Summer at Willow Lake

by Susan Wiggs

  Lolly changed in the bathroom. She didn’t bother pretending she wasn’t modest. It was silly, these were her cousins, but all the same, being fat turned her into a very private person. As quickly as possible, she slipped on her camp swimsuit.

  Connor. I’m going to see Connor Davis again. She tried to quell a thrill of anticipation but couldn’t quite manage. She told herself to take it easy. Maybe he wasn’t as cute as she remembered. Maybe he was all bulging from steroids or had a face full of zits, or maybe he’d turned into a skank or an obnoxious jock. Pulling on a heather-gray T-shirt over her swimsuit, Lolly conceded that there was really only one flaw in the otherwise perfect friendship they used to share every summer. And that flaw was such a deeply buried secret that sometimes she even forgot she was keeping it. But something always happened to bring the truth back home to her.

  And the awful, piercing, deeply concealed truth was that she was hopelessly in love with Connor Davis.

  Of course she was. How could she not be? He was strong and fast and kind, and you always knew where you stood with him because he didn’t play games and he didn’t lie. He was the perfect friend and theirs was the perfect summer friendship—except for that one little problem she had with being completely over-the-top gaga about him.

  It didn’t matter that she hadn’t seen him the past three summers. If anything, that made him even more perfect in her mind. Sometimes she tried to figure out the precise moment it had happened. Had there been a tipping point, when she’d shifted from simply liking him to swooning over him as Prince Charming?

  If she had to pick a moment, an instant when she knew beyond a doubt that her heart was lost, it would have to be the night of the ear piercing. She hadn’t known it at the time, but it was their last summer together, so perhaps there was something symbolic in the act of marking him permanently. He’d wanted his ear pierced for reasons she suspected had to do with rebelling against a hated stepdad. Connor would have done the piercing himself, except that she knew he’d make a mess of it, maybe even damage himself. She’d stepped in, pretending to be stoic when she wanted to faint the whole time. In the camp infirmary, using a sterile lancet and a rubber reflex mallet, she’d pierced his ear, weeping openly as tears of pain squeezed reluctantly from his clamped-shut eyes.

  He’d worn the silver hoop earring all summer, and every time she looked at it, she felt a secret flash of pleasure. She didn’t doubt for a minute that some other girl would be his first love, but in a weird way, Lolly felt as if she’d staked some sort of claim on him.

  She liked him so much that when she wrote about him in her diary, her hand shook, and the passage of time since she’d last seen him didn’t diminish her feelings. She was shaking now, getting ready to go down to the swimming dock.

  As she headed out the door, she grabbed her windbreaker and tied it by the sleeves around her waist so that it covered her butt. She was fooling no one, of course. Least of all herself.

  They hiked down to Saratoga Cabin and rounded up the Fledgling girls.

  “Aren’t we supposed to march in a line?” asked one of the campers, a little girl named Flossie.

  “Probably.” Dare ruffled the girl’s blond hair. “Think we’ll get in trouble if we don’t?”

  Lolly scanned the girls, an excited, giggling mass of all shapes and sizes. “They should definitely walk in a line, at least until I do a head count.”

  Despite some grumbling, they lined up two by two and sure enough, someone was missing.

  “I’ll go,” Lolly said, heading into the cabin. Its familiar smell enveloped her—shampoo, bubble gum, and the faint but ever-present whiff of mildew. She was always on the lookout for misfits, and she knew right where to look, because she knew all the hiding places. She found the stray camper curled up on a lower bunk, facing a wall from which hung a calendar. The first day of camp had been x-ed out, but the rest of the boxes stretched out in a long, seemingly endless string.

  “Ramona?” Lolly asked. “We’re going to the lake now.”

  Ramona gave a tragic sniffle. “I have a stomachache.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Did you know that in the counselor’s manual, it says that a stomachache is the most common ailment of all campers?”

  “It’s the most common ailment of me,” she said miserably.

