lakeside
“Come on,” said David, like the little devil he was. As if he’d been working toward this moment his whole life. “You can’t do it.”
He was rocking back and forth, the river dancing around his waist. Momentarily, the clouds parted and the sunlight bore harshly into my eyesight. I frowned and heard Jenny giggling at the shore, asking us when we’d start playing Marco Polo.
“You can’t,” he said, ignoring Jenny. “You’re not even interesting enough to come up with a different game.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yeah?” he said. “Then come up with one. Come up with one right now.”
I could feel the kids’ eyes on my back. I was facing the river in which David stood, waist-deep into the water. Even in this moment of hatred I couldn’t deny how picturesque he looked, a lean and lightly tanned teen posing for a Target summer photoshoot. His most definitely evil grin could be interpreted as an overzealous smile of a sporty youth enjoying nature, and the his blond hair caught the sunlight in a natural halo. Above us, the sky was a clear blue. Around us, it smelled wonderfully of water and rocks and grass and soft dirt. I could hear the rush of the river. As I took all of this in, contemptuously, my mind went blank. I stared, defenseless.
“Yeah. You can’t. All you do is play videogames. It’s not like you have much of a life anyway.”
I couldn’t believe his audacity. His blinding arrogance; his controlling attitude. That he’d gotten away with so many things, that he was so beloved -- how could the adults not see him for the devil he was? How could they misconstrue tyranny for charisma, hubris for confidence, and deceit for charm? How could they leave me to the side like a forgotten hand-me-down while he flourished in the attention and sunlight? And it had all gotten to his head, had become the fibre of his being. These summers were always under his reign, under his self-appointed dictatorship misunderstood by everyone else as natural-born charisma.
“Maybe I do.” I took a step closer, trembling with clenched fists.