was a baby and she's all grown up and a beautiful young woman now.
We leave the airport, and on the way home my mom questions SaraJane about everyone 'back home', like how's cousin Jess doin' and whatever happened to old Uncle Jack (her answer to which my father whistles, shakes his head, and says, "He always was a crazy old bastard.") I realize very soon that while I was right about not liking her, I was wrong about the way I wouldn't like SaraJane. I had thought that she would be some hillbilly freak that I could look down on, who would trail behind me saying, 'you shore do got a lotta doohickies aroun' heere', but instead she's smart, beautiful, and maddeningly innocent and perfect. This is going to be a long, long summer.
When we reach home my father opens the trunk and carries her luggage in for her, instructing me to show her around. I give her a tour of the house, and when we reach my room she gasps and says how lovely it is and blahblahblah. I wasn't planning on showing her my shed, because it's my personal space and I really, really don't want to share it with her, but my mother pops her head in as I'm showing her the room she'll stay in and asks if I've showed her my shed yet. Reluctantly I shake my head and bring her outside. If she was impressed with my room, then she's blown away with the shed. She goes on and on about how beautiful the walls and ceilings are, and when she sees the piano she positively shrieks, of course politely asks if I mind if she plays, and when I shake my head, proceeds to play a brilliant, complicated melody that outdoes my entire six years of piano lessons and intense practicing. To make matters worse, when she notices all my books, she gets really excited and exclaims that she, too, loves to read, and is so glad I do as well. I mean, if she had laughed at my books and told me they were stupid, it would have been easy for me to hate her. But the fact that she loves books is much, much worse, because books are my thing, and she knows nothing about them, she can't possibly love them as much as I do, and I hate her even more because she thinks her love of them even comes close to comparing with mine. When she's finished babbling about her favorite love story or something dumb like that, we go back outside. A slightly awkward silence follows.
The silence is broken by a gasp from SaraJane. I look up to see Chris getting his mail.
"Do you know him?" SaraJane asks me.
"Chris? Yeah," I answer tentatively.
"Is he...your boyfriend?"
I let out a snort.
"Not at all. Ew." Chris has been my friend since we were born, two days apart in the same hospital. We've grown up doing everything together, and it's absurd to think of him in any romantic way.
"Well, he sure is cute," SaraJane giggles. I mime a gagging noise. Just then, Chris notices us and makes his way over. As he comes toward us, I look at him from an objective point of view and realize that SaraJane is, in a way, right. His chocolate brown hair is shaggy and falls appealingly into his eyes, and he's toned and tan from all the work that he and his dad do on their farm down the road. His dark eyes are mysterious and cunning, and when he smiles he has cute little dimples that any girl (except me) would fall for.
"Hi, May," he says when he reaches us, demonstrating said smile."I'm Chris, May's cousin." He takes SaraJane's dainty hand in is.
"SaraJane," she giggled. "I'm MayBeth's cousin. I'll be stayin' here for the summer." Chris's smile widens. I almost gag, them mumble something about forgetting something in the shed and quickly leave the two of them together, though I'm not sure if it's such a good idea. I go back to the shed and watch them from the window. For some reason, the sight of them flirting makes my stomach slightly upset. I figure it's probably because I hate SaraJane so much, even though she is perfectly nice, and lovely, and everything my mother said she would be. Chris and SaraJane start making their way over, SaraJane still giggling at something Chris said that was apparently hilarious, which is weird, because I seem to remember Chris being terrible at making jokes.