Losing Her (2 page)

I stopped by a window in the upstairs hall, hearing squeals and screaming, and discovered it looked out onto the backyard of the Bosse family. My eyes scanned over each of them, examining their carefree smiles. They were all pretty, and my twelve-year-old body was overtly aware of their small bikinis in every shade of the rainbow as they raced around the pool, giggling.

I turned away, feeling a familiar sense of rage from their blissfulness, and silently sent another curse to my own father who took that from us when he left.

Later that afternoon while I was unpacking my clothes from boxes, folding each item into perfect squares just as I was taught from a young age, our doorbell rang. I stopped and stood in place, dreading it was the new neighbors.

“Hi, I’m Muriel. You must be Dr. Miller.”

“Oh, please, call me Sharon. It’s nice to meet you, Muriel.” I heard my mom’s voice meet the southern twang at the door.

Some more sounds filtered through the house, and then my mom yelled for each of us to come downstairs. I dropped the shirt I was in the middle of folding and ran a hand through my short hair. I didn’t want to meet the damn Brady Bunch.

I trudged down the stairs and got punched hard in the bicep by Billy as he raced past me, making me dislike the blond parade even more.

We gathered around the bare living room that had only our couches and a few boxes. I was used to feeling like my brothers and I occupied too much space. It had always seemed that our friends in Arizona were only children, or on rare instances had one sibling. Somehow the three of us felt like a group of twelve, yet I felt grossly outnumbered as I looked around at the mass of blondes standing around the room, all wearing a matching smile.

“These are my boys: Hank, Billy, and Max. Boys, these are our neighbors. Dr. Bosse’s wife, Muriel, and their children.”

“He doesn’t like to be called Dr. Bosse outside of the hospital,” a girl piped up, looking intently at my mom as she provided this piece of information.

I looked over at Muriel and briefly studied her. She was thin and her hair and clothes looked too clean, like she was a mannequin rather than an actual person. Her eyes flicked to mine, feeling my stare, and she smiled warmly at me before I turned my attention away.

“It’s nice to meet y’all. These are my kids: Mindi, Savannah, Kendall, Jenny, Kyle, and Ace,” she said, going down the order in which they stood.

I noticed the girl that had corrected my mom about David’s name was Kendall, and then saw the youngest, Ace, reach up and grasp the boy’s hand. He had messy blond hair as well, but something about him didn’t fit. He didn’t look much like the others that were all quite similar. I replayed their names again in my head, already forgetting the first two. All of their names were feminine, and yet Ace seemed like something that a baseball player or a special agent would be named. It was oddly fitting for her somehow.

“You’re all very beautiful.” I could hear the smile in my mom’s voice without turning to see it.

My eyes skittered across the first two girls smiling broadly at the assessment and then moved to Ace, who was obviously uncomfortable as she shifted her weight to stand a little closer to the guy. I wondered if it was because of my mother’s compliment, or if it was my brothers and I that made her feel so uneasy.

“And handsome too,” my mom amended.

“Thanks, I’m sort of an honorary member of the family. I’m just here a lot,” Kyle replied. I watched Ace squeeze his hand more firmly as her brow furrowed.

“He’s family,” Muriel interjected almost immediately. A grin slid across his face, exposing relief. It made me wonder what his connection was to the family, and why he seemed so comfortable with them all, especially Ace.

“Is there anything we can help y’all with?” Muriel asked, looking around at the array of boxes cluttering the walls in the hallway behind us.

“No, no,” my mom instantly replied, much to my relief. As much as I wanted to hate each and every one of those blondes for being so happy, I felt inclined to stare and study them and note in detail each of their differences. “We’re just getting things settled and trying to find a home for everything. I’ve forgotten what a chore moving can be.”

“I believe it. If you guys change your minds, please let me know. We’re all more than happy to help.”

None of the girls looked equipped to help as they stood in clothes that looked too fancy for summer, and shoes that ranged from heels, to flip flops with heels, to Ace who wore a pair of black Converse sneakers with the laces hanging around the soles, untied and looking dirty, like she stepped on them more often than tied them. I looked back at her face. She was the tannest of all the girls, and her hair was a shade darker. Each of the girls had blue eyes that were the same shade as their swimming pool, but Ace’s were an exact replica of David’s dark brown eyes.

Her brown eyes flashed to me as I stared at her, but I didn’t look away. If there was one thing I’d learned from my brothers, it was to not show embarrassment or unease, because they were signs of weakness. Her face turned away as she took a step closer to Kyle, hiding a bit more of herself behind his arm.

My eyes fell to the middle girl, Jenny. I could tell she was older than me, but her warm smile and carefree attitude made me instantly attracted to her. I’d noticed her in the pool, wearing a bright purple bikini.

“Thank you all so much for offering. We really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you all again.”

“Absolutely, we’ll do a barbecue or something soon. You boys come on over anytime. We have a pool that’s nice for when it starts gettin’ too hot.”

I watched Kyle’s head turn to Billy, his face a silent threat. Twisting to look at Billy, I saw his eyes gleaming. Apparently it didn’t take knowing my middle brother to know what he was picturing in his dirty mind.

Ace fell in the middle of her siblings as they headed toward the door. Muriel took up the rear as they filed outside.

“It was lovely meeting y’all,” she said, producing another large smile as she turned to face us again.