  “When I feel scared, that’s usually when my stomach starts to hurt,” Lolly confessed. “The good news is, the bellyache goes away when you quit being scared.”

  “That’s not such good news,” Ramona said. “I’m scared of camp and I’m stuck here for the whole summer, so it’s not going away.”

  “Oh, yes it is,” Lolly assured her, gently prying the girl’s white-knuckled grip from the edge of the bunk. “There are hundreds of ways to get over being scared. Believe me, I know them all because I’m an expert at being scared of things.”

  Ramona looked dubious. “I’m scared to swim.”

  “So am I,” Lolly said, “and I do it anyway. And the more I swim the less scared I am. I’ve already decided that when I go away to college in the fall, I’m going to join the intramural swim team.”

  “No way.”

  “Way.”

  “Why would you want to be on swim team?”

  “Because it’s hard. And scary.”

  “Then why do it?”

  “Good question. I’ve heard you should face your fears. It makes you grow as a person. For me, that would be making swim team.” She offered Ramona a conspiratorial smile. “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  “I don’t see what’s good about doing something hard.”

  Lolly held out her hand. “Let’s get your swimsuit on and go down to the lake and see if we can figure that out.”

  The little girl whimpered, and then surrendered, tucking her hand into Lolly’s.

  “Will you go in the water with me?” Ramona asked.

  “Of course, if you need me.”

  “Oh, I know I will.”

  Great, thought Lolly. While all the other counselors were high and dry, standing on the dock and flirting with one another, she’d be in the drink with this kid.

  She and Ramona were the last to join the swarm of campers, counselors and lifeguards. The long dock was equipped with starting blocks, and the swim course was marked with buoys every twenty-five meters. In the distance was the diving tower, its tallest platform ten meters high. Keeping hold of Ramona’s hand, Lolly scanned the crowd. Counselors were blowing whistles, yelling at the kids to form lines at the starting blocks. And there, supervising a squirming tangle of restless boys, was Connor Davis, looking like something out of a dream.

  At first, it was too chaotic to do anything but wave at one another over a sea of little kids. Even so, Lolly felt her bones melt when he looked at her. It was a wonder she was still standing upright. He was far and away the best-looking guy she had ever seen.

  The thing about Connor Davis was, he seemed to have no clue that his looks were anything special. Maybe that natural humility was a function of growing up hard and having a father like Terry Davis. Maybe things like that kept him from focusing on appearances.

  Girls focused on his looks all the time, Lolly knew. She could see it happening right now. The female counselors were already circling like lipsticked buzzards, checking out his shoulder-length glossy black hair, his sapphire-blue eyes, his big shoulders and easy, attractive grin. Some of them were undoubtedly already plotting ways to seduce him.

  By the time he jostled his way through the milling kids and moved close enough to greet Lolly on the dock, it was too late. Girls were nudging one another, pointing, staking their claim. Connor stayed focused on Lolly, though.

  “Hey,” he said. His voice was much deeper than she remembered, but still melodic. She wondered if he was still a good singer.

  “Hey, yourself.” Lolly knew every bit of delight she was feeling shone on her face, and she didn’t even care.

  “I was hoping you’d be here this summer,” he said w
ith his customary blunt honesty.

  “Too bad I didn’t have your e-mail address. I would have sent you a note, asking you.”

  “I don’t have an e-mail address. I hear you can use the library for that, but I don’t get there too often.”

  Lolly was mentally kicking herself. She always did this. Always took it for granted that the whole world had stuff like computers and mobile phones and such at their fingertips.

  “E-mail isn’t that reliable, anyway,” she conceded, and much as she hated to admit it, she liked it as a method of communication. E-mail seemed like a hybrid between a paper letter, which was a deliberate act, and a phone call, which presumed a level of intimacy between parties. To Lolly, e-mail would have been the ideal way to contact him. Except he never would have received her note.

  A whistle sounded, and the water-safety captain yelled at everyone to form lines along the swimming dock. Ramona Fisher grabbed Lolly’s hand and clung desperately.

