The Summer of '42
Lubrican
The Summer of '42
by Robert Lubrican
Bookapy Edition
Copyright 2020 Robert Lubrican
License Notes
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Table of Contents
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten
******
Foreword
When I was a teenager I saw the movie "Summer of '42" and I'd have to say it affected me like it probably affected any other testosterone-filled young man of the day. I still think of that movie from time to time and I suspect that the idea for this story originated from my relationship with that film. Originally, the title of this story was going to be "The Summer of '43". I didn't want to infringe on the movie title. But when I got into the timeline, the primary action in the plot had to take place in 1942, instead of 1943. I couldn't change that, because I couldn't change history. I know lots of politicians ignore or revise history, but I'm not a politician. So my apologies to anyone who feels that the title of the movie should not be defamed. In my defense, I did add the word "The" to my title. My story is set in roughly 2015.
******
Chapter One
My name is Jennifer. It doesn't really matter who I am, but every story like this I ever saw starts off with an introduction like that, so there you go.
What matters is that I have a relative in my family tree named Jennifer, too. I don't think I'm named after her, but I don't know for sure one way or the other. I believe her official relationship to me is great aunt, because she was my grandpa's sister.
I can already tell that using the full, proper relationship titles would be really tedious, so I'm just going to call them by their given names, sometimes. I grew to think of Great Aunt Jennifer as just Aunt Jennifer, so if I call her that, don't get confused.
There were five kids in her family: four boys and one girl, and Jennifer was the girl. From what I understand, she was the middle child, and my grandpa Rick was the youngest of them all.
We don't know much about them, because all the boys except Rick died in WWII. We didn't know anything about Jennifer at all until I found her diary. I'd never even heard of her until I found that. Us kids had never heard of any of them, for that matter. That's not strange, I guess. How much do you know about your grandfather's sister, or those who died in WWII?
Anyway, her diary, the diary that changed my whole life, was in an old trunk up in the attic of my grandmother's house, and I wouldn't have known it existed if my brother, Bobby, hadn't found it and gotten into it and found a bunch of relics from WWII. He was sixteen at the time, and I was fifteen, and he knew that if he told anybody what he'd found, the adults would take it all and he'd never get his hands on any of it again. At the same time, he just couldn't hold it in that he'd found an actual Nazi dagger, and a pistol belt with a real, actual leather holster on it, and some metal things he called magazines that hold bullets. There was a cap that had a little embroidered skull on the front of it and some rectangular thick pieces of cloth Bobby said were shoulder tabs. They had two Zs on them, kind of italicized, that he said were actually esses. Even I had heard of the SS in WWII, but all I knew was that they were bad people.
There were also thick bundles of letters. Bobby wasn't interested in them, but I was. They were letters the boys wrote home during the war, before they were killed.
And, there was Jennifer's diary.
It wasn't a diary that covered her whole life, growing up. It started, in fact, when she was sixteen. The first entry was December 7th, 1941.
Her two older brothers, Jerry and Phil, enlisted and were gone from the house within two weeks. The entries for all of December were written in a shaky hand, and they were splotched in places. It was so plain that she was crying when she wrote them that it took me back, even though I'd never been there. I felt like I was her. Maybe that's because my own older brother, Nathan, was over in Afghanistan, right then.
Anyway, once I saw those tear stains, I was hooked. The language was a little stilted, kind of formal, but the parts that were made with firm, sure strokes of the pen were easy to read. She had wonderful penmanship. I said that diary changed my life, but it was really the story she told that brought about immense changes in the way I think about things. It affected my whole mental process and I can't keep something that powerful a secret. At the same time, I can't tell you who I really am. You'll understand why when you read the rest of this. I still had to share what she wrote, though.
This, then ... is Jennifer's story.
******
Before I begin, or get into the meat of the issue, let me say that transcribing her entries verbatim would also be tedious. I will quote her in some places, but not most of the time. So I'm going to use what my English teacher calls narrative license for most of this. When I told her I was going to write a story about what was in my great-aunt's diary she lit up and said she'd give me extra credit. I asked her if it was okay to summarize and kind of update the writing and she said using narrative license is just fine and dandy. I'll never get that extra credit, though, because she'll never read this story. Again, you'll understand why after you've read it.
******
In early December, 1941, the whole nation was in an uproar. President Roosevelt addressed the country on the radio on December 8th, and asked Congress to declare war.
