Just Jem (Jayne's Nature), page 1
from Jayne’s Nature:
Just Jem;
a collection.
by Jayne Louise.
Mirror models
Tuesday, August 19, 2003
The last week has been really hot. On Tuesday we came home from the beach and showered as usual, and surprisingly enough all three of us showed up with actual clothes on for supper with our parents. I’d expected at least Jem to go without at least something. After supper I went up to my room, which is unbearably hot but I was not feeling well as it was the start of my period. I read a little and then wrote a letter on the computer to my aunt for her birthday. At one point I took off the headphones and heard Jules and Jem talking to each other in separate rooms across the hall.
‘No,’ Jules was saying. ‘I have no butt.’
‘I have a butt,’ said Jem.
‘Yes you do.’
‘You’ll get a butt, hun. You’re just not finished yet.’
By this time I had gotten up to see what was going on. The attic of our house is always hot and I expected to find one or both of them not dressed. But I didn’t expect what they might actually be doing while not dressed.
‘It’s just that you have everything else,’ Jules was saying.
‘I do not,’ said Jem. ‘That’s Jayne.’
I put my head around the doorway and looked in at her. My sister Jem was standing in front of her tall wall mirror, naked but for her good white church shoes, making poses for herself. She turned sideways to look at her own profile and then bent her shoulders way back and ran a hand down along the curve of her back and bottom.
‘Yes,’s he said, not seeing me. ‘I do like my butt.’
I laughed and then ducked out, just in time to see Jules, in her own room, whirl about in surprise. She had nothing on but shoes and had been admiring herself in her own mirror as well. ‘What are you supposed to be?’ I asked, like Daddy would have.
‘Nothing!’ Jules said, and she was blushing. ‘I was just….’ Then she lifted both hands and shoulders in a cute gesture of looking clueless.
Jem stood in her doorway across the hall. ‘We’re trying to decide who has the better butt,’ she said seriously.
‘It’s you,’ Jules said to me then.
I looked from one of them to the other and laughed again. ‘This is what you do by yourselves?’
‘Well, you were on the computer,’ Jules said, and made that hands-and-shoulders shrug again.
‘Jayne,’ Jem said, back in her room to admire herself again, ‘do you think it’s true what they say about heels?’
‘Hm; and what is it they say about heels?’
‘Well….’ She turned a few times like before and finally stood up perfectly straight, aligning her neck and shoulders and back and hips all in a line. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘like what you’ve said. How heels make your back straighter, How they’re good for your calves.’
I have said that. I just smiled at her. The church shoes are like pale blue maryjanes about 2-1/2” high, just enough to firm up her calves and tighten her bottom for her walk. Jem’s 14 now and the future of her figure has finally become obvious. She’ll never be big-breasted and she’ll never be fat, so everything past skinny is going to be good for her. She has a shape that bikinis are made for, with sweet, modest curves all over. In my opinion Jem is the prettiest girl I’ve ever known. ‘Well, they seem to work for you,’ I said.
‘Do you think so?’ She kept turning a little away from the mirror and looking over her shoulder at her back. She wasn’t being cocky or conceited. She was curious. For her this is as much an intellectual exercise as it is something to build up her confidence. She really doesn’t believe she is pretty enough to be cocky about how she looks.
‘Yes,’ I told her, and I started out of the room.
‘Do these work?’ Jules asked, as she pounded past me to share Jem’s mirror. She had changed her shoes to her bright pink wedges, the ones I advised her to not buy at Payless.
They both looked at each other in the mirror. ‘No,’ I told her. ‘You can’t even walk in those things. The heels looked better.’
‘Okay!’ she said, and stomped back across the hall to her room to change them.
Mom called up about the loud pounding she could hear from down stairs. Jules came back in the other shoes, the pale-yellow strap sandals she bought only this summer, for church. They’re about two inches high, maybe more, but less than the ones Jem has. She stood up straight in front of Jem’s mirror again and then, out of habit, assumed the ballet first position. Jem laughed at her. ‘Well don’t stand like that!’ I said, and fortunately Jules moved then, turning sideways to the mirror and lowering her chin to her shoulder to look over herself. I laughed then too. ‘Cute,’ I said.
Jem had stepped back and was just looking at me for a second. I had on red floral cotton/spandex panties that look like a swimsuit bottom and a plain white tanktop. My hair was down from drying it this afternoon and I was feeling a little bloated. But Jem said, ‘Jayne, hun, step in front of this mirror for a sec.’
‘What?’
‘Please,’ she said. ‘For me.’ And she prodded me over. I stood, awkwardly, and then she started peeling up my tanktop. ‘Just to see your butt,’ she said.
So I took it off and stood there in the red panties– that were a necessity– and let them both look at me. Of course I didn’t really mind– I knew why they wanted to. Jem and Jules both look up to me as a role model, but also as a body model. Because I’m older, whatever I look like is that they believe a normal girl my age should look like. I wonder if either of them knows that neither of them will ever be built like me. Jules will always be terrifically cute, but slender like a ballerina, and Jem will have the sweetest figure in the world so long as you think a B cup is enough. I envy them both, though I know they would both think that’s just nuts.
‘She does have a cute butt,’ Jules finally said.
I rolled my eyes. I felt like I was blushing. ‘All right,’ I said, ‘I think we’re done comparing butts, here. Just make sure you’re not doing anything to bring Mom up here.’
Mom did come up to kiss us each good night. I don’t know about those two but I know I had on enough clothing to be presentable.
