Tallulah

After I kind of blew off Percy, Rachel stopped talking to me as much, which I guess I didn't mind because I was always kind of the loner type, but it still hurt because I missed her friendship, even if it was probably so I'd get with her brother.

Percy still tried to be my friend though, which I guess I appreciated. Sometimes I felt smothered around him. I don't know.

I started seeing a guy named Joey, a senior, a few months later, mostly because I was wondering if I really was frigid or not. I wasn't (obviously). He was a real sweetheart, and Momma and Albert really liked him. He couldn't go to his prom so he took me out to dinner on the boardwalk instead. We broke up when he went off to college at the end of the summer. He sent me a few letters, but I never answered them.

While I liked him, I didn't like him. He was dry and dull and boring and safe. Too safe. He'd hardly ever touch me - a hand here, a kiss there, but nothing more than that and it made me frustrated. He was so plain and boring and he reminded me a little bit of Percy.

I wanted adventure.

(Maybe that's why that happened to me, maybe that's why I'm sitting here and wondering where exactly it was that I went wrong.)

Katie passed her bar exams in 1964. She was offered a position in Detroit, where she wouldn't be a lawyer per se, but she'd be working in a law office with a bunch of lawyers and learning the ropes, sort of. I guess that was pretty good. She was happy in any event, and told me that as soon as she got settled and made some money, she'd fly me out there to spend a week with her. (I'd never been on an airplane, so I was kind of excited.) We went all the way to New York—it took us almost a whole day to make it up there, and I was mildly miserable because the twins had colic and spent the entire car ride hollering up a storm—for her graduation. She gave me a tour of the city and I got to meet some of her activist friends. We had dinner at an Italian place later that night, and it was nice.

When Simone graduated a few months later, she came back home. She said she missed us and the twins, and of course I was happy to have her come back. I missed her too, and it was nice having her around for help with my science homework. She found a job in a blood bank a few minutes away from our house.

They moved to our neighborhood on my last day of my sophomore year in 1965. I remember when it happened because I remember that they had a moving truck and I remember looking at all of their pretty furniture and vases as I rode past them on my bike. The house next door had belonged to an elderly woman named Ms. Grayson, who scowled at me from her porch every morning until she died during winter break.

They were the Papadopoulos family, all the way from Greece.

Albert, being the friendly, cheerful person he was, had to go over and offer to help them and the movers. Of course he did.

Agnes Papadopoulos was a tall, skinny woman who wore fashionable dresses and smoked cigarettes on her porch every afternoon and waved hello whenever she saw me. I remember thinking that she was beautiful, with her long blonde hair and soft smile. She wore it differently every day: in a braid, on her head, down, up. Barnabas—affectionately known as Barney in Albert's poker group, which he quickly joined after moving next door—Papadopoulos was chubby and tan, with black hair that he slicked back all the time. I remember that he carried a small black comb in his pocket that he used to make sure his hair was staying down, and how much it used to make me smile. He wore a thick gold chain with a cross on it beneath his white shirts and black pants. It seemed like he only wore short sleeved white shirts and black slacks, even when it snowed. Their niece, Euphemia Papadopoulos, had her uncle's black hair and face, serious and solemn in her old country dresses and patent leather shoes. She would sit in her backyard on a lounge chair and read books all day long. She was intimidating and wore dark red lipstick all the time, even if she wasn't going anywhere.

I thought they were the most interesting people I had ever met and spent a week watching them move into their new house through my living room curtains.

Momma baked them a pie and invited them to dinner a week or so after they moved in. Apparently, the Papadopoulos family also had a son named Adonis who was still in Greece, finishing his studies. He'd be joining them soon. I paid that no mind at first—what did I care? He was just some boy who was going to be living next door.

Euphemia and I soon became friends, mostly because she had none and neither did I. Agnes fell in love with Maxine and Kennedy, which didn't really surprise me because it was hard not to like them. They were pretty cute. She offered to watch them all the time, gave Kennedy her son's hand-me-downs and made Maxine dresses and jumpsuits. (She was a seamstress, which explained why she was so fashionable.) Albert and Barney bonded over their immigrant status, and played poker with Peter and some of Albert's teacher friends in their—the Papadopoulos'—living room every Friday night. While the boys played, Agnes, Isabel, and Momma had drinks in the backyard, and sent Euphemia and I out with the twins. We usually got milkshakes and walked around for a few hours before heading on home.

Euphemia and I were inseparable once school started. We had most of the same classes and the same lunch, so we spent a lot of time together. It was nice to have a friend who wasn't trying to set me up with her older brother all the time. Since Percy was going to be graduating that year, he was a lot more busy than he had been before and couldn't really spend a lot of time with me, like he used to, which I didn't mind too much because I still had Euphemia, at least.

I met him at the beach.

I didn't know it was him at first.

Euphemia had mentioned him in passing—he had come home a few weeks before and was taking some film studies class or something at the university Katie and Simone studied at and she was annoyed because he kept filming everyone and everything, even when they didn't want to be filmed—and I hadn't thought much of it. Momma had mentioned something about inviting him over for dinner with the rest of his family, but she didn't want to do it until he was really settled in.

It was sunny, and since we had taken our final exams, we decided to celebrate by spending a nice long day at the beach. Euphemia was supposed to come, but her aunt was taking her shopping so she couldn't. It would just be Percy, Rachel, and me, which was fine since we hadn't hung out in a while. Percy had graduation practice later on in the afternoon, but we'd be back in town by then, hopefully.

