"What a strange, sad girl," June Halstead thought to herself, as she studied the faces of the girls sitting around her and noted with particular interest the downcast expression on Mimsy Colberg's. It was part of June's duties as a summer counselor at the camp to teach the girls basket weaving, taking various groups for one hour sessions two days a week. That morning, the first official day of the Summer Sisters program, she was instructing Pat's group in the basics of the skill and had noticed how withdrawn Mimsy seemed. While she'd been a camp counselor long enough to realize that in the first week or so of camp there were bound to be feelings of homesickness and loneliness among the girls, Mimsy seemed disturbed by something else and June wished she could put her finger on what it was so she could try to help.
"I wonder," she thought, "if it has anything to do with that dark-haired girl. What's her name now? Rosanne? No, Roxanne, that's it." Her eyes darted to the girl's face, but she seemed absorbed in the pile of rattan she was sorting in preparation of her first basket work. "I wonder…"
Being a psychology major at college, June was quick to notice and observe inter-actions among people, even if those actions were so subtle as to escape the untrained eye. It seemed to her that ever since the girls had assembled for the class an hour earlier, Mimsy had been at pains to avoid Roxanne. Her eyes never so much as glanced in the dark-haired girl's direction and although she spoke freely with the rest of the girls when they spoke to her, on at least two occasions June had noticed Mimsy ignoring a remark Roxanne had directed to her. She assumed the two girls had had some sort of argument, possibly even a fight, the previous night. Such things were not uncommon at the start of the summer, and she knew that unless something was done to correct bad feelings between the girls at their inception, there would only be further trouble during the months ahead.
Walking through the group, she made comments on what the girls were doing, but when she stopped alongside Mimsy she knelt down and murmured, "I'd like you to stay a few minutes after the other girls leave, if you would. I'd like to talk to you about something."
It seemed as though a flash of fear ran through the girl's eyes as she nodded her head up and down and whispered a quick, "Okay," and this left June feeling even more confused and upset. Why should she be frightened about talking to me, she wondered?
At the end of the hour, she dismissed the girls and began to clean up the basket weaving materials. From the corner of her eye, though, she watched Roxanne with particular interest and noted how she seemed to be waiting for Mimsy to join the others who were leaving. When she didn't, the dark-haired girl went up to her and, with a quick glance toward June, dropped to her knees and whispered something in Mimsy's ear. Her face went white and her eyes darted frantically in June's direction, almost as though crying out for help.
"All right," June thought with determination, "I've had just about enough of this. Time to find out what's going on."
Moving quickly toward the two girls, she leveled her eyes with Roxanne's and was startled by the expression she found staring back at her. It was almost one of mocking contempt. Her back bristled with indignation as she drew herself up and assumed her most efficient counselor's voice.
"Why aren't you going down to the lake with the other girls, Roxanne?" she demanded. "Shirley will be waiting for you to start the swimming class."
"I already know how to swim," Roxanne snapped in reply, her eyes still holding steady to June's.
"Then why don't you go down to the lake and tell Shirley that?" she firmly suggested. "I'm sure we can find another class for you to take."
"I'm waiting for Mimsy," the girl said flatly.
"Mimsy was asked to stay behind for a few minutes," June informed her, "by me. You were not. Now will you please obey me and go down to the lake?"
Once again June felt a strange little shiver run through her as she stared at that mocking look in the girl's eyes, but she held her ground, and in a few moments Roxanne got to her feet.
"All right," she said. "I'll go, but it's not because you tell me to. I'm bored here anyway."
"That one," June thought nervously, staring after Roxanne as she walked away, "is going to be trouble for someone this summer. I can feel it in my bones."
Turning back to Mimsy, she settled onto her haunches beside the girl and put her arm lightly around her shoulders. "You did fine work this morning, Mimsy," she praised. "I'm sure you're going to be as expert at this as I am by the end of the summer. Maybe even better. You seem to have a natural talent."
"Thank you," the girl said softly.
"Have you studied basket weaving before this summer?"
"No, Miss Halstead."
"Call me June, please," she smiled, "like I told all the girls to do."
"Okay… June."
"That's much better. I want us to be friends this summer, Mimsy, and friends don't call each other Miss. June sounds much more friendly, doesn't it?"
The girl nodded her head up and down. It seemed to June that she was ready to break into tears at any second. She could feel the tension in the girl's shoulders as she held her arm around them.
"Is this your first summer away from home, Mimsy?" she asked softly.
"No, Miss – I mean – June. It's not."
"Aren't you happy here at Summer Sisters?"
"Why do you ask that?"
"Oh, I don't know," June smiled. "Sometimes a camp turns out to be different than a girl imagines it's going to be and when she gets here she's unhappy. I wondered if that was true in your case."
"Are you going to send me away if I say I'm unhappy?" she sobbed, and the tears were now brimming in her eyes like liquid diamonds.
