Chapter 9

The timing was going to be close.

Kenny and Sandy would have to hustle to the boathouse before the girls and boys snuck out after lights-out for their little tryst.

At ten o’clock, as soon as he killed the lights and closed the door to his room, Kenny crawled out his window and headed for the path around the lake. A few minutes later, Jimmy was about to follow, but he heard a noise and watched in the dark as J.J., Danny and Jackson slid out of their beds and tiptoed across the cabin to slip silently out the door. He waited a few more minutes before crawling out of bed and grabbing his backpack already loaded with equipment. He was pretty sure everybody was headed to the same place, and he had a little skullduggery in mind.

Across the lake in Sandy’s cabin, the girls were following the same general plan as the boys.

Kenny got to the boathouse first and stood inside the door waiting for Sandy. When she arrived about five minutes later, he took her by the hand and led her into the trees about twenty yards back from the lake shore. He whispered, “We need to keep quiet, because I don’t know how far the guys are behind me. We’ll hide until everybody’s here, then we’ll just watch them to see what their plan is.”

Sandy whispered back, “But we know what their plan is, don’t we?”

“No. We think we know, but the note didn’t specifically mention anything about sex, it just implied it. And it didn’t say, condom, it said protection. I don’t know what else it could mean, but if we’re going to crash their little party, we’d betted know what we’re talking about. We make sure, THEN we act.”

Kenny crouched down behind a huge spruce. Sandy sat beside him on her rolled up sleeping bag, and said, “You say act. Just exactly what kind of an act are you planning?”

“Hell, I don’t know! I’m open to suggestions. If they start stripping, then I guess we’ll know for sure what they’re up to. But it’s gonna be damned touchy. Getting all over their case because they want to submit to their most basic biological drive seems kind of hypocritical to me. I mean, it’s our stated goal to teach them how to do it well and safely, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Sandy agreed, “but under controlled conditions, not out here in the woods in the middle of the night! Jeez, Kenny, we haven’t even brought up anything about them actually having sex yet in the classroom.”

“So what? That’s what Barb and Josh are planning, isn’t it? And even if they haven’t actually said it, you have to agree they’ve been alluding to it all along, so what else could the kids think? What’s the big deal if they decide to start screwing a couple of weeks before they’re given official permission?

“And as for doing it among the trees, to be honest, Sandy, if I had a choice, I’d rather make love under the stars than under, quote, laboratory conditions, unquote. I mean, that just seems a little too cold and sterile to me. Where’s the romance? Jesus, they’re people, not lab rats!”

Kenny’s voice was rising with his passions, and Sandy clamped her hand over his mouth. “Quiet! I think I hear something!”

They scrunched down and waited. First, they saw a light swinging back and forth, then they saw the girls, one of whom was carrying an oil lantern. Each was carrying a rolled-up blanket, Ginger was toting a basket, and Darla carried the lantern that was putting out a surprising amount of white light. They walked along the path giggling and chatting animatedly. They were all wearing the standard uniform: khaki shorts, sneakers and their camp T-shirts.

When they reached the boathouse, Ginger opened the basket and took out three cans of beer, popped the tabs and handed them out.

“Those little sneaks,” Sandy whispered, “I’ll bet they took that beer out of my fridge!”

“You have a fridge?”

“Um, yeah. Don’t you?”

“Hell, no! How do you rate?”

She shrugged, “I don’t know; maybe it’s because I’m over twenty-one and I can put beer in it.”

“You are? Oh, yeah, I guess I knew that. I keep forgetting I’m just a kid. But I don’t see what that has to do with being allowed a fridge.”

Sandy reached a hand between his legs, rubbed the bulge in his crotch, and giggled, “Some kid! Now, hush!”

Ginger took a spray can from the basket and walked around the area spraying for bugs. The night air was still, so it would probably keep the mosquitoes away reasonably well. While she sprayed, Becky lit several candles, presumably citronella, an insect repellant, and placed them on the two picnic tables.

Sandy observed, still whispering, “Jeez, they came prepared, didn’t they?”

“Quiet, here come the guys.”

The boys, also carrying a lantern, strolled, almost swaggered, up to the boathouse, acting like they owned the place. Kenny could easily see that it was affected behavior, most likely a bit of false bravado in an attempt to look confident when they were probably almost paralyzed with fear ... that is, if they were actually here to get into the girls’ panties.

Danny made a big production of bowing deeply as he doffed his Mariners baseball cap and announced in a very poor attempt at a

British accent, “Good evening, ladies. Your Prince Charmings are here to attend to your royal needs.”

And then, in a move that seemed very uncharacteristic of Danny Garcia, he thrust his hips forward and grabbed his crotch in a very crude gesture.