Jerry and Phil went to the recruiting station together. They had mother and father's blessings and father actually took them in the car, instead of making them walk. Jerry had always loved swimming in the creek, so he went into the Navy. Phil was an expert marksman, and he chose the Army.
There had been a lot of arguing going on about whether the United States should be meddling in other people's affairs in Europe. Jennifer didn't know anybody who'd actually ever been to Europe, much less Japan. To all the kids, those were just words on the big globe at school. They were no different than words like New York City, or San Francisco, which were also words on a map that conjured up no images at all.
But after Pearl Harbor, the arguing stopped.
Her first entry, though, also talked about what happened on December 6th, the day before everything changed.
December 6th was a Saturday and all five kids did what they always did on a Saturday. They went for a bike ride on the dirt roads outside of town. The bike rides were something that had started when they were all very young, and it bonded them in ways that most of us might not understand, these days. They weren't just bumpy rides along dusty roads. They were explorations of Ali Baba and the den of thieves, or King Arthur and the knights of the round table. Fairy tales (all of them gruesome) were acted out. The boys became John Dillinger, or Baby Face Nelson, and Jennifer played the parts of Ma Barker, or Bonnie Parker. She was a princess who was saved from peril a hundred times. As the bicycles set them free from merely plodding along on two feet, their imaginations flew free, too.
Back then this wasn't lame, like I'm sure modern teenagers would characterize it, today. Back then it was merely entertainment, and her entries glowed as she described them. December 6th was one of the last two rides they all took together. The 13th was the last, and by then the mood had changed. Jerry and Phil were going to war. It was only the strength of the bond between the siblings that made them ride that day at all.
When Jerry and Phil were gone, suddenly Jennifer was the eldest. She was the eldest by technicality, since she was only fifteen minutes older than her twin, Herbert, but it was clear she exerted seniority. Well ... in all but one thing, which I'll get to in a bit.
Ricky, my own grandfather, was thirteen when the war started. He itched to "get in the scrap", but he was too young and everybody in town (including the recruiter) knew how old he really was. Nobody who lived in Oxbow could lie about their age to enlist, like happened in other places. Since he couldn't go fight, Ricky, as it would turn out, made it his personal mission to find and recycle all kinds of metal. Everybody outside of town had a junk pile, usually in a gully, or dip in the land, and those were places of untold wealth for a boy like Ricky. He spent every Saturday digging through piles of what used to be trash, looking for brass or lead, and collecting rags and paper to turn in at the central recycling point in town.
Which meant that, on Saturdays between January and September, 1942, when Jennifer's twin brother enlisted in the Marines, it was just Jennifer and Herb who went on the weekly Saturday bike rides.
And that sets up what she talked about in her diary the most, and which must have been the biggest secret of her whole life.
******
Back then, girls didn't wear pants, so when Jennifer went on bike rides with Herb, she wore a skirt and a blouse. The weather in Oxbow was balmy. That's the word she used. She said it got hot later in the summer, and sometimes it rained. Rain would become important later in the summer, because it meant they did not go for a ride, and spent the day at home.
Jennifer's father worked in a small factory that, before the war, made little plates that had a machine's model number on it, and who built it and that sort of thing. Those plates got attached to things other factories made. After Pearl Harbor, the plates they produced all said: "This machine conforms to orders of the War Production Board". These little plates were sent off to other factories to be put on whatever they made that contributed to the war effort. It didn't sound very impressive to Jennifer, but her father was proud of his work. Her mother was a school teacher. The kids, of course, went to school. Basically, Jennifer's diary was about what life was like for an average girl in an average town when America got into the war. It was obvious that things were different, but they also tried to keep things as familiar as possible. That's why Jennifer and Herb kept going for bike rides every Saturday.
The first entry in the diary that was different from the rest, and which hooked me even deeper, was dated June 6th, a Saturday. America had been at war for about six months.
She had packed a picnic basket, and strapped it to the carrier on the back of her bike. She and Herb rode out by "Old Man Simpson's Farm" which was, apparently, remote, meaning that the road that led to that area didn't go anywhere except to farms. In other entries she talked about riding on main roads, where cars had been frequent in the past, but which now had very little motor traffic. Seeing a car on the road was an adventure during those days, because whoever had the gasoline rations to drive around must be an important person.
On this Saturday, when they stopped to enjoy their picnic lunch, Jennifer spread out the blanket on which they would sit, and began to unpack the lunch. She said Herb just stood there, watching her. She said his face looked odd.
"What's wrong with you?" she asked.