"Of course not!" June tightened the pressure of her arm around the girl's shoulders. "Why, that's the last thing I'd want to see happen. I'd like you to stay with us all summer and be happy while you're here. But I can't help if I don't know what's…" She stopped suddenly as a great sob broke from the girl's throat and she flung herself against June's body, clinging as though to a lifeboat.
"Help me!" Mimsy sobbed. "Please? Help me, June?"
"How? What's wrong?" she pleaded. "Please tell me what's upset you, so I'll know how to help."
"I-I can't…"
"Why? What's frightened you like this?" It was obvious to her now that the girl was terrified of something and it didn't require much detective work to figure out who else was involved in whatever the trouble was. "It has something to do with Roxanne, doesn't it?" she asked.
Mimsy's head shot up like a bolt and the terror was dancing openly in her eyes. "How -? No! No, it has nothing to do with her!"
"What did she do to you, Mimsy?"
"Nothing!" the girl insisted, but with such fear in her voice that it belied the assertion.
"Why are you so afraid to tell me what's wrong?" June pressed. "I've seen the way Roxanne was looking at you all during class and how you didn't want to look back at her. Just now, before she left, she said something to you. What was it?"
"N-nothing"
"What was it, Mimsy?" June demanded, making her voice more counselor than helpful friend. Sometimes, she knew, it was necessary to use her authority with the girls in order to help them, even though she preferred keeping the relationships on a more equal basis. "I want to know. If you don't tell me what's going on between you and Roxanne, I'll have to take both of you to Mrs. Marchant and…"
"No!" Mimsy suddenly cried, clinging more tightly to June's body. "Please don't do that!"
"Then tell me what Roxanne said to you before I came over and why you're so frightened of her. Is she bullying you and the other girls in your cabin?"
"No…"
"What did she just say to you?"
Mimsy gulped hard before answering in a soft, tearful whisper. "She said that if I told you anything she'd hurt me. Bad. She said she'd hurt me bad."
"Told me what?" June persisted.
"About – about last night."
"What happened last night?"
"Oh, please don't make me tell!"
"What happened, Mimsy?"
"She – she took me outside – I mean – I asked her to take me outside because I had to go to the toilet and I was afraid because I didn't know the way and it was dark – but not like she says!"
June's head was spinning in confusion. "I don't understand. What are you trying to tell me? What happened when you and Roxanne went outside last night?"
"She – she – oh, June, I can't tell you!"
As the young girl clung frantically to her body, sobbing out her heart, a sudden notion shot through June's mind hat almost sickened her. At first she wanted to reject the very idea as preposterous, even repellent, but the more she thought it over as Mimsy continued to sob against her, the more realistic and accurate it seemed.
"Mimsy," she said firmly, drawing the girl slightly away from her so she could look into her eyes as she asked the question, "did what happened with Roxanne last night have anything to do with – sex?" She almost whispered the final word, knowing full well that if she was mistaken about her hunch she might be stirring up more trouble than was already brewing.
"Sex…?"
"Did she – do anything to you? Anything she shouldn't have, I mean?"
Slowly, fearfully, glancing around her first as though to see if Roxanne were anywhere close by watching her, Mimsy nodded her head up and down.
June didn't know how to react to the admission. It was a relief to know what the problem was, but it didn't make it any easier to deal with. Especially not after what she and Pat had done themselves the previous night. She found herself being torn in two directions. On the one hand, she felt indignation and anger as a counselor, knowing that such affairs between the girls under her charge had to be stopped at all cost; but on the other hand, as a lesbian herself, she felt a strange thrill running through her to be holding Mimsy so closely in her arms and knowing that she, too, had known lovemaking with another girl.
"What did she do to you?" she asked, then bit her tongue in shame with herself for having asked. The question had not come from June the counselor, interested in the girl's welfare, but from June the lesbian, titillated by the idea of Mimsy and Roxanne together and wanting to know more details.
"Do I have to tell you?" Mimsy sobbed.
"No, of course not." June tightened the hold of her arms around the girl and rocked her slowly, comfortingly, back and forth. "Not if you don't want to, Mimsy."
"I'm – so ashamed…"
"Then it's all right; you don't have to tell me any more. I'll take care of everything."
"You're not going to tell Mrs. Marchant, are you?" Mimsy asked, her eyes springing wide with fear.
June considered it for a moment. She knew it was her duty as a counselor to report any such incidents that became her knowledge, but as a girl who had known sex with other girls herself, she couldn't report what she knew to the camp's owner.
"No, I won't tell her. Not unless Roxanne bothers you again and you want me to tell Mrs. Marchant about her so it will stop."
"Couldn't I move into another cabin?" Mimsy suggested. "Away from her, I mean? Maybe if I moved in somewhere else…"
"Of course," June said without hesitation. "That's just what I was thinking of doing. I'll arrange everything with my friend Pat. We'll put one of my girls in your place and you can move into the cabin with my girls." It was still so early into the summer that nothing much would be thought of a transfer like that. If any questions were raised by Mrs. Marchant or the other owners, June knew all she'd have to say was there had been a personality clash.
