Sketcher by Roland Watson-Grant Page A

Harry T, and we got there early to help set up for the rest of the camp kids.
    Now, when the bus came at sunset, this little city boy Peter Grant, who never got out of his house much, he was runnin’ beside that bus for about half a mile, and all the kids on the bus were cheering him on until he tripped over a rock in the dirt road and fell and busted his face wide open. Pow. And everybody said, “Oh my gosh” – and he was bleeding bad and the camp nurse wasn’t there yet. So they washed him off, and we went into our cabin and – guess what – Frico actually took out his sketchpad and fixed ol’ Peter Grant up real perfect. I held the flashlight so Frico could draw his face proper, and we didn’t even charge the guy a dime. You should’ve seen that midget Marlon and Belly eatin’ their words like cold soup. But to this day Harry T keeps sayin’ the nurse came and I slept through the whole thing. Yeah, right. All I knew was that even though Frico was still reluctant to sketch, him fixin’ those shorts and patchin’ up ol’ city boy Peter Grant’s face meant that soon we’d be in business.
    Of course I knew that when camp was over, Marlon and Belly would go back to pretendin’ that they didn’t see what happened at camp. So as soon as we got back to school, I hatched a plan. See, that statement about the impossibility of Skid getting a girlfriend really hit a nerve. So I said to myself: “I’m goin’ to do better than gettin’ a girl. I’m goin’ to go for the best one there is.”
    Now, I should tell you: I love older women. Loved them since I was, like, six or thereabouts . And why not? Older women are so fine. Anyone who knows me will tell ya, there’s somethin’ about a woman many years my senior that makes Skid Beaumont act up like he’s on catnip.
    That’s why when little Suzy Wilson first came to Long Lake Elementary in ’82, I wasn’t interested. Suzy Wilson was the most popular girl in school, even though she was skinny and too talkative and her chin was all pointy and whatever. She came from a sleepy corner of Canada, the French part, like my pops’ great-great-grandpopses, where it prob’ly snows all year and everybody stays inside. And I suppose there’s not a whole bunch of people to talk to on account of that. So when Suzy landed in Louisiana she had a hell of a lot of catching up to do. Man, that little girl would yap and my ears would just fall asleep.
    So, to be honest, the only thing I liked about Suzy Wilson was her aunt, Miss Fiola Lambert. Slow motion. Miss Lambert was this sweet-lookin’ teacher at Long Lake with a French accent and curls in her hair like a little girl. But man – there was no mistakin’ she was a woman. She was like warm toast soaked in syrup, or a cup of that camomile tea they serve in fancy restaurants – hot and dreamy. They said she had “European charm”. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but it sounded real delicate, like those heels that made her legs look so long. Even Pops, when he came to the school and couldn’t remember Miss Lambert’s name, he kept referring to her as “Miss Jacob’s Ladder”, cos he said her legs “wentall the way up to heaven”. Of course Moms gave him hell for that. Anyway, when all the guys were salivatin’ over little Suzy and her lemonade stare, I closed one eye and took a look at her aunt, thirty-year-old Miss Lambert, just so I could imagine Suzy in the future. And I gotta tell ya, future Suzy Wilson was hot as hell.
    Meanwhile, Marlon, Frico, Harry T and this other dude Kevin, they all liked Suzy. Man, it was like a circus. Everybody came with somethin’ to try to impress that girl. But Marlon, he took the whole thing to another level. He got all cheesy and started writing songs for her. Well, actually he was just making up new words for Michael