"You're really pretty," he said.
She thought that was funny, but he didn't smile when she laughed.
He came toward her, looking down at where she was sitting. Her legs were folded under her, covered by her long skirt.
Herb reached for the hem of the skirt and slid it up, exposing one calf. She said she was so shocked that she froze. Herb's hand kept moving the skirt until one hip, encased in cotton panties was exposed. He said nothing, and she just sat there, stunned. Eventually, her skirt was folded back around her waist until her entire lower body was exposed to his view.
"Leave it that way while we eat," was all he said.
That was odd enough that it gave me pause. I had tried to imagine what that must have been like back then, with things like sugar and coffee being rare and rationed. People were worried all the time, about the war, and about their loved ones who were off fighting it. I only have two siblings, Nathan and Bobby. Nathan is four years older, and basically ignored me for the last five or six years. Bobby is a year older than me, so I understand what it's like to be a little sister, but it's not really the same. Life was too different for them for us to really grasp it. Trying to imagine riding a bike out into the countryside with Bobby, and then him exposing my panties ... it's just crazy!
Anyway, she said she was "flummoxed", a word I had to look up, and she just sat there like that, until he pushed a sandwich toward her mouth and she finally began to eat. She said he kept looking at her legs, and that it made her get butterflies in her stomach.
They packed up and finished their bike ride that day, and Herb didn't say another word about what had happened. He acted like nothing had happened. He kept acting normal all week, until Friday night, when he asked if she'd prepare another picnic for them for their ride on the 13th. I guess it never occurred to her that he might do that again, or to suggest they not ride. I'm not sure what I would have done.
On the 13th, Jennifer packed meatloaf sandwiches and apples, along with a mason jar filled with water, and off they went. Again, Herb took the lead and, again, he led them to a secluded area outside of town. She said she knew, somehow, that he would "do something" again.
That sounds ominous, today, but I didn't get the impression she was worried. Her writing made it sound as if she merely anticipated her twin's behavior.
Again, when they sat down on the blanket, he moved her skirt to expose her legs.
"You're so pretty," he said.
"You know Father would stripe your butt if he knew you did this," she said.
"I know," he said. "It would be worth it."
Again, all he did was stare at her bare legs and panties while they ate.
And, again, when they resumed their ride and went home, nothing else was said.
Her entries for the following week mentioned that Herb was more affectionate toward her than usual, but otherwise were just like her earlier descriptions of life.
I got the feeling that both she and Herb felt isolated by what was going on in their family and the country at large. So much attention was being directed toward the war effort that nobody was paying any mind to them. They did their chores and their homework and their parents didn't worry about them.
On the 20th, there was no picnic lunch, but Herb put the blanket in the basket on her bike. This time he told Jennifer to choose where they went.
She chose to go back to Old Man Simpson's pasture, where there was a pond. Once there, she said she asked Herb if he wanted to go swimming. Of course they didn't have swim suits, and when he eagerly agreed, she stripped down to her bra and panties, while he removed all but his boxer shorts.
She said they "frolicked" in the water. They talked about Jerry's most recent letter, in which he said he'd finished his training and was waiting to be assigned to a ship. They knew that Phil was in Britain, but that was all.
When they came out of the water to lie on the blanket and dry off, Jennifer realized her cotton panties were semi transparent and clinging to her body in a way that obscured almost nothing from her twin's gaze. She also observed that the front of Herb's wet boxers were tented, making it plain he was excited. Even though she didn't spell it out, it was apparent from the way she wrote about this that she understood what "excited" meant.
As I read this I wondered what sex ed was like back then. I doubted that there was any formal education about things sexual, certainly not in a school setting. I imagine most of that was learned from parents, at home. That was difficult for me to picture, since my own parents had never mentioned anything to me at all about sex, other than that it was banned until I got married, and that I was to allow no boy any "liberties" on dates. Now, with years of experience behind me, I know they were worried, because I was "well endowed". I had (in my opinion) big, ugly breasts, that drew attention I didn't want. Now I understand that my parents remembered their own teens, and what they did, back then. But I avoided attention. I didn't use a lot of makeup, like most of my friends did, and I didn't have movie star heart throbs, like they did, either. I think my parents wanted to believe that, because I didn't have a boyfriend, or talk about boys, or ask questions, I wasn't interested in sex.