"Oh, that would be so wonderful!" Mimsy enthused, clinging tightly to June once again. "I know I'll be so much happier with you, June. It'll be a wonderful summer being one of your girls, instead of…"
"Instead of what?"
The sudden sound of another voice made them both look up in surprise.
"Instead of one of my girls, you mean?" Pat growled angrily. Her eyes darted jealousy from Mimsy's face to June's, taking in the way they were holding onto one another.
"Oh, no! I didn't mean that!" Mimsy insisted.
"Then what?"
"Pat, I'll explain in a minute," June cut in. "Mimsy, why don't you go back to your cabin and pack up your things so you'll be ready to move when everything's been arranged?"
"Okay," she said, smiling as brightly as she could manage.
"And wash your face," June called after her. "Your eyes are all red and they're such pretty eyes."
"Okay!" Mimsy laughed, turning to wave goodbye as she hurried toward the girls' cabin.
As soon as she was out of earshot. Pat stepped forward with an angry glower on her face. "And just what was all that about, if I may be allowed to ask?"
"We've got a problem," June sighed.
"So I noticed," she cracked. "A problem with big, beautiful blue eyes and a hot little body!"
"What…?"
"You're picking them kind of young this year, aren't you, darling?" Pat hissed. "I can understand that you're tired of me because I'm pushing twenty-one, but isn't sixteen just a bit young?"
As the realization of what Pat was accusing her of took hold, June's face tightened in anger. "Do you think -? You do! Oh, what a filthy mind you have, Pat! Honestly!"
"Are you telling me what I saw with my own eyes isn't true?"
"What did you see?"
"I walked over here to find out what was keeping you after your class and I find you wrapped in the arms of a hot little piece of ass. Then I hear her saying how much happier she's going to be as one of your girls instead of mine! What as I supposed to think?"
"With a mind like yours," June snapped sarcastically, "I guess there's only one thing you could think. But you're wrong. What you're thinking never even entered my mind."
"I'll bet!" Pat snorted.
June had to lower her eyes to keep from showing how much the very idea she was denying had been in her mind. Holding Mimsy as she had, she'd felt very definite stirrings inside her that had nothing at all to do with her feelings toward the girl as counselor to camper. Those feelings shamed her, and hearing Pat accuse her of them aloud made it even worse.
"She's moving into my cabin in order to get away from one of your other girls, if you want to know the whole truth."
"Which one?" Pat asked. Then, quickly shaking her head, she said, "No, don't bother. I already know. Roxanne, I'll bet."
"None other."
"What did the little bitch do to her? Put a frog in her bed? Drop a snake down her back?"
"Worse."
"How worse?"
"A lot." June lowered her eyes in embarrassment as she told her friend what she knew. "Something happened last night, Pat. Between those two girls. I think – I think Roxanne forced herself on Mimsy against her will."
"You're joking!"
"Would I joke about something like that?"
"What did she do?"
Looking up into Pat's eyes, June saw the same sparkle of interest to know all the dirty details that she had recognized in herself a short while earlier. It angered her that Pat was concerned with such base details, yet understanding the same feelings in herself she could make no denunciation.
"I-I don't know for sure. I didn't make her tell me minute by minute who did what to who. You can use your imagination. But whatever happened, it's made that poor girl almost frantic. Roxanne warned her that if she said anything about it to me she'd hurt her. Hurt her bad, I think was the way she put it."
"The little bitch!" Pat hissed. "I'm going right to Marchant and telling her to get that no-good-…"
"No!" June interjected. "I don't think it's the best idea to tell Marchant about it. Not unless it happens again, or she does it to some other girl."
"Why not? She'd be bounced out of here so fast…"
"Why not!" June laughed ironically. "Why don't you just stop and think about it for a moment? Don't you find it even a little bit amusing that you or I should be the ones to turn in anyone else because they've had sex with another girl?"
"I didn't think of that," Pat admitted.
"Well, I did and I realized how wrong it would be. If we feel the same way ourselves, Pat, we can't very well ruin another girl's life because of one mistake. You know that if Marchant sent her home with a story like that it would put a scar on her forever. It would always be on her records if she wanted to go to another camp or needed any kind of recommendation from this one."
"I have a feeling she's already got a record like that from where she was last year," Pat told her. "Every time I mentioned going back to the camp where she was before, I saw this funny little look come into her eyes. Like she was scared to death of something. I'll bet my whole summer pay that I know just what it is, too."
"Maybe you're right," June sighed, "but we've got to give her the benefit of the doubt. We've got to let her know that we know what happened and if she does it again we'll go to Marchant."
"When you say we, you really mean me, don't you?" Pat smiled. "I'm the one who's got to have the talk with her."
"She's one of your girls, isn't she?"
"All right," Pat agreed heavily. "Tonight when everybody's at the movie, I'll have a talk with her. But I wish to Christ that something good would happen before then – like Roxanne drowning in the lake!"
"She's a very good swimmer, she says."
"That's just what I was afraid of."