Susan Wiggs - Dockside at Willow Lake

It was easy to give her parents the slip, and she did so at will. Sometimes she even drove her older sister’s ancient Grand Marquis. She had taken it to the drive-in movie at Coxsackie, where she’d let Byron Johnson, a senior, feel her up. Unfortunately, her brother Carmine had spotted her. He hadn’t told on her, of course, but he beat the crap out of Byron and promised to break his kneecaps if he ever came near her again.

Now, with Greg Bellamy, Nina forgot all those other flirtations. This was the guy. The prize. The one she knew she’d write about in her diary and dream about at night. The one who made her want to go further than second base. A lot further.

“So, Nina, are you busy tonight?” Greg asked her.

“Depends,” she said playfully. “What did you have in mind?”

He stared straight at her mouth when he said, “Everything.”

She felt as though she’d caught on fire from the inside out. “Sounds good to me.”

“Excuse me.” Something very tall and very shapely sidled up to Greg. It was another camp counselor, looking like a Bond girl in camp clothes. “Oh, good,” she said, helping herself to Greg’s plate of pie. “You saved me a piece.” She aimed a dazzling smile straight at him. “Thank you, Greggy. I owe you one.”

Greggy? thought Nina. Greggy? Okay, I’m going to barf.

“Binkie, this is Nina,” he said.

The towering bombshell turned, offering the kind of smile that could freeze an enemy at twenty paces. “Nina. Now, where have I heard that name before? Oh, yes. You must be Mrs. Romano’s little girl.”

Nina was watching Greg, not Binkie. It was kind of amazing to see her image being dismantled before her very eyes.

“You know, Mrs. Romano,” Binkie reminded him. “The camp cook.”

In the space of a few seconds, Greg went from flirting and making a date with Nina to staring at her as though she had sprouted horns and a tail.

“Right,” he said, turning red to the tips of his ears. “I need to get back to work.” He glared at Nina. “See you around, kid.”

Binkie offered a chilly smile. “Nice to meet you, honey.”

Nina stood unmoving, having been put in her place so decisively that she felt as though she’d been rooted to the spot forever. Everything was boiling inside her—thwarted lust, resentment, yearning, shame and injured pride.

“You coming?” Jenny asked, returning from what had probably been a more age-appropriate conversation with Rourke and Joey. She seemed oblivious to Nina’s turmoil. “Gramp’s ready to head back to town.”

“Sure,” Nina heard herself say. She thought Greg Bellamy might be watching her as she left the dining hall. She refused to look back, though. He was a mistake she was only too happy to leave behind.

As she was beating a retreat, she was horrified to feel the hot press of tears threatening to spill. Fighting back, she paused, pretending to study the bulletin board, a patchwork of announcements for the camp staff. Someone had lost a pair of sunglasses. Someone else had two tickets to the new hit musical Miss Saigon , for sale. Everything was a blur, but then a bright yellow flier resolved itself before her eyes. Welcome Cadets! Community Mixer at Avalon Meadows Country Club. Each year, the new crop of West Point cadets was treated to a pre-enlistment party, their final hurrah before stepping into the rarified world of rigors that was the United States Military Academy. 18 and Over Required.

At the bottom of the flier was a fringe of phone numbers for the RSVP. Nina already knew one appointee—Laurence Jeffries, from Kingston. She’d flirted with him at football and baseball games, and he had no clue how old she was. He’d be the one to get her into the country club. She defiantly ripped off an RSVP number and stuck it in her pocket.

She glanced over her shoulder at Greg Bellamy. If he’d been nicer to her, she’d still be in the dining hall, eating pie. So really, if she got in trouble, it would all be Greg’s fault.

Nina never had any trouble passing herself off as an eighteen-year-old. She and her sisters all looked alike. At church and catechism, people always mixed them up. On any given Sunday, Nina had been called Loretta, Giuliana, Maria and even Vicki—their mother. Nina had learned everything she knew from her pretty, popular sisters. She eavesdropped on their giggling conversations about boys and sex. She’d sat with them late at night, listening to them dissect their dates, moment by moment. Thanks to her sisters, Nina knew how to crash a party, how to flirt with a boy, how to French kiss and what safe sex was.

The West Point reception was scheduled for a Sunday night. Nina planned to wait until Maria was in the shower. Then she would go to her sister’s wallet and help herself to the driver’s license.

That morning, as everyone was running around, getting ready for church, she told her parents the usual story—her friend Jenny was having a sleepover—though she probably didn’t need to bother. Everyone was preoccupied, and her father was organizing yet another fund-raiser for a candidate.

“Isn’t it frustrating to see Pop raise all that money for someone else?” Nina asked her mother as they all tumbled out of the van at St. Mary’s. Pop had leaped out first to join a group of local businessmen in front of the church. Carmine was left to play parking valet with the lumbering van, which had once been an airport shuttle. Their dad had bought it for a song. It was the only car that fit them all.

“I mean,” Nina continued, “he’s raising money to buy radio ads and we can’t even afford to get Anthony’s teeth straightened.”

Ma only smiled when Nina said stuff like that. “This is your dad’s passion. It’s what he believes in.”

“What about what you believe in, Ma? Don’t you believe in getting a new winter coat more than once a decade, or paying the light bill without going into debt?”

“I believe in your father,” Ma said serenely. And boy, did she ever. Giorgio Romano could do no wrong in her eyes. To be fair, Pop was just as crazy about Ma. He went to high mass with her every Sunday and sat there without blinking as she unhesitatingly placed ten percent of their weekly income in the collection basket, because Ma believed in tithing.

At a young age, Nina decided that men who followed their passion were of limited interest to her. She did, however, harbor a passion of her own, and it was for boys. Even in church, she caught herself checking out the boys. The altar boys, for Pete’s sake, who used to look so dorky in their red robes and white surplices. Now they looked impossibly sexy to her, with their Adam’s apples and big, squarish hands, dress shoes peeping out from beneath their robes. Nina had heard the term boy-crazy before; now she understood what it meant. They did make her crazy, in the sense that they totally distracted her from everything but thoughts of making out, all day and all night long.

As everyone lurched forward to kneel after the Lamb of God, she glanced over her shoulder at Jenny, a few rows back with her grandparents. The three of them looked so neat and self-contained, not like the whispering, rustling, unwieldy Romano bunch. But Jenny didn’t notice Nina trying to get her attention. As she often did, Jenny looked as though she was a million miles away.

Nina turned her eyes to the front and tried to keep her mind blank through the Canon of the mass. It was always a great internal debate with her, deciding whether or not to go for communion. Catholics took their communion very seriously. No wonder you were supposed to unload all your sins beforehand. Supposedly, the sacrament was reserved for people whose souls were spotless, who had emerged from the confessional as squeaky clean as an athlete stepping out of a postgame shower.