They were wrong. I was very interested in sex. I was confused about it, but interested, and what was being revealed to me in Jennifer's diary made me excited. Mind you, I couldn't really envision my brother pulling my skirt up and staring at my body, but I felt the very same butterflies in my stomach that Jennifer described in her decades-old diary.
I didn't talk to Bobby about any of this. The diary was my secret. Like he didn't tell anyone about the artifacts he had removed from the trunk and hidden somewhere, I didn't tell anybody about what she wrote, because I was afraid they'd take it away from me. In an odd kind of solidarity with the diary's author, I rationed my reading of this narrative, not jumping ahead. Like she had felt sure "something would happen" I felt sure she was right, but I didn't want to spoil it by peeking at the end. I read a page a day, and that was all.
I felt another kind of solidarity with my previously ignored relative, because even though I was confused about how my body reacted to various stimuli, I knew how sex worked, and I was sure she did, too, back then.
Things took a step forward on the 20th, as she sat there in wet undies and realized she was almost naked, and that her brother could see what, today, is called her camel toe. She called it "her fold" in her diary.
The next week, on June 27th, things ramped up even further, because after he raised her skirt he touched her.
He asked if he could do it, and she asked him why he wanted to. He said he didn't know. She told him it was alright, and he stroked her leg, starting at her ankle and drifting upwards. She specified that she expected it to tickle, but that it did not. When his fingers got to the leg band of her panties, they continued, but only on her hip. Again he commented on how pretty she was.
"You need a girlfriend," she told him.
"No, I don't," he responded. "I have you."
She wrote that was the first time she was sure things were going to take a very different path for them than the path most siblings trod. But they were twins, and they'd always been close. She didn't say it, but I sensed that because she couldn't envision her twin doing anything that would cause her pain or trouble, she simply let things happen.
******
The 4th of July fell on a Saturday in 1942, and it was muted, compared to years past. Saturday had become a normal work day for most Americans, Jennifer's father included. Her entry for that day seemed tense, somehow, and I felt required to do some research. I'm sure Jennifer didn't know what was going on in the world back then, because they didn't have the internet and news traveled slowly, especially bad news.
I found out (thanks to Wikipedia) that, on that day, the Siege of Sevastopol ended after eight months when the Axis powers crushed organized Soviet resistance in the Crimea. While Germany claimed victory, the Soviet loss had taken 300,000 German soldiers' lives. On that day, German authorities began systematically gassing Jews at Auschwitz. Soviet forces retreated at Kursk and Belgorod. The situation wasn't all bad, though. The Flying Tigers were dissolved after driving away eight Japanese bombers, the day before, and replaced by the China Air Task Force. The 15th Bombardment Squadron became the first Army Air Force unit to bomb occupied Europe when it joined the Royal Air Force in a raid on the Netherlands. The Japanese destroyer Nenohi was torpedoed and sunk southeast of Attu Island by the American submarine Triton. The Allies were fighting back and the Axis powers began to learn what defeat tasted like.
Jennifer and her family probably didn't know any of this, but they did know things were happening, and that victory wasn't a done deal. Later, as I wrote things out on a piece of paper, I knew that Phil was probably on his way to North Africa, but couldn't write home about it because of secrecy. What she wrote, though, was that fireworks were in short supply, but patriotism was at a fever pitch.
There was no bike ride that Saturday. At supper Herb talked of joining up when he turned seventeen, in September.
There were no parades, or picnics. Jennifer, in her diary, wrote of news that American boys were dying over there and she contemplated, for the first time, that her siblings might not survive the war.
I knew how she felt. I was worried about Nathan, over in the Middle East.
******
I could tell that Jennifer was agonized at the thought that a third brother might go to the fight. I think that might have had something to do with the fact that, on the Saturday following the 4th, when she and Herb went on another bike ride, they hugged and kissed while he touched her. This time his hands slid over her clothing in places she was quite sure her parents - and everyone else in town - would have disapproved of vehemently.
Her entry for that day, July the 11th, was terse: "He touched me all over, like a real beau might. I loved every second of it, even though I knew it was forbidden."
On the 12th, apparently after she'd had time to process things, she was more verbose. She said she cried, worrying about Jerry and Phil ... and him. He said nothing bad was going to happen, bragging like boys brag, but then held her. That embrace became a kiss, tentative at first, but then passionate as both let their emotions bleed out. She didn't use the word "French" but her description was of that kind of kissing. His hand strayed to her breast and she said she moaned, causing him to ask of she was all right. She said she was, and kissed him again.