“You too. Thanks again for stopping by,” my mom said, smiling in return.

That was my first interaction with the Bosse girls, and one of the last. My brothers and I never took them up on going over there, but living next door I saw them frequently, constantly connected to one another like Legos, interchanging different blond heads. Occasionally I encountered them, at the bus stop, or through the halls at school over the years, but I never made any effort to return their smiles or friendly greetings.

Billy loved to tease me about Kendall since we had quickly discovered she was the same age as me, but my attention never stayed with her long. She was attractive, but her correction to my mom about David’s name was not the only the time I saw her bossy attitude. I encountered it a million times more over the following year when we had several classes together. She wasn’t just assertive; she was a perfectionist. Annoyingly so, and she had a swarm of boys chasing her from the first day of school. I had no interest in competing with any of them, especially when my experience with girls up to that point had been nonexistent.

Hank and Billy were both disappointed to learn that Kyle was family by association because he was dating Mindi. Both of them had thought she was hot, and therefore hated Kyle instantly. We saw her the least. She moved out the following year with Kyle.

Savannah was the next in line, and for a while I think Billy was pretty interested in her, but he never pursed it and she never needed to seek attention. She left for Chapman University the year after we moved in and became a shadow, returning and spending her time following along with her sisters.

Hank decided to forgo returning to Arizona for college that fall with the excuse that he wanted to make sure mom was settled. After some strongly advised encouragement that sounded a lot more like threats from our mom, he enrolled at a local community college. He met a girl there that he dated off and on, and lived with us two years longer than he’d originally planned. Then he went home to visit a friend in Arizona and met Sarah. It took him six months to come home and gather his things before permanently moving back to Arizona.

We all returned a year later for their wedding, marking the third time that my Grandma Miller cried.

None of the Bosse girls paid much attention to me other than the occasional polite greeting they gave to everyone, but they didn’t need to. They had a double-digit line of guys that happily worked to pursue them. The summer before I started high school, I thought Kendall or Ace was trying to catch my attention, but was pretty certain they were just trying to get a reaction out of me, or wanted me to join the hordes of guys fawning over them. I wasn’t about to sign up for that shit.

I saw Kendall the most since we had multiple classes together and occasionally crossed paths within our friend circles. When we got to high school, she and Jenny both seemed to have a full-fledged parade of girls behind them everywhere they went. I wanted to hate them, but I never did see or hear any of them being rude to anyone. It was like people were just innately drawn to them and their beauty.

Jenny got pregnant my freshman year, which shocked the entire school and put a slight damper on her popularity. Kendall had instantly ditched her usual crowd of cajoling monkeys to be with her at every break and lunch. At home the two were usually connected as well. However, it was Ace that Kendall was inseparable from since the day we’d moved in.

Over the years Ace seemed to grow into herself, becoming more confident, and smiling and conversing more freely. She caused the biggest stir of the Bosse girls; the day she started high school the entire locker room was abuzz as guys talked about her, placing bets on who would be the first to date her and successfully mark her. Javier reminded us all of the Bosse rule that prevented any of the girls from dating until they were sixteen. Many of the guys disregarded the warning, swearing they’d be able to manage the task. She was followed by swarms of them as they tried to get close to her. Each was filed away to the friend zone and heckled relentlessly by the others that were willing to wait.

By the time she was sixteen, it didn’t take long before she was on the arm of multiple guys, never spending much time on any one before moving on to the next, providing me with another reason to avoid her. Guys that found out I was neighbors with the Bosses begged for me to invite them over, which quickly became one of my biggest pet peeves.

One day, my junior year, I was passing the soccer field to reach the parking lot and heard someone call my name. I looked up to see who it was and watched Ace kick a goal in from centerfield. Baseball had always been my sport, but watching her and the focus on her face as she began dribbling a new ball the coach passed her was one of the hottest things I’d ever seen.

Maddie Simmons waved to me a few feet to the left, and I watched as other girls got distracted as more guys from baseball streamed by, but Ace didn’t turn her attention from the ball as she continued down the field. In that single moment, she began stalking my thoughts and continued to do so for years.

By that time I had my own admirers and I was happy to distract my wandering thoughts. I quickly learned there was a good number of girls that were just as anxious to have no-strings-attached relationships. I didn’t look down at them for it or consider them skanks. They wanted to experiment with their sexuality … with me. There wasn’t a lot to complain about.

I went through a short line of them before my mom came home early one day and interrupted one of the sexual experiments we were conducting in my room. It was one of the most horribly awkward moments of my seventeen years. She kicked the girl out then sat me down and made me learn about every STD out there, showing me graphic images and talking to me about parenting and the responsibilities that it carried. It worked for a while. Then I started bringing girls home after a few months of remaining dateless and completely celibate. It was too easy with only having one parent that often worked long hours. But my mother’s words had become emblazoned on my mind, often stopping me from doing much more than making out and feeling them up, and occasionally earning a hand job in return.

I knew most of the school thought I’d been laid by half of the female class—or classes—and although it was a far stretch, I never made any attempt to correct them. Apparently the girls that were rumored to have slept with me rarely made an attempt to correct the rumors either.

David remained a friendly figure, always making a point of greeting me and talking to me as though he knew who I was and cared to. He continued to invite me over to see his Chevelle and would talk sports with me, not seeming to mind that I kept conversations short.