The Sun Shines Brightest in June (Completed) gxg

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Klara was officially a teenager, and that was something that I had never considered before. I mean, she was only two years older than me, so we were relatively the same, but I started to realize that being a teenager meant she was also somehow much older than me at the same time. It didn't make sense, but I knew it was true. Being thirteen seemed to bring so much more responsibility and worry than being eleven.

At first I had noticed that she spent more time in our room, away from everyone else. Sometimes even away from me. Then she started to take more time to getting dressed in the morning, or fixing her hair. Once I even walked in on her carefully applying light pink lipstick she had apparently borrowed from her mother. She looked pretty funny leaning so far into a small mirror propped on her pillow.

I think the most notable change that I noticed in Klara was the way she dressed. She could be feminine and dress up when she wanted to, but the majority of the time she seemed more comfortable in a basic t-shirt and jeans. That summer though, she was wearing shirts that were clearly too big for her, and if the weather wasn't too hot, oversized sweatshirts and jackets. She wouldn't wear anything girly anymore, and I could never figure out why.

Naturally, I assumed she was hiding something. I had learned somewhere that girls around her age did that kind of thing. Weight gain, scars, pregnancy. There were options. Klara didn't look like she had gained weight anywhere else, so I assumed that wasn't it. She was still pretty thin. She only talked about kissing Jake, so I was fairly certain she couldn't be pregnant. I knew how that worked now. The third thing, though, that scared me.

Klara seemed moodier lately, and she was certainly hiding something, so scars could have been a possibility. What then, though? What if Klara was hurting herself? I knew a girl a few grades above me who got caught doing that. My heart broke inside thinking that Klara would ever be unhappy enough to want to do something like that.

My only option was to trick her. I needed to know.

"Do you want to go swimming?" I asked, walking into our room to find her lying in bed reading a book.

She peeked over the edge at me.

"I don't really feel like it today. Maybe some other time."

"You've only gone swimming once this summer...."

She covered her face with the book again.

"I haven't felt much like swimming. Go with the boys, or with the twins. I'm sure they'll want to."

I watched as she made herself more comfortable. Clearly I wasn't going to get her to budge. I gave up and sulked all the way downstairs to join Caleb and Timothy in front of the TV.