He raised her skirt again, and stroked her legs. This time his hand brushed the front of her panties. She wrote: "I felt like a harlot when I spread my legs to give his hand more room, but somehow I knew he didn't think of me that way."
She said she didn't understand why she felt the way she felt, but she wasn't going to try to stop feeling that way.
On the 13th, on the way home from school, Herb pulled her behind a shed and kissed her again. He told her he loved her.
The next Friday, the 17th, Herb suggested they go to the pond again at Old Man Simpson's, the next day. Her underthings had still been damp when they got home from the previous swimming session and she'd had to hang them up out of sight to dry.
She suggested that the solution to this was to skinny-dip.
I almost went on to the next page, but made myself stop. My nipples were stiff and itched. I felt the urge to rub between my legs. Most of the time I do that when I take a shower, though, so I decided to wait.
******
When I read what I described above, it was a Friday night. As usual, I didn't have a date that night, and Bobby hadn't said anything about going out. It was November and starting to become parka weather, so going out for a walk wasn't an option for settling down.
I tried to read a book, but all I could think about was Jennifer and Herb. I'd never been skinny-dipping in my life, but I imagined what it might be like. I thought about Bobby and me, somewhere private, taking off our clothes in preparation for getting in the water. He'd see me ... all of me. How would that feel? The last time I'd seen him naked was when we were seven or eight. We had always been put in the tub together until that time frame. The last time I'd seen him naked, we were twins in all but the thing that sprouted between his legs. My chest was just as flat as his, back then. I had a "fold" instead of a penis, but neither of us paid any attention to that difference.
I thought back to Bobby's behavior in the past. We fought, like any siblings, but not all the time. He'd be seventeen in two weeks, on the 24th of November. We always celebrate his birthday at Thanksgiving. That started when he was a little boy and Mom said she was thankful he was born. As he grew older he didn't mind that on his actual birthday, nothing happened. He was like that. He didn't sweat the small stuff. He was on the football team at school, but didn't play very much. That didn't bother him, either. He wasn't in the "popular" crowd, but he had plenty of friends. Some of his friends had hit on me in the past. I'd only told him about it once, because he got in a fight with the guy and got suspended. Other boys hit on me, too, but I ignored most of that. Boys were boys, you know?
I tried to remember if Bobby had ever displayed any attention toward me like Herb did to my predecessor. We shared a bathroom, and he always complained that I took too long in there. I closed the door while I took a shower, but then opened it while I dried my hair, to let the humidity out. I wrapped up in a towel while I did that. Did Bobby linger out there, waiting for me to finish, or did he wait in his room until I was out? I couldn't remember. I hadn't paid any attention to him.
That's not to say he was as modest as I was. Whenever he took a shower all he wore out of the bathroom was his tighty-whities. He was cute. I acknowledged that. Unlike him, when one of my girlfriends expressed interest in him it didn't bother me. He was actually kind of buff, but not in a body-builder kind of way. That flat chest of his now had bulges under the skin that were muscles. I had big boobs. He had big muscles. I had never paid much attention to that, before.
I'd never thought about him as a ... boy.
I knew that the way I was feeling had to do with what Jennifer and Herb were doing way back when, and I knew it was probably strange that I felt no "ick factor" about them. But that was ancient history, you know?
It was then that, as I thought about Bobby, and transposed him for Herb, and me for Jennifer ... I realized there was also no ick factor.
That's when I started wondering if there was something in our genes that made us different from other people.
******
Of course I didn't know if Bobby would quail and squeal and call me a pervert if I suggested he and I find someplace to go skinny-dipping. I didn't even know if I wanted to find someplace to go skinny-dipping with my brother. What was confusing was that I knew I didn't want to go skinny-dipping with any other boy. But if it was Bobby ...?
And for sure I didn't want my brother to think I was a pervert.
I just couldn't help but think about it.
The other thing I didn't know (yet) was whether or not Jennifer and Herb actually got perverted. Well ... assuming you don't call what they had already done as perverted.
I decided I was "flummoxed".
I still don't know why I went to find Bobby and talk to him. My feet just took me to his room, where he was sitting on the end of his bed, video game controller in his hands, his eyes on the old TV Nathan had given him when he left home.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"I am crushing on Nex Machina," he said, not looking at me.
"Why aren't you out on a date?" I asked.
"This is cheaper," he said. "Go away. You're distracting me."
"I want to talk to you," I said.
"Why do women always want to talk?" he mused.
"Do you think I'm hot?" My mouth started to say "pretty" but I updated it.
