Episode 34: Birthday/Negotiations

It was the second week of September; the leaves had not yet started to turn color but there was a feel to the air that said 'Okay ... that's it – summer is over'. The weather office had promised a scorcher of a week-end, however. Tom's thirteenth birthday was coming up and Bobbie had asked him, since at thirteen, he would "officially' become a 'teenager', whether he wanted anything special as a birthday party.

Tom thought about it. "Yeah ... I know it's impossible since we don't have a pool but, rather than anything else, I would love to have a pool party with all my friends from camp."

While Tom had 'more or less' kept Bobbie up to date about what had happened at camp including the three-day outing on Skinny Dipper Island, he had been vague on the details, so the following morning, Bobbie called Helen Adams, Linda's mother, to see if she could fill in the gaps. What she heard threw her for a loop.

"You mean to say that they spent most of the season naked? The way that I had understood it when that Mr. Douglas called was that it had been an occasional skinny dip. How do you feel about Linda being naked?"

"To be honest, I don't really care ... you know I used to be a dancer, right? I don't often talk about it but the troupe I used to dance with did quite a few productions where both the guys and the girls used to be topless and sometimes, even nude. It was all very daring, at the time. As a matter of fact, that is how I met Steve; I was lead dancer in a coming-of-age piece where both main characters were totally nude for the final dance. Steve had been in the audience with the girl he was dating at the time. My dancing had impressed him so much, he was waiting for me at the stage door the following evening with a dozen roses. We've been together ever since. We've always been rather open at home; while we don't make a point of staying nude, we don't close the bathroom door or the bedroom doors either."

"I see ... To get back to my original question; Tom asked for a pool party with his friends from camp. He's mentioned a few names but, to be honest, I haven't kept track of them. Do you know their names?"

"I know the names of the girls, mostly ... tell you what ... I'll talk with Linda this afternoon and get all the details and I'll get back to you this evening."

"Great!"

Jennifer had been relaxing at her uncle's cabin, mainly to recover from the hectic summer. She had finished her Master's degree in resort management the previous spring and had planned to start doing some serious job-hunting in the fall after camp would be over but when Hunter Douglas hired her as full-time Camp director, job-hunting was no longer an issue. Ever since that first meeting before Hartwell had fired her, Hunter and she had meshed so well that it had felt as if they had known each other for years. He had offered her a free rein in running the camp as she saw fit.