Both girls considered his words carefully. “Do you really think so?” asked Grace.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Want to try again and put the theory to the test?”
They did not want to, pleading fatigue. Instead, they ducked under the net and paddled over to the underwater sitting ledge in the deep end so they could sit down and rest for a bit. Jake paddled over with them, giving them the ledge while he put his back to the edge of the pool and secured himself by spreading his arms wide while he lay on his back, his legs floating out before him.
“It’s such a bum that we have to go back home tomorrow,” Chase pouted.
“All good things must come to an end,” Jake quoted.
“True,” she said. “Pocatello is going to seem so boring after California though.”
“Maybe,” said Grace, “but it will be nice to get back home, back to our own room, our own things, the normal routine.”
“The normal routine bites,” Chase said. “I wish I could stay here forever.”
“This would quickly take on the routine of normal life and you’d be bored with it as well,” Jake suggested.
“I seriously doubt that,” Chase returned. “Do you ever get bored with the life you lead?”
“Honestly ... no,” Jake admitted. “But there are aspects of it that can be quite unpleasant.”
“Like what?” Chase asked.
“The list is quite long,” Jake told her. “Privacy is extremely hard to come by. Everything that Laura and I do is subject to being printed in some tabloid rag or announced on a Hollywood gossip show. And those same reporters are free to make things up about us if they don’t happen to have any actual facts to print or report and there is little to nothing that we can do about it. A vast majority of the town we live near despises us and believes anything they hear about us even though they do not know us at all. And we are constantly navigating in a world filled with people who are trying to exploit us and screw us in any way they can, which makes us mistrustful of the motivations of pretty much everyone.”
“Wow,” said Grace, awe in her voice. “That’s deep.”
“Hella deep,” Chase said, just as awed. “You know, that’s what I really like about you and Aunt Laura, Uncle Jake. You both talk to us like we’re adults instead of a couple of teenagers.”
“Yeah,” Grace said. “I really like that too.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake said, circling things around to what he really wanted to talk about, “because I have a favor to ask of both of you.”
“What is it?” Grace asked.
“Yeah,” Chase said. “We’ll do anything for you.”
“It has to do with all those pictures you have been taking during your time here,” Jake said.
“The pictures?” Chase asked. “What about them?”
Both girls had brought cheap 35mm cameras with them and both had shot at least ten rolls of film over the past two weeks. Many of those shots had been of the famous sights and scenery of coastal California—particularly Grace’s, as she planned to paint many of the landscapes and seascapes she had encountered once she got home—but a good portion were also of Jake, Laura, and Celia. There were shots of them individually and together. There were shots of them posing with the girls, both individually and together, shots where they stood arm in arm on the ocean cliff, in front of the airplane, inside the airplane in flight, out on the fishing boat, on the ATVs, at Disneyland. Jake knew that he personally had had his photo taken no less than twenty times with one or both of the girls, sometimes with Laura or Celia in the shot, sometimes without. Chase, in particular, had exclaimed on multiple occasions that she couldn’t wait to show those shots to her friends in Pocatello, so they could see that she really had hung out with her Uncle Jake and Aunt Laura and, most significant of all, Celia Valdez.
“It’s like this,” Jake explained. “You heard about what happened with that photo that Laura and I took with that ramper at the Pocatello Airport, right?”
“Yeah!” Grace said. “With Ron! Brian went to school with him. Ron was a senior when Brian was a freshman.”
“Brian says he is a total computer geek with no social skills,” Chase added, a considerable amount of contempt in her voice at the thought of such a creature.
“Uh ... yeah,” Jake said. The was the first he had heard that Ron the ramper and Brian knew each other. “Anyway, Laura and I met Ron when he helped us with our plane when we visited you back in December. He took a bunch of shots of the plane, and of Laura and I with his coworker, and then the coworker took one of Ron and Laura and me. Are you familiar with what happened next?”
“Like... yeah,” Chase said. “Everyone in Pocatello knows what happened next. Someone got ahold of that shot of you and Ron and Aunt Laura, photoshopped it, and started spreading it around on the internet saying that Ron was a drag queen and that you and Aunt Laura had kidnapped him from South America and were keeping him as a sex slave that does the windows.”
“Right,” Jake said.
“But nobody believes that,” Grace said. “The newspaper put out an article explaining that it wasn’t true. They showed the original picture and interviewed Ron and he told them he sent the picture out to some photography club in an email. Everything was explained.”
“Everything was explained to the people of Pocatello,” Jake said, “where a lot of the people know Ron the ramper and were inclined to accept the evidence before their eyes despite the fact that I am evil incarnate to most of your quaint little community. In the rest of the world, however, that story was not published and a great many people actually believe that Laura and I are keeping a Venezuelan transexual in captivity and that our money and fame is compelling authorities to look the other way about it.”
“Really?” asked Grace, wide-eyed.
“That’s totally uncool,” Chase added, outraged at the thought.
“People actually believe that ridiculous story?” Grace asked, shaking her head.
“They really believe it because they want to believe it,” Jake said. “And none of the newspapers or media outlets want to publish the Pocatello story because they have no interest in telling the truth about us. They cannot write a story about the allegation because it is provably untrue and would open them up to libel charges, but they are under no obligation to declare the rumor untrue.”
“Wow,” Chase said. “I see what you mean about the bad side of your life.”
“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake said. “So, you’ll understand when I tell you I am a little concerned about all of those pictures you took of me and Laura and Celia, particularly the ones with you two in them.”
Both girls eyes got a little wider. “Are you saying,” Chase said, “that you think people will think that ... that ... me and Gracie and ... and you are ... you know... doing it?”
“If those pictures were to get out into general circulation,” Jake said, “yes, there are people out there who would suggest that, would possibly even come up with a story like what they came up with about me and Laura and Ron the ramper.”
“That is so disgusting!” Grace said, genuinely appalled at that thought. “You’re our uncle! And old enough to be our dad!”
“That doesn’t matter to the people who pass these sort of things around,” Jake said. “They could put any story they want on it and a certain amount of people will believe it. They might put in the story that you are my nieces and that I’m giving your mom and dad money to look the other way about what we or doing or they might say you’re a couple of sex slaves I bought in New York City. They might even say that Laura or Celia is involved in this thing as well.”