I looked at myself in the big mirror on the back of the door.

Another Country -9-
by Erin Halfelven

I carried clean clothes with me to the shower. My bathroom opens off the hall, so I’ve always done it that way. John, when he was still living here, would forget and have to run back to his bedroom in just a towel. I’ve always been kind of paranoid about someone walking in on me, too.

But the bathroom door has a lock, so I flipped the lever before I got undressed while I let the shower run to get hot. Or warm, at least. Mom wanted a shower, too, so I’d better not use all the hot water.

Naked, I looked at myself in the big mirror on the back of the door. I’m fifteen, short, and sort of scrawny compared to Josh or even my brother. And I haven’t changed much since I started high school. Except for the puffiness in my chest, which I had started noticing around Christmas. Back then, there had been hard little nodules inside the puffy tissue around my nipples. Like a cookie with a nut in it.

Now, there was some noticeable bruising from Chud’s joking around, but even more noticeable and kind of alarming was the definite—shape!— of the mound of flesh. Like small titties, girl titties….

There was no good reason for me to be growing titties. No reason at all, but certainly no good one. Yet there they were. Mom’s little chart said A/AA, and that was a bra size. If they kept growing, would I need to wear a bra?

I was afraid to touch them. They didn’t hurt, really but they kind of tingled thinking about them. And then I thought of something else. What I’d seen from the top of the stairs through Josh’s door. It felt a bit like electricity when I thought of it. In my groin and my nipples.

Damn.

I grabbed a towel and dry-scrubbed my skin until the sensations went away. After putting the towel aside, I got under the water, turning it almost completely cool. And found some relief from where my imaginings had been going. I sudsed my hair with shampoo, then soaped my body, rinsed and repeated, then rinsed again, keeping with the cool stream.

It was a warm enough day that I didn’t shiver. Being clean felt good and I used deodorant where I thought it would do some good. I wrapped a towel around my hair to soak up some excess water.

Then, on a whim, I got out one of our big beach towels and wrapped it around me the way I had seen girls do in movies. I stared at my reflection, adjusted the towel again and did some more staring. The towel made it look like I was wearing a dress, one with broad stripes, sideways palm trees and surfers on vertical waves. I’d fitted the towel tight just above my nipples and it pushed up some of the excess flesh there into a couple of half-hidden mounds.

I felt my face get hot. I knew I looked pretty good—for a girl. And odd idea that probably should have been more disturbing. But I wondered, what would Josh think?

*

I got dressed in the shorts and polo Mom, and I had discussed. The shorts needed a belt to snug them up. Had they always been so short? My legs looked good, though. Was the polo opaque enough? Maybe not. I’d better wear a T-shirt under the polo, too.

I fussed with my hair a bit. I was getting shaggy, my last haircut had been before Christmas. Maybe Thanksgiving? I never seem to be able to keep it combed and the barber always teases me about just buzzing it all off. Yikes!

On my way back to my room, I heard Mom call out that she was starting her shower. “Yeah, okay!” I shouted back. I’d left my dirty clothes, towels and washcloths in the bathroom hamper, but now I had nothing to do until Dad and John arrived.

I spent some time in front of my mirror. I even changed clothes a few times but ended up back in the outfit I’d picked out before: turquoise shorts and white polo. I debated with myself about putting on socks to wear with my sandals. Maybe if I had a pair of thin turquoise socks; thick white socks would look too dorky.

Cindy and her mom would be here tomorrow. What would Cindy be wearing? Her folks owned a bed-and-breakfast place on the coast, and Cindy always dressed nice to serve as hostess in the restaurant. But at heart, she was a horse-person and owned a championship dressage horse named Petula, a cream-colored mare with black mane and tail. Beautiful horse, and Cindy looked good on top of it.

She favored tight jeans and Western-style shirts in bright colors and turquoise jewelry. Her boots had high heels and colorful inlays, and each pair probably cost more than my whole wardrobe. She wasn’t just pretty, she was glamorous.

Cindy’s mom was an older, more elegant version of her daughter. Something about Antonia rubbed my mom the wrong way. She sounded British but was from someplace in Maryland. She was what Mom called “a Santa Barbara-type,” meaning Mom thought she was a phony. She had platinum blonde hair no longer than mine but worn in a sort of helmet tightly fitted to her head. She once confessed to wearing green contacts.

It might be unpleasant to be around Mom and Antonia tomorrow, but going with Dad and John to fetch Uncle David’s trailer didn’t sound like much fun either. They both thought that since I played basketball, I must like all sports. The college roundball tournament would be starting soon, and I didn’t even really care about that.

Besides, getting Uncle David’s trailer out from under the fir trees where I last saw it parked would probably involve hot, dirty, itchy work that didn’t appeal to me. Maybe if I stayed here I could sneak off and spend part of the day with Josh.

Why was I blushing?