The first thing I found in my luggage when I started to unpack at the camp was a packet of letters from Sandy. One had been mailed from Camp Climax every day, and they had all been opened. Each one became successively more erotic, more desperate and each one asked why I wasn't writing.
The bitch of a Mother! She'd opened every one, confiscated them, kept them for herself and progressively got the hots for me through Sandy's eyes. And didn't even have the nerve to give the letters back that morning and admit what she'd done. Instead, she had to sneak them into my luggage, not having the guts to throw them in the garbage, as she probably wanted to do.
I sat down and wrote a long letter to her explaining everything (except what had taken place in Mother's bed last night), mailed that and spent the rest of the evening replying to each of her letters in turn.
The summer passed with excruciating slowness. I spent most of my energy waiting for Sandy's letters reading them and writing to her. We wanted to see each other before we were shipped off to our respective schools, but we couldn't figure out any way to do it. I asked my counselor, Matt, if he knew of some way I could get together with a girl friend of mine at the end of the season and he said we could use one of the cabins in the camp-only a few counselors, he among them, hung around for the week or two after the camp closed, and he'd be more than willing to look the other way if I was sure the girl and I could cover our tracks. I told him we'd stay in hiding the whole time and wrote Sandy, giving her the dates.
The camp was pretty much of a bore-but pleasant enough. The kids-most in their early and mid-teens-seemed attractive enough and the counselors-in their late teens and early twenties-seemed free-and-easy.
I managed to avoid most of the organized activities, preferring instead to take off by myself every morning in a canoe and explore the area, sometimes taking along a couple of sandwiches and staying out all day.
This had its advantages, since no one paid much attention to where I was, or what I was up to.
On one of my first mornings out, a girl was sitting on the pier when I came for my canoe. She couldn't have been much more than thirteen, but she was dazzlingly pretty, with long, shiny brown hair and amber eyes that sparkled mischievously when I said hello to her and asked her what her name was.
“Dolores,” she said.
“I'm Terry. What are you doing today, Dolores?”
“Just sitting here.”
“Feel like going for a ride in my canoe?”
She nodded her head. “Uh-huh.” She hopped into the canoe and sat opposite me at the other end. We talked about how much we hated the camp, how much we hated our parents, how much we hated school. We got further and further away from the camp; the sun was getting higher and hotter.
“Let's get out of this sun for a while,” I said, moving the canoe toward the tree-lined shore.
“Why don't we go for a swim?” she said.
“Do you have your bathing suit?”
“Who needs one? We can go bare-ass. There's nobody around.”
“Do you like to do that, Dolores? Swim bare-ass?”
“Yeah.”
I beached the canoe, pulled off my shorts and watched her strip. She had a perfect girlish body, with smooth, skinny legs and hips, a light, fluffy pubescent thatch, breasts the size of small saucers but with big, pink nipples that made my mouth water.
She smiled wryly at my lustful stare and at my burgeoning erection. She stood there waiting for me to make a move toward her. I did. She jumped into the water.
We swam well out into the lake, playing sexy tickling games and dunked one another. During the course of our sporting I managed to kiss, bite, suck, pinch and feel just about every inch of her vibrant young body, and my excitement was getting the better of me.
“Let's go back in,” I said. “I'm getting tired.”
“What's the big rush?”
“Come on,” I said impatiently.
Once on shore we lay down on the grass alongside the canoe. Dolores crawled into my arms and started nipping at my ears.
“Are you a virgin?” I asked.
“That's for me to know and you to find out.”
“How do I find out?”
“Try me.” She pulled me over on top of her and I covered her mouth with mine. I loved the feel of her soft, girlish skin and her small, firm, butting breasts.
She spread out her smooth thighs to receive mine and the head of my penis brushed her delicate clitoris. I pushed inward. She was tight, very tight, but she was pushing up avidly at me as though she knew what she was doing. I slid further and further in, encountering no obstacles, until I had plunged as far as I could go.
“Does that answer your question?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Now I have one.”
“What?”
“Are you?” she asked. “What?” “A virgin.” “Not exactly.”
“Then prove it to me.” I did my best to prove it to her for the rest of the afternoon. She was tremendously energetic and imaginative and I would have had a deliciously satiating time-if I had been able to stop thinking of my sister.
The letter came a few days later, saying she wouldn't be able to make it down on the dates I'd specified because her camp ran a week longer than mine and there was no way she could get away; and that Mother was picking her up on the last day and driving her directly to the boarding school.
I called her person-to-person at the camp, and after about a fifteen-minute wait I got her on the line. After a flurry of exclamations we settled down to business: when could we get together. She didn't think we could. We have to, I told her. She couldn't think of anything.
“Don't you want to see me?” I asked. “You know I do.”
“If I don't see you soon, Sandy, I really will go crazy. Don't you have any free time? Nights or anything?”
“None,” she said. “They supervise every minute.”
“What about the last few days? Don't they ease up then, just a little?'
“Only on the day we leave. Mommy's coming sometime after lunch. We have the morning off to pack.”
We arranged to meet that morning, on an island in the lake a mile or so from her camp. She gave me explicit instructions on what roads to take, where to park the car, where to enter the lake and exactly the spot on the island where we would meet.
Finally the operator came on asking for another quarter, which I didn't have, and I had to hang up.
The next problem was to convince Matt to lend me his car. I explained the situation to him, leaving out the fact that the girl was my sister, and pleaded with him to let me stay on the extra week by myself, then borrow his car for the day. He was a little wary at first, particularly since I didn't have a driver's license, but he finally agreed. I suppose the intensity of my urgent desperation convinced him he'd never get rid of me otherwise.