  Connor flashed another grin. He still didn’t seem to notice that every female counselor in sight was fixated on him. Could he possibly be that clueless, or did he really not know?

  “So we’ll catch up later,” he said to Lolly.

  “Yeah. Later.” She saw that he still had his pierced ear. Oh, God. He’d kept it. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

  “Yo, help me out here,” someone bellowed.

  “Julian,” Connor said under his breath, and then he shouted the name as he ran. The small boy named Julian had climbed a tree beside the lake, and he was crawling along a limb that hung out over the water. He was a remarkable-looking boy, wiry and quick and clearly filled with mischief. Balancing on the end of the limb, he thumped his chest, Tarzan style, and let out a bloodcurdling yell before leaping like a frog into the water.

  Lolly got busy as well, helping to sort the girls into their skill groups. Ramona stood shivering on the dock, regarding the beautiful, clear water with misery and terror.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “You’re going to amaze yourself with what you can do,” Lolly said.

  “I’m not going in.”

  “If you put it off today, it’ll only be harder tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take my chances,” Ramona said.

  “Tell you what, how about if I get in the water first, and you can jump in and swim to me. Think you could do that?”

  Ramona shrugged. At least it wasn’t a flat-out refusal.

  Wonderful, thought Lolly, dropping her windbreaker, then peeling off her T-shirt. I get to be the first counselor in the water. Ramona looked so grateful that Lolly forgot to be self-conscious, though. She showed her how easy it was to jump in, just a short drop.

  “Right here to me,” she urged. “Come on, Ramona. Think how proud of yourself you’ll be.”

  “You promise you’ll catch me?”

  “Promise.”

  Ramona shut her eyes tightly, screwed up her face and hurled herself off the dock. For such a tiny, birdlike girl, she made a huge splash, drenching Lolly. But she succeeded. She went all the way in over her head and came up dog-paddling, bursting with wonder and pride. “I did it! Lolly! I did it!”

  And so did I, Lolly thought, seeing Connor on the dock again. He was being checked out and fawned over once again, and appeared to be completely ignoring Lolly. Fine, she thought. She didn’t need or want his attention.

  “Let’s swim over to that ladder,” she instructed Ramona, heading for the swim ladder at the end of the dock.

  “It’s too far. I’ll drown.”

  “I’ll be right by your side the whole time,” Lolly promised.

  The wooden ladder attached to the dock had seen better days, and its rungs were slimy and waterlogged. Ramona scrambled out of the lake and did a little jig of triumph. Behind her, Lolly slipped and nearly fell on her face, coming down heavily on the dock.

  “Graceful,” someone said, and snickered. Lolly recognized the voice of Jazzy Simmons, one of the other counselors. “Have a nice trip, Lolly?”

  Her face burning with humiliation, Lolly ignored her and started to climb to her feet. A large hand took hold of hers and helped her up, and her face burned even hotter when she found herself gaping up at Connor Davis.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “Fine.” She couldn’t bear to look at him. After he walked away, she looked down at Ramona, now shivering inside a towel. “See? It’s not the end of the world.”

  Twenty

  Unofficially, the staff common room at Camp Kioga was known as the party shack. This was a large, all-purpose room where counselors and workers came after work to hang out and play music. As Connor approached the shack, he felt a base beat rattling the walls and rafters, and knew the party was already in full swing.

  He stepped inside, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness, which was illuminated by the glow of the stereo equipment and a couple of candles on a table with some bags of chips and bowls of salsa. Undulating bodies clustered in the middle of the room, creating an impromptu mosh pit. Others stood around the periphery of the building, drinking contraband beer and trying to hold conversations despite the volume of the music. Connor scanned the place for Lolly, but he couldn’t find her.

  Maybe she was…mad at him? He couldn’t quite figure out why, but when he’d helped her up off the dock today, she’d seemed pissed off, dismissing him with a curt, “Fine.” Girls, he thought. Who the hell could figure them out?

