Patiently Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Author:Phyllis Reynolds Naylor [Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, GR
ISBN: 9780689826368
Goodreads: 1931126
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

9

* * *

Going Coed

That night, our night, none of the older counselors was available to drive us into town, so the six of us girls decided to sneak down to the river early and go skinny-dipping, just to say that we had. Doris, who felt she was on the verge of a cold, didn’t want to go in but said she’d be our lookout.

“We’ll just take a short swim before the guys start looking for us,” Pamela said with a giggle. But we were all secretly hoping that the guys would find out where we’d gone and… Well, who knows what we were hoping. Just for something exciting to happen, I guess.

We weren’t foolish enough to leave our clothes on the bank, though. We wadded them up and stuck them in the fork of a low tree. When we got down to our underpants, we wore them to the water’s edge, then gave them to Doris to put in the tree for us, and dived in. Elizabeth refused to take off either her underpants or her bra, so there we were; one girl on the bank fully clothed; one girl in the water in her underwear; and four girls in the river naked.

We swam quietly, giggling to each other, feeling very risqué. When the guys didn’t come down right away, I noticed, none of us suggested we get out, even though the water was frigid and I could feel my teeth chattering. We just kept swimming around, watching the path to the dining hall. I noticed Pamela’s voice getting a little louder, just in case the guys were within earshot. And soon, down the path they came—all six of the male assistant counselors.

What we did, of course, was shriek and duck down under the water, swimming a little downriver to pretend we weren’t there, which was ridiculous. And then they were in the water, all their clothes on the bank, and after we got over being semi-embarrassed and silly, we just swam around and talked, and it seemed to me we were pretty grown-up, Gerald included.

“Was that your boyfriend or your brother I saw you with this afternoon?” Craig asked me.

“My brother. Les. My dad’s wedding’s been postponed because my new mom’s sister is sick,” I explained.

“Tough luck,” said Craig.

“I’m going to feel so much better when they’re finally married,” I told him. “Dad’s been waiting a long time.”

“Yeah, sure,” I heard Joe murmur, and the others laughed.

I didn’t say any more about Dad and Sylvia. I didn’t want people guessing about their private lives when they didn’t even know them. So I just dog-paddled around, thinking how strange and exciting it felt to be swimming at night. The sky was cloudy, though, and we couldn’t see much of anything except a ball of white somewhere back on the bank, which I realized, finally, was our ball of underwear in the fork of the tree.

Both Elizabeth and Pamela were swimming around Ross like sharks, I thought. Gwen and Joe were nuzzling off by themselves, G.

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