Of Painted Water (Logan Lerman Love Story)

Hillbillies, Sticky Notes, and One Horrible Text

If I hear the word 'Howdy' again in the next two minutes, someone is going to die.

"Well I sure is glad to see you, folks." Uncle Bill gushed at the dinner table, pulling his John Deer baseball cap of his head to expose his thinning brown hair. A line was visible on his forehead, the sunburn line. The area above his eyebrows was half sunburned and half normal, a very obvious line separating the two types of skin. His baseball cap didn't really protect him completely from the sun.

"Yeah, so glad you could have us." Aunt Genny blushed prettily, her crazy curly hair, also brown, was currently being held back by a colorful tye-dyed scarf.

Aunt Genny is my dads sister, and her husband bill has no blood relation to our family. They live way out in Viginia, on a farm.

And there was only one word to describe my extended family: Redneck.

If you just walked by my family in the grocery store or something, you would probably think we were normal people with normal lives. You would never believe we were related to the Carson's.

Bill Carson had grown up on his daddy's farm, and ended up inheriting it, too. Aunt Genny, who loves nature more than my mother, was more than happy to pick up her Cali life to go live out in the sticks with him, and to pop out seven kids within a fifteen year time period.

Not to be stereotypical or anything, but these people just stand out like crazy. It's like they try to make it obvious they're not from around here.

The massive mud-spattered Chevy truck in our front drive proves that.

"It's so great to see you again." my mom smiled, but I could see the lines at the side of her mouth that said no, she didn't think it was so great.

We we're all gathered around the tiny dining room table that I had previously been telling my mother about my best friends pregnancy at, eating dinner.

A majority of my cousins were old enough and off going about their lives, so only three of them were with their parents, at our house.

Child One: Butch, five years old and chubbier than any pig I've ever seen. He had a bad habit of grabbing certain body parts that he shouldn't grab. And let's just say they aren't his body parts.

Child Two: Anne Marie, thirteen with the attitude to prove it. She seems to think I'm out to get her, and has made it her goal to pester me with questions meant to hurt my feelings, such as "Have you plucked your eyebrows recently? No? Well you should look into that."

Child Three: Darren. Sixteen. He must be the only one of them that actually likes me, and I want nothing to do with him. He likes me a little too much for my comfort, and seems to be under the impression that I'm playing hard to get, which in his mind means try even harder to bother me.

Robin had come out to see what was going on, had grabbed a roll and then darted off back to her room. I think she needed some alone time, because the reality of her situation was hitting her full force. I wanted nothing more than to go join her in her room, but mom said that if I left her alone with our extended family that I wouldn't live to see tomorrow.

And Dev?

Well for the first time in his life, he was being quiet.

And that is because he has become the focus of Anne Marie, who thinks he bears an incredibly similar appearance to that of her idol, some teenybopper from Australia.

Cody something or other.

Every time he opens his mouth to say something or to contribute to the conversation, she sighs dreamily and gazes at him like he just asked her to marry him. And she keeps talking, blabbering her mouth off about how much she just adores him, and how she wishes she had a boyfriend like him.