I spent the final weeks ticking off the days and dreaming of what it would be like with Sandy again. Occasionally the girl, Dolores, would accompany me in the canoe and we'd play a little in the water or on the shore, but mostly I just kept to myself, nursing all the nuances of my obsession.
The night before we were to meet I got the keys from Matt, packed my canoe on top of the car and took off shortly after midnight. It was about a four-hour drive, and I wanted to get there in plenty of time. I was willing to wait for three hours on the island if necessary, rather than risk the possibility of missing one moment with Sandy.
It was just as well that I did, for I got lost several times, not used to driving any long distances and unfamiliar with the roads. Finally, around four in the morning I arrived in the town adjacent to Camp Climax and began hunting for the roads Sandy had told me to take.
After following a succession of dusty, bumpy dirt roads lined with dumpy summer cabins I arrived at the shore of the lake at the spot she had suggested.
I parked the car, unloaded the canoe, set it in the water and paddled toward our island. After about a half hour the sun started to come up and I could make out on the far shore the white buildings and tents of the camp. I began hunting for the island and spotted it sitting like a green jewel in the middle of the lake.
Steering around to the far side I found the clump of tall white pines where we were to meet and grounded the canoe. I stripped and dove into the bracing, ice-cold water of the lake, rubbing the highway grime from my face and body. After the long, tense drive and the five-mile paddle in the canoe the water felt gloriously refreshing. When I came out and lay down on the soft grass in the rising sun, I felt so relaxed I fell asleep.
Sandy's lips on mine woke me up. I looked up into her fierce blue gleeful eyes and grabbed onto her for dear life. She had already taken off her clothes, and I pressed her naked body against mine, blubbering exclamations of joy.
“Don't say anything yet, Terry,” she said, pulling me on top of her as she lay back. “Take me right now, you can't believe how much I need you.”
I took her, thrilling again at the hot, juicy, knowledgeable, intimate, yielding, contracting, loving grasp of her cunt around my penis. We worked swiftly and hungrily, both of us desperate for immediate satisfaction and release after so many weeks of separation. There would be time for more languishing joys later.
With the quick, simultaneous precision of our days in the drive-in, we drove each other powerfully home to torrential climaxes.
“It's been so long since I've felt this way, Terry. You can't imagine how rotten I've been. I've gone so much to pieces, I wasn't even sure if you'd like me.”
“I love you, remember?”
“The time is going by so fast, we only have a few hours here and I have to go back. When are we going to be able to see each other again?”
“Jesus, don't rush it. It's short enough as it is.' You're talking as though our time's already up.”
“How many girls have you had at that place?”
“None,” I said.
“You can't kid me. Come on, how were they?”
I learned my lesson the last time. “Nope, you're wrong there. After that horrible experience with Kitty I've sworn off all girls but you,” I lied.
“Do you think they'll let us be together at Christmas?” she said.
“Why do you keep jumping ahead. Let's talk about the future later on. It's kind of a depressing subject.”
“I know. I had so many things I wanted to say, I guess I'm kind of crazy, jumping around-I can hardly think. I wanted so much', waited so long to see you and now we wind up talking about the dismal future and getting depressed.”
Her eyes glazed with tears, her exquisite, innocent, girlish face looked so sad suddenly. I licked her eyes but the salt tears kept on flowing. “It's crazy for me to cry,” she bawled. “I'm so happy!”
“Me too,” I said, but for some crazy reason I was bawling too. I guess we knew what society had in store for us if we persisted in the crime of love. We'd already had a generous sample from Mother.
“We really know how to enjoy ourselves,” I said through my tears, and started to laugh. So did Sandy. We laughed uncontrollably, hysterically, rolling over and over in the grass, and yet somehow still crying, rolling over and over until we locked genitals, locked our gazes briefly in an anguished look of longing and then passionately poured out all the love we had and all the love we could muster up into each other's bodies.
When we finished it was noon. We felt so perfect together in our love now it seemed a murderous waste to part. We had spent hours working back into each other, working out all the kinks and tensions and pain and frustration of the weeks behind, and in a flash it was over.
“I don't think they'll let us get together at Christmas,” I said.
“You don't?”
“Not if Mommy has anything to do with it. And she sure won't let us stay with him, unless he wins custody of the both of us.”
“What can we do, then?”
“Why don't you fish for an invitation from one of the kids in your class to go to then- place for Christmas-some place in New York or Boston. Then I'll get some guy in my class to alibi for me- say I'm going to his place out west, or something. Instead, I'll go where you are and we'll have two weeks together.”
“Oh, that'll be terrific. How did you ever think of it?”
“Kids do it all the time. It wasn't me who thought of it. It was that guy Matt, who lent me the car.”
“Write to me, Terry,” she said as we were kissing goodbye. “And call me. I'll give you my, number at school.”
“We'll figure out some way to make it work,” I said to her. “They can't stop us if we want to love each other.”
“I hope so, Terry.”
“I know so.”
With great difficulty, with final kisses that turned out to be next-to-last, we parted, she got into her little canoe and paddled off. I walked around the island, following her and sat on the other shore watching her move slowly toward the camp where Mother waited.
When she was gone I walked back to where we had made love and lay face down, drinking deep of the odor of grass, flowering clover and her body.
Then I dressed and abandoned the island, wondering if it really were possible for us to love one another for very long.