BBA & HBWC Administrator
Andrea Reece
30 Winton Avenue, London, N11 2AT
Tel: 0208 889 1292
Mob: 07807 893369
Email: branford.boase@gmail.com
Press Enquiries
Andrea Reece
Tel: 07807 893369 | Email: branford.boase@gmail.com
This timeslip tale unfolds into an unexpectedly touching story of a teenage relationship. Adolescence can be full of uncertainties, fears and emotions, some of which last well into adulthood. The author has managed to express the magic and innocence of first love. A beautifully told story. The writing is accomplished — characterful and commanding, with a great sense of time, place and emotional timbre. The writer manages to tell a life story through the short presentation of two timeframes. It’s suspenseful, haunting and left us hungry for more!
Camp Bluestem, Nebraska, 1987
Let me tell you about the first girl I fell in love with.
I’m thirteen and a half, and it’s the last day of camp before my mother comes to drive me away. The bridge of my nose stings with sunburn. My hair is French-braided by some older girl whose name I can’t remember, and my camp-branded t-shirt envelops my growing frame down to my knees. The evening is golden; time doesn’t exist.
I’m sitting cross-legged on the grass beside a girl my age whom I’d been inseparable with all summer, a girl so painfully beautiful. Her hair is curly brown and her eyes are green, and if I looked close enough, I could see a willow tree drift and sway inside them. There are honeyed freckles that sit on her cheekbones, arranged as if somebody had individually painted every one. Even now her face is so clear and sweet in my mind it’s as if she’s burrowed herself into bone; I still look for her in everyone.
Looking over I see a smile rip across her face, stretching out like a cat in a patch of sunlight, and she almost glows. Like there’s something incandescent inside of her. Maybe it’s the way the day hits just half of her face, the setting Midwestern sun beaming over us in waves, causing sweat to bubble at my hairline – as if basking in her isn’t warmth enough. Or maybe the way you can feel her soul ripple out of her every time she laughs. Even though I’m just a kid, barely older, I know this is what love is supposed to feel like, before they tried to teach me otherwise. It’s warm and kind and feels just like this summer. I feel love in her presence.
She wraps her hand in mine and squeezes tightly, both of our wrists stacked with bracelets as we watch the day turn night, two girls allowed to just exist. A choir of cicadas chirp and hum somewhere out of sight; the smoky scent of campfire burns in the air.
At night I feel her place a gentle kiss on my temple; I don’t dare open my eyes. It sounds as if she’s crying.
When I wake in the morning, she is already gone.
Camp Bluestem, Nebraska, 2014
My daughter stands in front of me bearing a smile adorned with a row of braces. She is thirteen and a half, scuffing her shoes with parking lot gravel and begrudgingly allowing me to take her picture before the next five weeks of camp. Her hair is French-braided and hangs over her backpack that bulges outwards as if it were a shell.
And as I watch her wave and walk away, the ground crunching beneath her feet, my eyes flicker to another mother standing beside her car – she watches her own daughter run with youthful excitement and looks up, as though she can feel my gaze on her face. She is a woman, a woman who was once a girl. A woman with greying curly hair, and the same willow eyes. She is just as warm as the day she left me. My temple begins to buzz with the memory of her lips.
I am interrupted by my wife calling from the car. My wife who looks so much like that girl I once knew, a girl so painfully beautiful. I tear myself away and climb into the passenger seat as the engine rumbles and we roll slowly out of the parking lot.
When I turn and look back, she is already gone.