He looked at me. Then he looked back at the game. Then he looked at me again.
"You just killed me!" he groaned. He tossed the controller aside. "What kind of bug crawled up your ass?"
"That's gross," I said. I felt petulant, and didn't know why.
"When a girl asks her brother if she's hot, a bug has definitely crawled up her ass," he pronounced.
That answered that question. I turned to leave.
"Thanks," I said, grumpily.
I was back in my room when he showed up at my door.
"What's going on?" he asked, making it sound like he was a martyr for being there and caring.
"If you don't think I'm hot, then nothing is going on," my mouth blathered.
My big brother, Nathan, always treated me like I was ten years old. He basically ignored me, most of the time, and when he did interact with me, it was like he was bestowing some favor on me. Bobby was different, though. He and I had engaged in serious conversations in the past. We didn't do that often, but he didn't mind sharing some quality time with me, now and then. He also knows me a lot better than Nathan does, probably because we're only 18 months apart in age.
"At the risk of opening a can of worms, why do you care whether or not I think you're hot?" he asked.
"Never mind," I groused. "Go play your stupid game."
Jennifer's diary was sitting on my night stand, calling to me. I picked it up and then set it back down.
"Is that the thing you found in that old trunk?" he asked.
'Yes," I said. I was still flummoxed. He must have discerned that.
"Does that have anything to do with what's going on?"
I was torn. The diary was my secret thing. But it had caused me to have feelings and thoughts that were bothering the hell out of me. My flummoxed mind made a decision for me.
"I've been reading it," I said. "It's ... different."
"It's old," he observed.
"Yes, but what she was feeling isn't something old," I said.
"Of course it is," he said. "She was feeling it seventy-some-odd years ago." He knew it was a diary, and that it was in with the relics he had claimed.
"Her brother thought she was hot," I blurted.
He was silent for a dozen heartbeats.
"That's interesting," he finally said.
"It is!" I yipped. "She called it something different than 'hot' but that's what it meant. Two of her brothers were off at war and her twin was thinking about joining up, and they ..." I stopped. How did you condense everything she'd written into a few sentences that wouldn't sound crazy?
"Does this have anything to do with Nathan?" he asked.
"I don't know," I sighed.
"Well, just so you know, I'm not going to go off and join the Army like he did," said Bobby.
"I'm glad," I said.
"Really? I thought you didn't care."
"I do care!" I insisted.
"And this makes you want to know if I think you're hot." He said like he was talking to an imbecile.
I grabbed the diary, my secret, and thumbed to the page when Herb first raised her skirt. Then I went to the page I'd stopped on and pinched them between my thumb and fingers. I extended it to him.
"Read these pages, but only these pages!" I said.
"Why only those pages?" he asked.
"Because I haven't read the rest, and you can't either. Not yet."
He stared at me. I stared back. I felt butterflies in my stomach, but not because I was excited. I was scared, scared that he'd read them and talk about how perverted they were. I think he sensed my fear, because he took the book, but didn't read.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
I could see something like worry on his face. I felt more grown up in at that second, and thought of him as more grown up than I ever had before.
"No," I said. "But read it. I need you to read it and tell me what you think."
"Now you're scaring me," he said.
"Just fucking read it!" I yelled.
Chapter Two
After I screamed at him he started to turn, to leave, and I shot up off the bed and grabbed his elbow.
"No!" I said. "You have to read it here. That can't leave my bedroom."
"Okay, okay," he said, using that voice you use with a scared puppy. "Calm down. I'll read it."
He sat down on the bed, and I sat beside him. I could look over and see the pages, and I watched as he flattened the page dated June the 6th.
"Here?" he asked.
I nodded. I wanted to say something, to prepare him, but I couldn't think of what to say. "They had a habit of riding bikes together on Saturdays," I got out.
It didn't take long for him to scan over that page. He turned the page and this time he read more slowly.
"Things happen on Saturdays," I said. "Between those days she just talks about daily life during the war."
He flipped pages, scanning again, until he got to the 13th.
"Weird," was his only comment. But he kept reading. When he got to the 20th, he seemed to read it twice.
He glanced at me.
"What do you think about this?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said. "It makes me feel ... strange."
"Should I keep reading?" he asked.
"Do you want to keep reading?" I came back.
He frowned.
"Yeah, I kind of do." He frowned. "Just out of curiosity, I mean."
"I kind of did, too," I said, feeling relief for the first time since I gave him the diary.
