Summer After Summer. Ann DeFee

I was never grumpy, not even when it was that time of the month. Now Misty would definitely know something was up.

      “What?” She had that crafty look I hated so much.

      “Nothing.”

      “Don’t you nothin’ me, girlie. You’re keeping a secret and I want to know what it is.”

      “Hey, y’all.” Those dulcet tones came from Bunny.

      I was saved by my bleached-blond friend. She strutted down to the dock in the shortest, tightest pair of cutoffs I’d ever seen. “Aren’t those uncomfortable?” I had to ask.

      “Nope.” She slipped her sandals off and sat down on the dock. “Let’s go riding.”

      Cruising was our favorite hobby. Of course, in Meadow Lake, cruising was one of the few things a kid could do for entertainment.

      “Sounds good to me,” Misty said. “I don’t have to be home for dinner until seven.”

      “And I don’t have to go to work until tomorrow.” In my summer gig as a lifeguard, I worked a couple of days a week. It was a hard job—yeah, right—but someone had to do it.

      “Where’s Mary Alice?” Bunny asked.

      “Her dad’s holding a revival meeting. She told me they’re going down to the river to do some baptizing,” Misty answered.

      Bunny laughed. “I guess riding around with us is out, huh?”

      “Yep.” Mary Alice missed quite a few things the rest of us called fun.

      Even though it was hotter than hell, we had the convertible top down. We were willing to sacrifice anything in the name of being “cool,” and believe it or not, that included scorched thighs.

      We circled the Pink Pig several times. At three o’clock in the afternoon the pickings were slim.

      “I have an idea,” Bunny said.

      It wasn’t so much what she said as how she said it. The way my skin prickled, I knew we were heading for a mess of trouble. But before my good sense could issue a stern warning, Misty piped up.

      “What?” she asked.

      Bunny wore her “we’re gonna be oh, so grounded if anyone catches us” grin.

      “We’re going skinny-dipping in the park.”

      “No!” I shouted, almost causing her to run into a stop sign.

      “Why not?” Bunny put on her affronted act.

      “Because my daddy’s the police chief and if we get caught I’ll be a hundred and ten years old before I’m allowed to leave the house again.”

      “Don’t worry about it. I have everything under control.” She turned the car toward the park.

      Misty didn’t say a word. She was probably wondering whether she could survive jumping from a moving vehicle, because if that girl got nabbed with her drawers down in a public place, her parents would hustle her off to a boarding school that would make Oliver Twist’s look plush.

      Our friend batted away our objections as if they were pesky gnats. So off to the river we went, the three of us like lemmings to the sea.

      The park had a long winding roadway between the golf course and the water. River Road was popular with the high-school crowd for a couple of reasons—most of which made my daddy cranky. The Indy 500 wannabes used it to hone their racing skills, and the “parkers” favored the secluded areas to do whatever it was lovers did, not that I was an expert on that, being a virgin and all.

      For this particular exploit we had to have privacy. My bare butt was not appropriate viewing material.

      Bunny pulled into the small lot adjacent to a picnic area at the end of the drive. At that time of day, in that heat, the chances of running into a family were pretty slight. Anyone with a lick of sense was inside enjoying the air-conditioning.

      “You guys coming? You’ll love it.”

      Bunny was out of the car and halfway down the hill before Misty and I could decide what to do. Darn it, she started flapping her arms up and down making clucking noises. Who could ignore a challenge like that?

      “I hate being manipulated,” I muttered. And that’s what my friend was doing, in spades.

      “Me, too,” Misty admitted. “But I can’t seem to resist.”

      “Yeah,” I said as I unfolded my long legs from the backseat of the very small car. Please God, don’t let one of Daddy’s patrolmen do the park loop and check on Bunny’s car.

      

      Okay, Bunny was right. Shucking your clothes and skinny-dipping was decadence at its best. It was a cross between being naughty and feeling liberated.

      “This is nice. But I’m still worried about snakes,” I said as I rolled over to float on my back. The only way a cottonmouth water moccasin could bite you was to latch on to a small appendage, and I had two small appendages that I did not want bitten, and we weren’t talking about fingers.

      I’d always thought floating was as close as you could get to being back in the womb. It was very quiet and it gave you a serene sense of weightlessness.

      “Who’s that?” Misty hissed.

      I felt my tranquility take a nosedive. I jackknifed in the water just in time to see my so-called friends swimming as fast as they could toward the other side of the river.

      “Hey, you!” It was a male voice. An irritated male voice.

      Oh, great! It was none other than Eddie Troyer, Daddy’s newest patrolman.

      Fortunately, I was far enough out in the water that he probably didn’t recognize me. Unfortunately, he was standing next to our pile of clothes.

      Darn it all!

      When I trained as a lifeguard I did a lot of underwater swimming. With Patrolman Troyer hot on my tail, I was certainly glad I’d learned how to hold my breath for an extended period of time.

      

      “What are we going to do?” Bunny asked.

      The three of us were crouching in the bushes as we watched the cop prowl up and down the opposite bank.

      “Oh, God,” I moaned. “He probably thinks we’ve drowned and he’s gonna call my daddy. They’ll bring a boat out and drag the river. We have to let them know we’re not dead.”

      “No,” Misty whined.

      “Wait, wait, wait.” Bunny seemed to be the only one whose brain was still working.

      “He has to go back to his car to report this, right?”

      “Yeah.” I could almost see where she was going with this.

      “When he climbs back up the hill, we race across, grab our clothes and hide in the bushes downstream.”

      “That might work.” And if it didn’t, the rookie was going to get an up-close and personal preview of my ass. But as repugnant as that seemed, I didn’t have a better idea.

      “I’m in.”

      “Me, too,” Misty reluctantly agreed.

      She didn’t sound all that sure, but neither was I, so we were even.

      The minute Eddie turned his back and trudged up the hill, we were in the water swimming like we’d jumped into a pool of piranhas.

      Bunny was the first out of the water, first to grab her shorts and first to disappear into the bushes. I was right behind her. Panic and adrenaline made me very fast.

      “What are we going to do about your car?” The vehicle question was something that had occurred to me the minute my brain started working. How could we explain