Chapter 2

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.

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The Summer of '42

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