On the entry for the 27th Bobby actually groaned.
"He did need a girlfriend," he said.
When he got to the page on the 4th of July I told him about my research, and about how things were just starting to turn a corner for the Allies, but lots of soldiers were getting killed. I said, "Can you imagine living like that? I mean the rationing, and worrying, and everything being about the war? It's no wonder they got ... odd?"
"You're calling this odd?" He frowned. "Just odd?"
"What do you think?" I asked, breathlessly.
Instead of saying anything, he skipped ahead to the next Saturday. That was the Saturday when things got serious.
"What's frottage?" he asked. That was a word she'd used for what Herb did to her that day.
"I had to look that up," I said. "I think it's a word like gay. It meant something different back then than it does today."
"What does it mean today?" he asked.
I felt my face get hot and knew I was blushing.
"It's when two guys rub their crotches together, or you grope somebody in a crowd."
"Not sexy," said my brother.
"I think back then it meant fondling outside the clothes," I said.
"Oh. That's not so bad, I guess," he said.
"He was her brother," I pointed out.
"I get that," he said. He looked at me for a minute. "Are you worried I'd perv out on you?"
"Not worried," I said, unable to frame my true feelings. I wasn't sure what my true feelings even were. "It just makes me feel strange."
"You are hot," said my brother. "But then you already know that."
"I do?"
"As much time as you spend in the bathroom primping and getting all dolled up, you have to think you're hot when you get finished," he said, artlessly.
"All I do is style my hair," I objected. "I don't put on makeup and all that."
"You don't need it," he said, but I got the impression he hadn't meant to say it out loud.
"So you think I'm hot?" I whined.
He looked at me, and then back at the diary, and then back at me.
"I'm pretty sure I'm not supposed to think you're hot like Herb thinks she's hot," he said.
"Go to the next one," I groaned.
He turned pages and read the last entry I'd read. As soon as his eyes got to the bottom, he reached to turn the page. I grabbed his hand.
"You can't read further," I gasped.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Because I haven't read it, yet," I said.
"Why not?" he almost yelled.
"I only read one page per day," I said. I tried to take the diary away from him, but he was stronger than me.
"Let me get this straight," he said. "You stumble on what passes for porn back in nineteen forty-" He looked blank.
"Nineteen forty-two," I said, helpfully.
"Yeah. You find some porn from nineteen forty-two and you only read one page per day?"
"I like the anticipation," I mumbled.
He sat there and then looked at me.
"Do you Jill off after you read this?"
"Bobby!" I gasped.
"Don't get all hoity-toity on me," he said. "You wanted me to read this. It is porn."
"Do you want to go jerk off?" I asked, defensively.
"Maybe," he said. He blinked. "I mean no, but I could understand if it got somebody going."
"Do you think they were perverts?"
There it was, out of my mouth like projectile vomiting, uncontrollable, and without conscious intent.
He actually thought about it. I could hear my heart thudding in my chest.
"Well, I think pervert is a little strong. I mean there was a war on and they were freaked out and stuff. Things were bound to get a little crazy. Right?"
I nodded. Again, I couldn't have stopped that response if there'd been a gun to my head.
"One page a day, huh?" he said.
I nodded again.
"How about one week per day?" he asked.
"What do you mean?"
"If you'll read one week per day ... I'll read it with you," he said.
"A whole week?" My heart thudded.
"I couldn't stand the suspense if it's just one day at a time," he said.
"Okay," I said. "Maybe," I equivocated.
"Can we at least read the next page now?"
I had the strongest urge to look at the front of my brother's pants, but this I was able to control.
"Are we perverts for wanting to read this?" I whispered.
He shrugged.
"Maybe. I mean people say it's perverted to look at porn. But everybody does it. So is everybody a pervert?"
"Isn't this different?" I asked.
My next-to-biggest brother looked right at my boobs, without blushing. The strange part of that was that, for the first time in my life, I was ... proud ... of my breasts!
"I wish we had a picture of her," he said.
"Why?"
"Because I'd like to see if you look anything like her," he said.
"Why?"
"Because you are hot, baby sister."
******
"I've never been skinny-dipping before," I said, as my fingers prepared to turn another page in Jennifer's diary. "Have you?"
Bobby's eyes weren't on my boobs any longer. Now they were on the diary.
"No," he said. He sounded a little hoarse, or something. "Except for in the shower. Does that count?"
"I don't think so," I said.
"Would you turn the freakin' page?" he finally pushed.