  A leggy blonde in a windbreaker that was unzipped to her belly button sidled up to him, holding a longneck bottle of beer. The music subsided as the CD changed. “Here’s to getting through another day with the ankle biters,” she said in a low, sultry voice. Her tongue slipped out to moisten her lips. “I had no idea little kids were so much work.” She lifted the longneck to her mouth and took a swig, then drew the bottle away with a kissing sound and offered it to him.

  The music started up again, “Do It With A Stranger,” the metal beat banging hard against the walls of the place.

  “Want some?” she asked, leaning up to shout into his ear over the loud music.

  “No, thanks.”

  “People call me Jazzy, by the way,” she said with a smile.

  Maybe you should tell them to stop, he thought. “I’m Connor.”

  “I know.” She winked. “I asked. You got a girlfriend, Connor?”

  He saw Lolly come in with her two cousins, and the three of them started waving and greeting people. “Nope,” he said.

  “Excellent. It’s going to be a great summer. I’m from L.A.”

  “Buffalo,” he said. Big deal.

  She laughed as if he’d said something funny, then did that dumb-girl thing where she pretended to be tipsy, and staggered into him. She smelled of beer and fruity shampoo. Her boobs felt unnaturally firm—which he’d heard was a telltale sign of a boob job. He slipped one arm around her and helped her to a bench. She apparently assumed he wanted to make out with her, and wound her arms around his neck.

  “I’m going to grab something to drink,” he yelled in her ear. “Nice to meet you, Jazzy.”

  He looked around, part of him wanting to escape, the other part wanting to stay and party, and of course, yet another part wanting to jump her bones. But no. Not with Jazzy from L.A. Or with the other girl—Mandy or Mindy—who hit on him as he wended his way to the refreshments table, laden with soft drinks and chips.

  It wasn’t that he had anything against hooking up. Far from it. He practically had a hard-on right now, just from the thought of Jazzy leaning against him. But he didn’t want to start the summer hooking up with some random girl, that was for sure. He needed to scope out the territory first.

  And now two more girls were bearing down on him. The one with the big tits and the Mount Holyoke tank top, and her giggling friend, whose father manufactured a line of overpriced clothing.

  He spotted a lifeline in the form of Lolly Bellamy. She stood at the fringes of the crowd, watching with a bored expression
on her face. Connor crossed the room to her, cutting a path through the crowd, which was now freak dancing to Metalopolis.

  “Hey,” he said, acting casual.

  “Hey.” Her smile was brief, and he wondered if she was still mad about something.

  “So we said we’d catch up,” he reminded her.

  “What’s that?” She cupped a hand around her ear.

  “Catch up,” he repeated, and gestured for her to follow him to a far corner of the room, out of the blare of the stereo speakers. She smiled up at him with a look that was soft and genuine. He’d always liked her face. She had nice skin and pretty eyes behind the glasses.

  “I was surprised when I learned you’d be here this summer,” she said.

  “I hadn’t planned to come back,” Connor explained. He was a man now, as Mel was fond of reminding him. Old enough to leave home, to get out of his stepfather’s life. And of course, he couldn’t escape fast enough. It wasn’t as if he liked living at his mother’s. It was simply the best option he had in order to save every possible penny for college. Because it was a given that he’d get no help from his mother and Mel, or from his father, in that department.

  Which was fine with Connor. He didn’t mind paying his own way. He would have been long gone the minute he tossed his graduation mortarboard in the air, except that his mother had other plans for him.

  “What made you decide to come back?” Lolly asked.

  He hesitated, wondering how much to tell her. “I figured after graduation, I’d get a job and a place of my own. I figured I’d get a life.”

  “And here you are.”

  “Just couldn’t stay away.” There was plenty more he could have said to her, and probably would, except it was almost impossible to have a decent conversation amid all this noise. Maybe that was for the better. Maybe there was no need for Lolly to hear the real reason he was back here once again. His mother’s other son, eight-year-old Julian, had come up from Louisiana for the summer. Their mother needed Connor to look after him.