White Houses

A bookstore clerk in a small tourist town finds her life changed by a group of college students who move next-door for the summer.

The battered Volkswagen first brought them into her view against a fiery sunset as picturesque as the people inside. Standing on the screen porch with a cup of stale coffee, it was easy to see the magic in the five silhouettes that bounded exuberantly towards the tiny white bungalow and she envied the freedom of the tourists. Another group of kids, here for the summer believing that life would always be that pleasant.

She, like most of the locals, paid close attention to the comings and goings of the the island. It was, after all, a small town and most of what drew travelers had lost its interest to those who lived there, so gossip was a way of life, and this following did not omit the five.

The first that she met came into the bookstore where she worked, a small cozy place that did stiff business between providing beach reads and the classics for those who had come to the island to find the quiet to escape into books.

A broad smile of white teeth against espresso skin introduced Dan, staying in Carlton Cottage, and inquired about Samuel Taylor Coleridge poems. “Anything by Coleridge�"we love him.”

She produced a collection with her usual efficiency and chatted about the poet's influence on Keats. Dan had an easy laugh and a charming way, and she found herself invited to join his house-mates for dinner that night. Between her curiosity and his friendliness she agreed and offered to bring pie.

Wonderings about the group caught upon a snatch of gossip about “those five kids” and chased her throughout the day, until she was standing on the porch with lemon meringue in hand. A knock on the door was followed by a rush of faces and voices, each giving a name.

They were picture perfect, in carelessly fashionable clothes, stylish hair and the demographics of an international ad. All were beautiful uniquely and complimentary, as though picked by a marketing director.

Jenny, small, platinum blond and deeply tanned had a grace in all of her motions and a need to move.

Karl's red hair and brash rhetoric lit him up in the dim room.

A keen smile and bemused expression drew laughter to Sampson, whose tousled sandy hair and green eyes were complimented by a riot of freckles.

Just behind him was a shock of wavy brown hair and dark, almond eyes that belonged to the exotic Tara.

“Everyone, this is Lydia.” Dan waved to her with a flourish.

A tumble of laughter and conversation followed, and she was pulled in. The cohesion of the five was contagious and they hardly seemed separate entities, but rather facets of the same. Story after story about things they had done together but nothing about their lives before meeting or apart from each other�"omitting even seemingly important individual details. It was only much later that it came out that Karl had been born in Russia, and only because all of them had taken a trip to see his hometown over spring break. This confirmed that they were college students, as Lydia had heard, but it was unclear just exactly where they went.

Dinner was pasta, all they knew how to make, and she quickly found herself promising cooking lessons.

That was how it began, with Lydia stopping by after work a few nights a week with a new recipe and a shopping list. They were enthusiastic at first, eager to learn and try new foods. As familiarity grew, she would drop by more and more often and cooked less and less. She came to trade books with Dan, give Karl some competition at chess, admire Jenny's paintings, but she stayed for the companionship. It got her out of her gray house, which had not felt so lonely until her introduction to a place of such intense togetherness.

A few weeks in and she was chasing them on the beach in a rainstorm, laughing as they danced in the buffeting winds and fell into each other. Lying in the heap, Lydia caught herself searching for the last moment of such release, and could not find one in recent days. Strange, what a difference a little time can make. After all, there was less than five years difference between her and Jenny, the youngest�"though life had quietly coalesced into what it was very shortly after she received her diploma and returned to the town in which she had grown up.

These thoughts were quickly severed by Sampson, who took notice of her drenched hair, which had fallen into his face. First pushing it aside and then grabbing it again to lament her split ends. Suddenly he pulled her up; he was leading her back to the cottage, the others coming quickly and instinctively. Once bundled in towels to ward off the shivering, the air was filled with the slide of metal on metal, and her shoulder length hair was truncated to a modish short style that transformed the listless waves of strawberry blond into soft, springing curls. The other four cooed appreciatively and insisted that she needed clothing to match her new hair. This precipitated a trip to the trendy shops that lined the boardwalk�"stores that no self respecting local would be caught dead in.

By the time they left, the rain had died down to a light staccato, and so when Tara pulled Lydia in front of a mirror to exclaim over the perfection of the red denim skirt, it was not the image of a soaked book clerk that returned the startled gaze, but rather a second modern nymph. As the rest gathered behind, she was shocked to find that it really seemed to be a group of six, rather than five plus an outsider. She was one of them.

“The assimilation is complete,” joked Karl, but followed with a more thoughtful, “an even number now. This is good.”

The return to the cottage, crammed into the Volkswagen with an armload of bags, was full of easy laughter, and it suddenly registered on her that she would call these friends. Not simply in the careless use of the term, and not only because now her outward appearance matched, but the comfort she took in these she had so shortly ago called kids. The familiarity made it apparent, for there was nothing odd about sitting on Samson's lap with Tara draped across her.

The word 'love' had been casually bandied about often by the five, and Lydia began to feel that if the warmth she felt towards these people who had dropped in and enlivened her life was not love, than little in this world could be. She had not even considered the emotion since the parting with the Allen that had held so much of her heart.

And so June slipped by into July, the heavy warmth necessitating many trips to the beach and picnics on breezy precipices. She worked most days, and would then return to the cottage. There were songs that demanded dancing, late nights of drinking and talking, whimsical fancies that took all of them�"from sudden urges to fly kites to the turtle now kept in an aquarium in the kitchen to the intense week of writing countless poems.

It was a life that fluctuated between torrents of energy and deliciously languid periods, with a light and dreamlike feeling and cloying affection. One warm morning, as Lydia woke in a tangle of arms and legs she looked lazily at the lovely, entwined people and thought of her past Allen. How mundane, how distant he seemed. Gathering her things and dressing, she smiled thinking how pleasant and rich this new existence was. Standing at a mirror to brush her hair, the reflection was not the Lydia that she had known. Not unsatisfied by herself before, she had still been by herself at the time, and the company she now kept had styled her hair, practiced her smile, and put a bright flush into her cheeks. It also added the shuffling figure of a sleep soaked Dan in the background.

He smiled at the mirror, then drifted to the kitchen, and when Lydia climbed out of the shower, she was greeted by the scent of omelet. He had been the only one who had succeeded in making a shell-free, unburnt one in the lesson she had given, so long ago.

Author's Note

This is half finished, I know. I wrote it over a year ago and am trying to decide whether it's worth going back to.