It was anti-climactic, because Jennifer wrote half a page about whether what they were doing was wrong or not. Then she must have gotten interrupted, or something, because the last half of the page was a recipe for "Skedaddle no-sugar cookies" and instructions for how to make them.
"What the fuck?" complained Bobby.
I turned the page. My one-page-a-day rule was taking a beating.
I knew instantly they'd done it. Or at least done something, because her handwriting looked different, shakier somehow, less controlled than her usual firm strokes. It looked like it had been written faster, maybe, as if she was short on time, and wanted to get it all down before she forgot it.
My eyes flashed to read what had been so urgent.
It was clear her thought processes hadn't caught up with events, because she talked about things out of order. The first line was: I think I might not be a virgin anymore. My heart seized in my chest. If she didn't know, then the incident must have been traumatic, or violent. Then again, I was still a virgin, and I had no idea how I'd feel when that changed. I mean what did a penis inside you feel like? They looked too big to go in there, but my brain told me it had happened billions of times before. Maybe, compared to a baby coming out, a penis going in was nothing. Maybe you didn't feel it at all! I remembered the pickle I'd pushed in there. Big mistake. Even after I'd sucked all the juice off, there was still enough of some chemical on it that burned and stung like crazy. But under that, I'd felt it spreading things.
Bobby made a sound, deep in his throat and I realized my woolgathering, as Jennifer would have called it, had gotten me behind. What was he moaning about?! I read on.
She wrote about the scenery on the road to the pond, and then about one of the tires on her bike going flat. I realized she was back in narrative mode, thinking on a linear basis after her initial explosion of what was tops on her mind.
Then, He's so beautiful, naked. I almost couldn't breathe. That was followed by a few sentences on what she remembered him looking like the last time she'd seen her brother naked, which was when they were ten. She said he looked like a Greek statue, frozen in time. That brought us to the end of another page. She was much more verbose, lately.
"Reading this made me think about the last time we took a bath together," I said. "We looked exactly alike except for ... down there."
"I wish he'd written a journal, too," sighed Bobby. "She says he looked like a statue, but I bet that was because he couldn't move after she got naked for him."
"She didn't get naked for him," I said. "She got naked to swim."
"If she let him watch, she got naked for him," said my brother, firmly.
"It doesn't say she let him watch," I argued.
"She was watching him, obviously. That's hard to do when you're hiding behind a bush taking your own clothes off. Turn the page."
"We already did two pages," I said.
"Jennifer," he said, his voice heavy. "Turn the page."
"You're in such a hurry," I said. I think I was teasing him a little bit. Knowing he wanted to go on with this made me feel like I wasn't alone in the world with the feelings I was having.
"You could take off your clothes," he suggested. "Like we were going to go skinny-dipping."
He wasn't teasing, and I felt a chill run down my spine. My nipples suddenly itched, too.
"We don't have a pond," I said.
"Turn the page, Jennifer," he groaned.
The next page was Victorian porn for sure. She talked about how they stood and stared at each other. She said he was "excited" but that it didn't scare her at all. They went in the water ten feet apart and stayed that way for "a long time" before he finally said something. That was that she was beautiful, and he felt like he'd been given a present that equaled all his birthdays and Christmas combined. She said her nipples itched, and that, under the water, her fingers squeezed them.
I realized my own hand was at my right breast and jerked it away. Bobby didn't notice. His eyes were glued to the page.
She said he came towards her in the water and, because she didn't know what to do, she just stood there.
"I love you," he said, and then he pulled her into a skin-to-skin embrace. The water was cool. His skin was burning hot.
She felt something pushing between her legs and knew it could only be one thing, since his hands were on her sides. Then they kissed, and she suddenly knew "what it's like when lovers kiss."
"Fuck," groaned Bobby.
"So you like this?" I whispered.
"Who wouldn't," he replied.
"Most brothers and sisters wouldn't think this was ..."
"Hot?" he finished for me. "I've never thought about you like this, Jenn, but man!" His eyes jerked and I realized he was re-reading. "Not very often, anyway," he muttered, softly.
"What does that mean?" I asked. I could read this any time I felt like it, but having this conversation might only happen once.
"What does what mean?" His eyes stayed on the page.
"You said not very often," I said.
"I did?"
"Yes. What does that mean?"
"I don't know," he said, finally glancing at me. "What were we talking about?"
"You said you never thought about me like this. Then you said, 'Not very often, anyway.' What does that mean?"