Unless, she suddenly thought as she made her way to the lodge for breakfast, Pat had hidden the letters in some secret place June didn't know about. As the danger of being exposed as a lesbian to those she loved most in the world reasserted itself, she felt an icy chill run down her spine and for a second it seemed as though her legs were going to buckle under her. She stopped and caught her breath, but as she continued toward the lodge her footsteps were a bit heavier than they'd been only moments before. She realized that all she could do was hope – if not pray – Pat would never do anything with the love letters if they still existed.
"Oh this is lovely, June!" Mimsy exclaimed, as she opened the door of the cabin and stepped inside behind June.
"It's a dump!" June laughed. "The only thing it lacks is a trapdoor and a dungeon!"
"It's not bad at all," Mimsy insisted. "It's sure a lot better than the cabin where we sleep!"
"You'd better not spread that around," June chuckled, "or Mrs. Marchant might be in big trouble with your parents. For the price she charges your parents to send you girls up here for the summer, she wants them to think you're all living in the lap of luxury. They might not like it if they found out the 'help' lives better than you do!"
"I'll keep it a secret!" Mimsy giggled.
"Drop that sack down over there by the window," June said. "You're going to have muscles like Popeye if you stand around holding it much longer."
Mimsy quickly obeyed and put the sack down on the floor. Then, seeming suddenly nervous, she dropped her head and looked down at her nervously tapping foot. She seemed to be withdrawing into herself once again, as she had during the class and immediately afterwards, before she and June had begun to talk.
"Why don't you sit down?" June suggested. As Mimsy crossed the room toward a straight-backed, wooden chair, she quickly shook her hand to stop her. "Not there, honey! That's got to be the second most uncomfortable chair in the whole world! That one," she said, nodding toward a second chair in the other corner, "is number one!"
"Where should I sit, then?" Mimsy asked in a soft murmur.
"On the bed, of course! The one on the left's mine. Just settle down and make yourself comfortable."
As the girl crossed the room to June's bed, she seemed hesitant about sitting down on it, in the way a guest with black grease all over his clothes would feel reluctant to sit down on his hostess's fine antique furniture. Her eyes darted back and forth from June's face to the bed as she sat down on the very edge of it, her back stiff and her body rigid. She seemed almost afraid of making herself too comfortable.
"It's not that hard, is it?" June laughed, glancing at the girl's strange posture. "I know it sometimes feels like it's made of bricks when I'm sleeping on it, but I didn't know it felt like that to sit, too!"
"Oh, no! No! It's fine!" Mimsy insisted. "It's a very comfortable bed."
"Yes, I can tell by the way you're sitting on it!" June mocked. "For Pete's sake, you're not going to break the springs if you make yourself comfortable! Kick your shoes off; put your feet up! Relax a little bit." She suspected the girl was nervous being in the counselors' cabin, with its atmosphere of authority and the reminder that they were not really equals, for all Mimsy's earlier protestations to the contrary. She wanted to dispel that atmosphere as quickly as possible and make the girl feel at her ease. She welcomed the thought of having a close friend for the summer among the girls. Mimsy was a bright, intelligent young woman; it would be interesting to get to know her better. With Pat behaving as she was and making things so difficult, June knew she had better look elsewhere for a summer friend. She had hopes that Mimsy would prove to be that friend. Someone she could talk to – about Gary, her family, her worries about her future once she graduated from college, anything that two friends talk about. It would make the coming months pass so much more nicely, she thought, having a friend like that.
"That's much better!" she smiled, as she watched the girl finally break down and settle herself comfortably at the foot of the bed. "Why don't you grab that pillow and put it behind your back, too? I'll use the one on Pat's bed. She'll never know, if I fluff it up again before she gets back!" They giggled together, already starting to share friend-type confidences.
"Now I'm afraid I might be going to shock you a little," June warned with a little chuckle, as she opened the drawer on the table between the two beds and took out a pack of cigarettes. "I know Mrs. Marchant likes to have you girls think your Big Sisters are as pure as the driven snow and haven't a bad habit among them, but I've been dying for a smoke all afternoon!" She put the filter tip into her mouth and quickly struck a match to light it. "So now," she murmured as she breathed a thick cloud of smoke up from her lungs, "I guess you've got two secrets on me. My cabin's more comfortable than yours and I'm a nicotine fiend!"
"Then it's only fair if I give you a secret on me," Mimsy smiled. "I've been dying for a smoke for two days!"
"Oh, you poor thing!" June laughed. She fished the cigarette pack back out of the drawer and offered it to the girl. "Mrs. Marchant would have a heart attack if she saw me doing this, but here. Have one, please."
Mimsy reached for the cigarette without hesitation. She put it gratefully into her mouth and inhaled the welcome smoke far into her lungs as soon as June offered her a light. As June had hoped it would, the cigarette being offered and accepted seemed to seal the last bond on their friendship and provide the break-through she'd been searching for to make them equals at last. She could almost see the change in Mimsy as she relaxed completely, accepting June as her friend now.
"Boy, that's good!" she sighed, blowing another puff of smoke through her nostrils.
"It's not, really," June told her, "but I'd be the last one in the world to start giving you a lecture on the evils of smoking. People who live in glass houses, you know."
"I'm glad you're not going to lecture me," Mimsy smiled. "I think it might spoil something if you did."
"How do you mean?"
"Well, it would remind me that you're my counselor, when I want to think of you as my friend."
June felt such a rush of sudden warmth toward the girl run through her that her hand reached as though by instinct to hold Mimsy's and squeeze her fingers in a bond of friendship and affection.
"I'm so glad you said that," she said softly. "Because it's just how I've been hoping you'd feel toward me. I want us to be friends, too."
"Really?" Mimsy's eyes were glistening with an excited brightness.
"Really," June told her, squeezing her hand once again. She was a little surprised by the strength of the grip she found holding her own hand in return. Mimsy hadn't exaggerated at all, she thought, when she said she was small but strong. It wasn't just the power behind the grip, though. June sensed something else in the close touch of their hands together. Some strange little tingle, like electricity, that seemed to be flowing back and forth from Mimsy's body to her own…
"I think this would be a good time for us to have our talk, June," the girl said in a soft murmur, her eyes holding firmly to June's.
"Okay…"
"It's about what happened to me the first night we got here," Mimsy began. "What Roxanne did to me, I mean."
"Oh." As a strangely uncomfortable feeling suddenly settled in her stomach, June moved to pull her hand free of the girl's. Mimsy's fingers tightened in response, refusing the contact to be broken. "What – uh – what do you want to talk to me about it?"