LEAH and BILLY: A love story

By Erin Kaine

LOVE INTERRUPTED: It started with an idyllic day playing hooky at a summer camp as young teens who are just becoming sexually aware and finding an innocent but profound connection exploring nature and their own potential -- and a first kiss under a starry night sky. The Fates cruelly intervene and 20 years pass after the budding lovers lose touch with each other. Then comes a serendipitous chance meeting in which they both fail to recognize the other when circumstances reunites them again. Not only are they physically changed as adults, but a silly misunderstanding leads to barriers to finding the love they both are vaguely aware of reaching fruition. Misunderstanding leads to alienation and confrontation, but The Fates show their softer side in the end to renew what had never really died.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janus Expressions
• Release date: Jul 23, 2013
• ISBN: 9781498978064

Book preview

LEAH AND BILLY

A love story

I.  PROLOGUE

1

IT WAS A WAY to get the kid out of the house. A summer weekend camp for junior high kids, sixth to eighth grade. Leah’s mom jumped at the chance and got her latest boyfriend to pony up the cash. Leah didn’t want to go. She saw it as another weekend of grief from other kids her age, like school, but with less chance to escape.

Now 11 is a neither-fish-nor-fowl age and it doesn’t help when you are the tallest girl among them, skinny and awkward and the subject of whispers and taunts because you are a little bit different. Different in Leah’s case was being a little quieter, a little smarter and not fashionably dressed – hand-me-down dressed on ill-fitting jeans made for a girl who actually has hips and two layers on top to disguise those puffy budding and sore breast buds protected by something called a training bra.

Leah Marie Driscoll always thought of a whip and a chair whenever anyone used the expression, but she allowed what was in training wasn’t likely to reach out an attack anyone. And her running shoes were woman’s size 8 which looked like they could do ski-less water-skiing. What a self-image, she thought.

It was early late Saturday morning, the second day of the camp, and only full day of the three, that she emerged from her cabin for another round of planned activities. She was plunked down in this camp reluctantly so her momma and her boyfriend could do what momma and her current boyfriend always do when they can get rid of her.

So it was off to the campfire-less campfire round for whatever the counselors had in store in the way of mindless busy-bee stuff.

Pssst! The sound was off to her left by clump of high bushes. She stopped. You’re not going to that dumb meeting are you? She was actually frightened for a second or two until the owner of the voice stepped out to show himself. He was a tow-headed crew-cut blond boy, kind of chunky which is a nice way of saying plump, with fair skin and chubby cheeks. He was a half a head shorter than Leah and she would guess a year or two older than her.

We’re supposed to go, she responded. It’s on the schedule.

Do you always do what you are supposed to do? he asked. His voice was kind of high and reedy like young boy’s voices are oftentimes.

N-no. But Leah was lying. She always did what she was supposed to do. Who are you?

Billy.

The boys are supposed to go too, she said.

He laughed. All the more reason not to. There is too much to learn out here, he said with a sweeping gesture of the landscape, than to waste your time on arts and crafts. Do you like arts and crafts?

Not really, Leah admitted. But ...

Then come along with me, it will be fun. Your name is Leah, right? How did he know? Her mom named her after some actress she saw in a movie. Her name wasn’t one that would pop to mind easily.

Leah looked around and saw everyone had vacated the area. It was just her and Billy. So she did something she seldom did, break the rules. OK, she said. Billy smiled and gestured for her to follow him.

They walked for about 20 minutes, cutting through a forested area and a wide meadow that she had never seen. It was sunny and the birds and animals owned the place. Not a human sound to be heard except their own footsteps. They ducked under low branches and made their way down a bank to a small stream that seemed to appear out of nowhere. Billy pointed out things around her that she would never see herself, like a huge bird’s nest in a tree, mistletoe growing in clumps in the high branches, a young red fox jumping around in the tall grass of an open meadow.

How come you know this place so well, Leah asked.

I was here last year at a two-week church camp, so I had a lot of hooky to play or I would have heard more than I wanted about Jesus and all.

Isn’t that blasphemous or something?

Maybe, but I bet Jesus even gets tired of hearing his name 5,000 times a day at a church camp.

Leah got this mental image of Jesus holding up his hand and saying, Enough already! She giggled.

They stopped at the bank of the shaded stream, a babbling brook actually that spilled into areas of quiet pooled water that was crystal clear so you could see every rock and crevice on the bottom.

Look, Billy said. Pollywogs.

She looked and saw hundreds of odd little bulbous creatures with weird tails darting about in the clear water. They looked like all eyes and a filmy tail. Leah had never seen a pollywog which name sounded like some mythical creature of Arthurian legend or such. But here they were just tiny and oddly likeable creatures hiding out in a forest stream. These little things will become frogs? she asked rhetorically.

Billy nodded as he watched them. He hunched down and reached up to grab Leah’s hand to pull her down to her haunches. Then he scooped up a double handful of water with two of the critters swimming in it. He held them close to Leah for her inspection. She smiled and poked her right index finger into the pool in his palm and touched one of them. She couldn’t help but laugh.

There will be thousands of frogs when they change.

Not really. Billy said. Nature has a way of thinning the herd called fish. Pollywogs are in the food chain but there are enough of them to beat the odds and produce a bunch of noisy and dumb frogs, for sure.

You don’t like fogs? she asked.

Oh, no, frogs are OK. Girls like you needs frogs to kiss to find your Prince Charming.

Leah took her right fist and punched Billy on his left shoulder.

What do you do with them?

Nothing now. When I was small I used to find them in a creek near my house and capture them in a Mason jar with a lid, but I decided that was dumb. They belong to nature so I just watch them and enjoy them being themselves. That makes me feel good.

Leah’s eyes were wide and gleaming as she watched what looked like magical little seedlings darting about randomly. They are cool, she said.

Billy picked up a stick and put the end in the water to herd the little creatures about while Leah watched in silence. Leah rose up and moved to various locations to view the tiny creatures from every angle.

Beats the hell out of cutting up construction paper, right?

2

LEAH LOOKED UP at the filtered sunshine coming through the trees as the leaves weaved a changing pattern of light across the shiny pool and the grassy bank. The air smelled clean with a trace of damp earthiness and a fresh smell of new vegetation. Not a trace of glue or a Sharpie. She nodded.

Come with me, Billy said. He started to walk along the stream bank.

Where are we going? Leah asked.

Down to the lake.

But the lake is back that way, she said as she motioned behind her.

That is the big lake where they have the canoes and stuff. This is a smaller lake at the end of this stream. I think of it as my own private lake. Lake Billy.

"But we are getting farther away