Arnold Evans
Different -the girls of summer
CHAPTER ONE
"All right, girls! Quiet down!" Pat Fulton put her hands on her hips and shouted in her most authoritative voice to bring the dozen or so teenage girls ringed around her to order. As the babble of conversation and laughter continued without letup, she stuck the bright silver whistle hung around her neck into her mouth and gave it an ear-splitting blast.
"I said quiet down!" she warned a second time, turning her head quickly from face to face, a dark frown of anger creasing her forehead. The majority of the girls in the group ranged in age from thirteen to sixteen. Although Pat herself had just turned twenty, she had enough of an age difference on her side to command respect and attention from the younger girls in her charge. When she flashed her large dark eyes and knit her jet-black brows in a slash of disapproval, even the boldest of them became instantly quiet.
"If there's one thing you're all going to learn before you've been at the Summer Sisters Girls Camp very much longer," she declared, "it's that when a Big Sister like myself tells you to do something, you do it. No questions asked. Does everyone understand that?"
Most of the girls nodded their heads up and down quickly, their faces reflecting their fear of Pat and of being at the camp itself. For many of them it was the first time they'd ever been away from home for a night in their lives, and a few looked like they were on the brink of tears. One of the older girls, however, seemed determined to make a reputation for herself with the counselor on the very first night of camp.
"What if you tell us to do something we don't think we should do?" a voice in the little group questioned.
"Who asked me that?" Pat growled, turning her head quickly around in the direction where the girl's voice had come from. She felt herself stiffen slightly inside as she confronted a face she had noticed earlier, when all the camp counselors had met the summer group at the local train station. Pat had suspected from her first glance at the girl that she was going to prove to be trouble. Staring into her deep blue eyes once again, she was almost certain of it. She'd been a girls camp counselor long enough to recognize that look at once. "Oh, you," she muttered. Her eyebrows tightened in another frown, but the girl's eyes stared right back at her in challenge. "Aren't you the one who was making all the fuss at the train station?" she snapped.
"I was questioning why we had to ride all the way up here in that cattle car you called a bus, yes," she answered. "At the camp I went to last summer, they sent private limousines into town to pick us up."
"Then why didn't you go back to that camp this summer?" Pat asked as sweetly as she could manage her voice to sound, but the hard line around her mouth betrayed the truth of her feelings.
For a moment, the girl seemed completely flustered. Her stare darted away from Pat's face and she shifted her stance nervously. "I-I – didn't go back there because I was bored with the place," she declared after a hesitant start.
"Well, I'm afraid you're going to be bored with this camp, too," Pat hinted, "unless you learn to follow orders like the rest of the girls. What's your name?"
"Roxanne," she said. "Roxanne Thomas."
"And how old are you, Roxanne?"
"I'm seventeen," she answered quickly.
"Little liar!" Pat thought to herself. "If you're a day over sixteen I'm Grandma Moses!"
Aloud, however, she asked, "Don't you think that's a little young to be making decisions for yourself?"
"Not at all," the girl said, with a haughty toss of the mane of long brown hair tumbling over her shoulders. "I've been doing it all my life."
"I doubt that, Roxanne," Pat muttered, aware that she and the girl were now heavily in the midst of a confrontation for leadership of the others in the group. The results of this first showdown might well determine who held the ultimate authority for the rest of the summer.
"I have, too!" Roxanne insisted. Then, as though it were something she was proud and anxious to have the others standing around her in the group know, she added, "My parents are divorced. I spend half the year with my mother and half with my father, but they both let me do whatever I want to when I'm with them."
"But you're not with them now," Pat seethed. "You're with me. And I'm being paid by the owners of this camp to see that all of you girls obey my instructions for the summer. I don't mean some of you, either. I mean all. If that's not perfectly understood by you, Roxanne – as well as anyone else here who thinks they know more about camp life than I do – then perhaps you'd better speak to Mrs. Marchant about getting a train home in the morning."
With satisfaction, she noticed the others shift ever so slightly away from Roxanne and lower their heads in obedience. At least the first round was hers, she thought.
"Is that understood?" she asked the girl.
"Oh, I guess so," Roxanne sighed heavily. "I find authority such a bore, though."
"Well, then, my girl," Pat thought grimly, "you're going to have a helluva boring summer with me!"
"What if one Big Sister tells us to do something and you tell us to do something different?" another girl in the group asked, but her question was genuine and held none of the cockiness of Roxanne's.
Pat turned her head and stared at the pretty little blonde who'd spoken up. She looked about the same age as Roxanne, and Pat had noticed her, too, at the train station in town, although for an entirely different reason. She felt a little flutter race through her pulse as she met the girl's eyes. The stare she found in them was bold, but not challenging.
"What's your name?" she asked.
"I'm Mimsy Colberg," the girl told her.
"Mimsy, huh?" Pat thought with interest. "A cute name for an even cuter little doll. Maybe you're going to be trouble for me this summer, too, honey. With all those pretty blonde curls, you could be big trouble."
"Well, Mimsy," she said aloud, hoping the sudden softening of her tone wouldn't too obviously betray her feelings to the other girls, "if that ever does happen, you do what I tell you. The way this camp is set up, each of us Big Sisters is in charge of about a dozen of you girls and for each of us you're our sole responsibility. If another Big Sister tells you to do something you think is questionable, check with me first. The only exception would be if Mrs. Marchant herself gave you an order. Okay?"
"Okay," Mimsy said with a little girl's smile that brought a quick ache of yearning to Pat's heart.
"You are going to be trouble," she thought with dismay. She was well enough aware of her sexual feelings for other girls – especially cute little blondes like Mimsy, who were such a thrilling contrast to her own dark-haired good looks – to know when there was a danger that she might not be able to control herself in certain situations. From the first moment her eyes had meet Mimsy Colberg's, Pat had known she'd have to watch herself around the girl all summer to be sure they were never alone together long enough for one of those situations to develop. Mrs. Marchant, the camp's principal owner, was a kindly, understanding woman, but Pat was certain her sympathies did not reach far enough to forgive any counselor caught trying to seduce one of the girl campers. No matter how cute and appealing she might be, or how difficult the temptation was to resist. As Pat's upcoming senior year in college was entirely dependent upon the money she would earn that summer as a counselor at the camp, she could not afford to take chances and knew she would have to watch her step around Mimsy very carefully.
"Are there any other questions before you go to the showers and turn in for the night?" she asked. The girls had already eaten their dinner in the main dining hall shortly after their arrival and in another hour at the most she would be free of them. She wondered if June was finished with her group yet and was already waiting for her in bed in the cabin they shared. Whether she knew it or not, Pat thought, June was in for a hot lovemaking session that night. She could feel the need inside her growing stronger with each passing moment.