Before I could get any more details Katie skidded the car into our driveway and hopped out. I followed, still cussing my stupid shoes and feeling more self conscious than ever about my bare legs, my dress, and all my lady parts.
Inside the house, Katie grabbed something from the front room then charged down the hall. “What are you doing?” I asked as I stumbled behind.
She ran into my room, bent over the big VCR, and I heard the weird mechanism inside rise up to pop out the tape we’d been watching when we got Gilmorized. Then I saw Katie slam in another tape and shove it down. “There,” she said. Then she stood up and immediately began peeling off her top.
The TV screen lit up with a shaky image of a white sand beach and some circling gulls. At first I didn’t recognize what I was seeing, mostly because i was more interested in how the light from the screen played across Rory’s bare body, but then I glanced back at the screen and saw a petite girl in a black one piece swimsuit. Katie. A minute later, some goofy looking guy with a cheapo foam body board wandered into view. Me.
“It’s our vacation video!” I shouted.
“Yes, genius. It’s a tape of nothing but you and me.”
The previous summer, the family had taken a rather sad three day vacation at Panama City beach while coming back from one of Katie’s gymnastics meets. Mom had carried the same bulky old camera she’d been using to document all Katie’s meets since she was three, and kept pointing it at me and Katie. It had been irritating at the time, but now it was a lifesaver.
Katie plopped down on the edge of the bed, rolled on her back and stuck her legs up in the air. With a few skillfull swivels of Rory’s famous hips, she slipped out of her skirt. She titled her head, long brown hair spilling across the bed. She saw me looking at a her with my mouth hanging open and rolled her blue eyes. “Come on, Lorelia, isn’t this what you’ve been waiting for? Peel off that dress, girl, and get that vintage ass over here.”
For a second I could only stare. Could I really do this? I mean, no matter what she looked like, she was my sister. Kind of. On the other hand, she looked... she looked... I kicked off the damned shoes and struggled out of the green dress. Somewhere along the line, something ripped, but a minute later I was naked, ready, and standing at he foot of the bed.
A minute after that, I was still standing.
I raised up my arms and hid as much of me as I could. “I can’t do this. I mean, I don’t even know what to do.”
Katie raised a hand to me. “Come on,” she said. “You don’t have to do anything.”
“Katie, I...”
“Shhh. Come down here.” Her fingers found mine and she pulled me down, snug up against her on the narrow space of my twin bed. Her smooth skin pressed up against me nearly head to toe. Despite being sure that I couldn’t do anything with Katie—no matter whose body either was of us was wearing—I could feel the increasingly familiar sensation of my groin furnace switching to Extra Hot.
“What are you...”
She rolled onto her side, facing me with a grin. “Did you know that women your age are at their sexual peak?”
“I’m not...”
Her hand rested lightly on the soft inner side of my thigh. “Plus you’ve got all these brand new joy spots.” Her fingers slid upward with aching slowness. “I figure this will take five minutes. Tops.”
Before she’d even touched more than my leg, every muscle in my long, thin, borrowed body tightened up like a bowstring. My back arched up and away from the bed. My toes curled. The fire between my legs spread over my skin. Her fingers moved again.
It took two minutes. Tops.