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Grand entrance
Wednesday, August 20, 2003
The next evening Mom and Daddy were going out, and we asked permission to have friends over. We promised it would be just the girls from before and that we would stay in and watch a video or something. Jules was having dinner at Tina’s, so they came back about 7:30. Jem was still up stairs and so I sat in the front living room with Tina and Jules till Naomi and Gretel came by, at about 8:00. That’s when Jem decided to come down.
I know I should have expected it– girls’ night in, parents out, late entrance– and I’d seen her before this anyway. I laughed when I first saw her and got up to get out of the living room. But her entrance was so cute that I lingered in the archway to watch her. Very slowly she descended the stairs, delicately gliding her fingertips along the railing, taking each step carefully in the pale pink maryjane shoes with the 2-1/2” heels. Need I say it? –that was all she wore.
Naomi laughed out loud. Gretel just sat there staring with her mouth hanging open. Jem saw that, stepping down to the floor, and immediately asked, ‘What?’
‘Nothing!’ blurted Gretel.
‘Sorry,’ Jem said, turning with perfect poise and starting across to the kitchen, ‘but it’s just us, and I’m comfortable.’
‘She’s been like that all day,’ Jules said with a groan, and we all got up to go out to the rec room then.
The weirdest part of it seemed to be that it was still light out. The inside door was open to the street and we didn’t have any lights on. Maybe it only seems strange, but had it been darker outside I wouldn’t have thought Jem’s being naked was so obvious.
In the rec room we put in Big Fat Liar and found comfortable places to sit. Jem was still in the kitchen, undoubtedly waiting to make another entrance. She wasn’t out by the time the previews were over, so I got up to see what she was up to. The smell of overdone popcorn exploded as she opened the microwave door. ‘Yuck,’ she said.
I laughed again. Being naked was fine with her, but not in the kitchen– she had put on Mom’s pink-and-white gingham apron, with the high heels and her bare bottom showing underneath the apron ribbons. ‘What are you supposed to be?’ I teased her.
She took out the popcorn and dumped it onto the large bowl we use just for movie nights. ‘Why do you keep asking me that?’ she asked, and turned and handed me the bowl. ‘I’m just making popcorn. Would you take that out, please?’
I smiled at her and then couldn’t resist leaning in and kissing the side of her head. ‘You’re my idol, you know,’ I whispered, and took the popcorn out to the others.
Jules called, without looking around, ‘The movie’s coming on, you guys!’
‘Guys?’ Naomi teased. ‘I take exception to that remark.’
Then Jem came out, still in the apron, with a tray of cold iced tea and six glasses. ‘Yes, definitely,’ said Tina with a laugh. ‘I don’t think anyone would mistake Jem for being a guy.’
We all laughed at that. ‘No way,’ I said. ‘Not ever again, anyway.’
Jem made a face at that. But that’s how we communicate in this family. We don’t hide out reactions to things, even when, as usual, we say just
Jem took off the apron in the rec room and tossed it over the chair by the kitchen door. Then she sat on the sofa beside me for the movie. I was really proud of that. My sister knows I’m the one person in the world who understands what she’s really like. She trusts me, because she knows I love her, and that’s the highest honor in the world.
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Vertically victorious
Early May 2004
I was in the rec room with Daddy and Mom when Jules came back from Tina’s. ‘I’m home!’ she announced from the front door and went straight up stairs. We were watching something on the History Channel about slaves and figured neither of them would come back down again. During a commercial break, Mom and I put out some iced tea and chips and salsa on the table and sat down in time for the show again. At the next commercial Daddy got up for some too. We were all watching again when Jules came down in her plaid PJ pants and a cami top. She helped herself to some chips and then said, like it was some profound statement, ‘It’s starting again.’
Mom looked up like she’d said the plumbing was leaking all over the house. ‘What’s starting?’ she worried.
Jules sat down beside Daddy, almost like she would sit on his lap, crunched on a chip and then said, ‘She’s not wearing anything again.’
I laughed. ‘Oh,’ said Mom, totally relieved. ‘Well… as long as it’s just that.’
‘It is,’ said Jules, and got right up again for the kitchen for something other than chips.
I got up for more too and just before the next commercial we heard the chips again. I turned around first and then Daddy did too. Jem was standing at the end of the table, casually dipping a chip into the salsa and then biting the very end of it very daintily, like a princess at an embassy ball. In profile to us her figure looked really lovely. Of course she was naked, all except for her shoes, her new good black ones that are about three inches high.
Daddy made a smile, almost ready to laugh. ‘And what, pray tell, are you supposed to be?’
Jem didn’t flinch. She only stood there, knowing we were all looking at her and not the TV, and made a little smile, the same kind of sly smile as Daddy makes. ‘Taller,’ she said, and turned and stepped around into the kitchen,
We all laughed then. So, it’s nearly summer, and it’s starting again!
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Just Jem.
Text © 2012 by Girls Of the Dove LLC.
From the individual texts of 2003-2004, used with permission.
All rights reserved.
This e-text is covered by Digital Rights Management.
No part of the manuscript or artwork included in this e-text
may be reproduced, stored or transmitted by any means
without express written permission from the Publisher.
Text edited by Melissa Stockhart.
HTML edited by The Girls of The Dove.
First Kindle® edition, January 2012
From the original America Online journal entries of 2004
Surf City Source media group
New Jersey
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More adventures are told
in the upcoming complete edition
of Jayne’s Nature,
from Surf City Source media group.
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Jayne Louise, Just Jem (Jayne's Nature)
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