Just Perfect

Golden light sprinkles across my room as my eyes slowly shake off the heaviness of sleep. I can hear my little sister soft breathing in the lower bunk bed of our small dark room. I try to detangle myself from my sheets as beads of sweat start to form on my forehead. The summer has been scorching and unfortunately, today is no exception. I quietly crawl down my ladder and out into the hallway, its dead silent everyone is still asleep. I inch down the creaky stairs to get ready for the fun day that awaits me. Today is the annual barbeque with our neighbors the Natalinos. I do not know when it really started but it happens every year like clockwork. As I wait for my family to wake, I throw on my Jessie the cowgirl bathing suit underneath my favorite summer dress which flows in a way that every time I walk it looks like I am flying instead. I try to put up my hair but the tight curls resist all my attempts so I let them flow down my back like a stream.

As I hear people stirring up stairs my excitements builds as well, it takes everyone twice the time it took me to get ready. We finally step outside at just past noon with the sun in the center of the sky causing a hot and humid afternoon, however nature is trying to cool itself with a gentle breeze blowing our hair back. My siblings and I, exploding with excitement scurry across the street and leave our parents to carry all the food. We run into their backyard and make a beeline for the pool. As were running, we are striping off our clothing as to not waste any time when we finally reach our destination. I am the last one to make it to the pool since my short legs don’t carry me as fast as my little sister’s and older brothers’s. When I reach the pool, I jump as high as I can then when gravity starts to push me back down I feel all the air rushing around me right before impact. The impact with the surface of the water sends relief through my body as the cool water chills my sunned skin. As my whole body is submerged water rushes into my ears and nose and when I surface it’s the best feeling of them all as the excess water rushes from my hair down my face. It’s the feeling of Summer. We splash and swim around with Nick and Tony our neighbors for what seems to be hours when we are all called in for food. As soon as we finish all the kids are itching to jump back into the cool blue water, you’d think we were fish by how much we liked the water. We all run straight back to the pool and dive right back in. Nick and Tony are brothers who live across the street from us, we have known them are entire lives. The Natalinos are my second family I grew up with our families equally caring for each other through thick and thin. Our parents always joke that that Tony and I are going to grow up and get married since he is 6 years old and I am only a year younger but when they say this to us our faces blush rosy and a smile creeps up on us as we run away giggling like any little kid would. As we swim around we play all the usual pool games like Marco polo, fish out of water, sharks and minos, volleyball, basketball, king of the deck, and water gun fights. Everything was building to be the perfect day.

We have been in the pool the entire day when it starts to get dark out and we notice our hands are shriveled up like prunes. Our parents finally drag us all out of the pool, when we are walking towards the house our bodies seem stiff and waterlogged. I insist on changing myself even though my parents can clearly see I am wiped of all my energy and could fall over with exhaustion at any moment. When I walk out, I have my dress on backwards and my sandals on the wrong feet but in my sleep blurred vision everything still appears perfect. When I am walking down the hallway towards the door I pass a mirror and see my favorite dress now looks strange against my angry looking burned skin which makes my hair look even more blond with every second in which the red grows darker. Even this however doesn’t take away from my perception of this perfect day. I walk outside into the cool night to find Tony and my brother Ryan running around chasing the blinking lights that illuminate the night sky. I join the fun only for a few minutes until I am really too exhausted to take another step. I lie down on a cushioned lawn chair and count the stars watching as lightening bugs drift in and out of my line of vision. The last thing I see before I drift off into dreamland is a lightening bug land on my nose and blinking once to tell me goodnight. I drift off to sleep with a smile and the memory of a perfect summer’s day.