Chapter 7

It was the last dance, and, of course, it was slow. Almost everybody was dancing now. The fifteen or twenty percent of kids who hadn't made "that kind of friend" were already starting to get the dining hall ready for its more normal use as an eating facility, moving chairs and unfolding table legs, so that breakfast could be had the next morning.

"So ... did we do anything you're sorry for?" he asked in her ear.

She imagined that she felt the hot weight of his spunk inside her. She wondered if she'd have a period, a week after she got back home. She wondered if people would think she was a slut, or could tell, just by looking at her, that she wasn't a virgin any more.

"No," she whispered.

"I'm glad," he said softly.

"Arden?" Her voice was tight, and sounded nervous.

"Yeah?"

"Why didn't you do that to me the first week?"

They turned in a complete circle before he answered.

"I didn't know if you'd let me."

"Did you want to?" she asked.

"A lot," he answered simply.

"Do you do that with girls at home?" she asked.

"Not like you're thinking," he said. "I don't have a girlfriend or anything."

"You just seem to know what you're doing," she said, uncharacteristically telling him what she was thinking.

"I've done it before," he said, somewhat mysteriously.

"Who with?" she asked.

"If I told you, you'd probably get mad at me," he said.

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't want you to hate me," he said, instead of answering her question. "I like you a lot."

"I like you too," she said, thinking he must be an idiot. Why would she let him do the things he'd done to her if she didn't like him?

"Promise you won't yell, and get mad?" he asked.

"I guess," she said, reverting to her normal answer in an unknown situation.

They did two more circles before he answered.

"I told you we're nudists," he said. There was a long pause, and she was about to ask what that had to do with anything, when he finally went on. "We're very close ... in our family. My sisters and I have shared a bedroom all our lives. We show love in ways that a lot of people think is wrong."

As that sank in, Gloria's feet started to feel like they weighed a ton. She was an only child. She'd slept alone, in her room, all her life.

"Your sisters?!" she gasped.

His arms tightened, instinctively, to keep her from bursting free and making a scene. She didn't try to get loose, though. She was too shocked.

"We were curious about ... stuff," he said. "You promised," he said, feeling like he had done the wrong thing.

She had stopped "dancing", and stood. Her hands felt like lumps of clay on his shoulders. His hands felt hot on her waist.

"You do that with your sisters?" she whined.

"Sometimes," he said. "Not a lot. It's kind of for special occasions. It's complicated. Our family is really different."

"I guess so!" she gasped.

"I never did it with anybody else," he said, like he was defending himself, somehow. "Except you."

As preposterous as it seems, the knowledge that, outside his own family, she was his first, seemed to calm her. Of course the situation had been bizarre and strange for the whole three weeks of camp, and that may have had something to do with Gloria's ability to keep her mind from exploding with this new, crazy information. To keep from concentrating on what he'd admitted to, she concentrated on his statement that she was different, somehow.

"Really?" she asked, her voice high.

"Really," he said, as if that would fix everything. "I'm not much interested in girls ... outside girls ... I don't go on dates or anything."

"Why me?" she asked.

He started them moving again, trying to return to normalcy.

"I don't know," he admitted. "You're pretty, and interesting. I've never felt like that around a girl before."

"This is so weird," she moaned.

"Yeah, I guess so," he admitted.

The music ended, and the DJ announced that it was time to wrap things up. He gave the obligatory comments about how they had to get up early in the morning, to clean the cabins before breakfast, and that they should all go straight to their cabins.

"Do you hate me?" asked Arden.

Gloria looked at him. He looked different to her, somehow. She knew that was silly. He was still Arden. She just knew something about him now that made him seem different.

"I don't know," she said.

"I'm sorry if I hurt you," he said, anguish in his voice.

Judy was suddenly standing beside them.

"Break it up you two. Hit the cabins. You can talk at breakfast."

Gloria lay in her bed. Judy was in her sleep shirt, and had her flashlight in her hand. Gloria watched her as she went around the cabin, saying something to some of the girls. She leaned over to pick up a piece of clothing that was on the floor, and hung it on the end of a bunk bed. Gloria saw she wasn't wearing panties again, because there was no panty-line under her shirt.

While Judy was gone, getting fucked for the last time by Brad, at least this year, Gloria's mind flitted from images of Brad, fucking Judy standing up, to Arden's penis spurting, to Judy kneeling to suck Brad's cock, to the sounds Amy had made while Mike filled her with his semen, to the feel of Arden's prick in her pussy, and his mouth on her nipples. She tried to envision Arden, hunched over a girl ... his sister ... or maybe two sisters. She realized she had no idea how many sisters he had, or what ages they were. She blinked as she realized that the girl in her vision was Amy, the only "girl" she could visualize in that situation, with Arden.

She knew she was in for a rough night.

LAST DAY

Gloria folded her mattress in half on her bunk. All her stuff was packed and sitting on the porch. She'd lug it with her to breakfast, and then put it on the bus, when it got there.

It HAD been a rough night, and her dreams had been troubled. Since she couldn't make an image of Arden's sisters, her mind had plugged in other girls and women she knew instead. There had been a dream of Arden with Amy, and then Judy, and then her mother. In the dream he went from one to the other. As he left each one, her abdomen was swollen with his baby. Then he reached for her. She ran away, across a big grassy field, and when he caught her, they were suddenly under their tree, where the blanket was spread out. The can of coke was there, on the blanket, in the middle. She didn't understand that, but the dream didn't give her any information. Instead she was transposed to the picnic table, in the dark, and someone was fucking her. She couldn't tell if it was Arden, or someone else. She wondered, in the dream, if it was Brad, because whoever was making her feel so good seemed bigger than Arden. In her dream the man smelled like her father, who smoked a pipe. Then, just as suddenly she was in another place, naked, sitting on Arden, and his penis was spurting up inside her as his blue eyes bored into hers. He said: "There are no others." There was more, but she couldn't remember parts of it.

Like many dreams, she remembered every detail when she first woke, but then her mind prioritized, and the colors faded, and she couldn't quite remember what sequence things had happened in, in the dream. By the time she'd done her part in cabin cleanup, lugged her suitcase to the dining hall, and sat down for breakfast, she couldn't remember, for sure, many things she knew she'd "seen" while she slept.

Arden sat down beside her.

"Hi," he said. He sounded like ... Arden.

"Hi," she responded automatically. She felt the tingle in her body that she'd felt every day for the last two weeks, every time she saw him.

She looked around, but they had both gotten there early. Only a few others were in the dining hall.

"What if I'm pregnant?" she asked in a whisper.

He blinked. "You're not on the pill?"

"Of course not, you idiot," she almost snarled. "I was a virgin when I got here!"

"Oh," he said, looking confused. "My sisters ... they're all on the pill. I guess I thought you wouldn't let me unless..." He looked confused.

"I DIDN'T let you!" she hissed.

"Yes you did," he said, sounding hurt.

"You just ... did things!" she insisted. "What if I'm pregnant?"

"I don't know," he said, sounding lost. "Do you think you are?"

"I don't know!" she said, much too loudly. She looked around.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to..."

"Would you be sorry?" she asked suddenly.