Rachel and I were swimming for a while. I remember how cold was that day, even though it was the warmest it had been a long time. Percy had left to get some ice cream. We went back to the beach to look for Percy because he had been gone for almost half an hour and the ice cream shop was right on the boardwalk. What was taking him so long? We split up, she'd go one way and I'd go another. He was our ride back home, after all, since we lived almost twenty minutes away from the beach.

He came up to me after Rachel left.

He was handsome and tall and tan and had the warmest smile I'd ever seen in my whole life and made me want to melt. I probably looked messy, with sand in my hair and my swimsuit that was just a little tighter than I would have liked. I should have known—should have been able to tell because he had his father's eyes, blue and friendly and sweet—but I didn't, because he was too busy dazzling me and telling me he had a pretty smile—prettiest I've ever seen—and he'd like to use me for his film, if I didn't mind.

"If you don't mind."

He even talked nice, with a light accent but not really, and all I could do was dumbly ask what it was about.

"Normal people," was his answer, "doing normal people things. Like smiling and eating and breathing and living."

He had a Super-8 like Albert's and I didn't know what to do. Boys never complimented me, like ever. Percy did, sometimes, but that was when he wanted something and he didn't mean it so it didn't even count. And Joey wasn't big on compliments or hand holding or doing much of anything romantic. I think he called me pretty once. I can't remember. But this man­—because he was a man, looked like one and smiled like one and was just manly—who I didn't know and had never seen before in my whole life told me I had a pretty smile and that was it. (I should have known better, I should have known, should have seen but I didn't because I was an innocent little girl who didn't know any better even though she should have.)

I let him follow me around the beach to do 'normal people things'.

I forgot about Percy and Rachel because I got lost in him, in his smile and his voice and the fact that he smelled like cigarettes but not really, like the faint scent of cigarettes that lingers when you don't smoke but someone you live with someone who does, because he bought me a chocolate milk shake with all the fixings (without me asking for one and I loved chocolate milkshakes) and seemed interesting and mysterious, because he waited outside the bathroom of the gas station across the street so I could change out of my bathing suit and bought me a candy bar (I had the worst sweet tooth and he knew, he knew me so well), because he gave me his sweater when it started to rain so I wouldn't get cold, because he said he liked my name and I liked how it rolled off his tongue, T-a-l-l-u-l-a-h. I liked him and I didn't know why and that only make him like him more.

Of course, that bubble popped when we ran into Percy and Rachel in the parking lot a few blocks away from the beach.

Percy was not a happy camper, and was even more upset seeing me with "some guy". (It dawned on me then that I spent all day with him and didn't even know his name.)

"Where have you been?" Percy asked me, making a face.

"Around." I smiled and he made another face, grabbing my arm.

"C'mon. We're leaving." I jerked away from him and he frowned, tutting at him.

"I think she can decide if she wants to leave with you or not."

"Well, I'm her ride home, so it's not like she really has a choice," Percy answered bitingly, shooting him a dirty look. "C'mon."

"No."

Percy always had to have things his way and it annoyed me because he never let me do things the way I wanted to do them, ever. Not if he had a say in it.

"What do you mean, no?" Rachel asked.

"I'll take the bus." Percy and Rachel huffed, turning around. I glanced at my watch. It was almost five. The bus station wasn't that far away, and I had enough money to pay for a trip home, maybe—

"You're not really taking the bus home, are you?" he asked, playing with the lens cap on his camera. I turned to look at him, shrugging.

"It's not that far."

"I can give you a ride, if you want. I have the car today." I bit my lip. Percy and Rachel were already turning the corner. What if there weren't any buses out my way? Then what? I nodded and followed him to his car, a Caddy that looked like Peter's except that it was blue and white on the inside.

"I live in the city." He nodded.

"So do I."

It started to rain heavily, again, and I thought briefly of Percy and how they were going to have graduation practice outside, but then he asked me what street I lived on and I turned to look at him, playing with the strap of my bag in my lap.

"89th and Ridgeway," I say, glancing at him. He raised an eyebrow but said nothing, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. "So who else is in your film?"

"Family. Friends. People I run into. You." He shrugged. "I have to develop the footage later. I could give you a copy if you'd like?" I shrugged and nodded, leaning into the seat. "So... that guy—"

"Ignore him. He's a stupid boy."

He smiled a little, and we were silent, comfortably so. I liked it. I liked him. I liked how he ran his hand through his hair and his dimples and his smile and how his shirt was tight but not too tight and like he looked like a real person. When we got to my neighborhood, I gave him directions to get to our house. Euphemia was sitting on the porch—she was the quiet brooding type—and stared at the car with a small frown as he came to a stop in front of my house.

"Thanks for today. I appreciate it. I had fun. We should do it again sometime."

"I don't even know your name," I said softly.

"Adonis."

Adonis.

At first, I didn't think anything of it. I just thought that his name was fitting because he was pretty attractive, thanked him for giving me a ride home, then went into my house. Albert and Momma were being couply again and the babies were sleeping in their play pen. They were dancing in the kitchen. I wanted to gag. I set my things on a chair and looked down. He didn't ask for his sweater back. I laughed a little, peeking through the window.

I frowned. Why was he parking in the driveway next door? And why was Euphemia yelling at him and pushing him inside her house? And then it hit me: he was Adonis Papadopoulos. Adonis, the annoying film student, Adonis, the boy whose mother sung his praises every time she got, Adonis, the man whose father was so gloatingly proud of. Why hadn't I recognized him sooner?

Adonis Papadopoulos, the mysterious boy who had taken my heart away when he gave me his sweatshirt.