Strawberry Summer by Cynthia Blair Page A

comfortable in.
    Immediately after breakfast, Chris slipped away, back to the cabin to change into one of the sundresses she’d brought, an outfit that wouldn’t identify her at all with Camp Pinewood. And Susan headed for the lake, a bit apprehensive about her very first attempt at teaching swimming. Or, more accurately, at not teaching swimming, since she had no intention of leading a group of eight-year-olds into the lake, trying to keep an eye on all twenty of them at once.
    The campers were already waiting for her, wearing their bathing suits and clutching their towels. Fortunately, Chris had reminded her to put on her bathing suit, underneath her jeans and T-shirt. She was so nervous that she might have forgotten otherwise.
    “Hey, Chris, how come you’re not wearing your bathing suit today?” asked one little girl, with freckles and red hair braided into two pigtails.
    In response, Susan pulled off her T-shirt to reveal one of Chris’s kelly-green tank suits.
    “You never did that before.” The little girl looked troubled. “Aren’t we going into the water today?”
    “As a matter of fact, I came up with an idea for something different for us to do this morning.”
    The campers looked doubtful. Obviously, most of them considered their morning dip in the lake one of the high points of the day. She realized that her plan to discuss water safety—while on dry land—was not going to go over as well as she’d hoped.
    Susan could feel herself floundering. How was she going to keep these water babies entertained for an hour? Having them stay right next to Lake Majestic yet not letting them go in seemed like a sort of punishment.
    “ I know!” She was suddenly inspired. “What we’re going to do today is take turns giving a swimming exhibition. One at a time, I’d like you to jump into the water and then show the rest of us how well you can swim. You know, what you’ve learned so far this year. Everyone else will be sitting on the dock, watching. They’ll be your audience. It’s like putting on a show, in a way.”
    While she felt uneasy about keeping an eye on twenty kids in the water, she could certainly deal with one at a time. Even her lifeguarding skills were strong enough for that.
    “So, what do you think, kids?”
    “Yippeee!” cried the little girl with the braids. “Just like the counselors’ variety show last night! We can all take turns being the star!”
    “Oh, boy! I can show everyone how well I can float!” chirped another.
    “And I can show everyone how well I can dive! My brother taught me how, last summer!”
    The campers buzzed happily as they thought up ways to show off their newly acquired swimming skills and tried to come up with special effects to embellish their “acts.”
    Relieved, Susan thanked her lucky stars that she was fairly good at thinking on her feet.
    She only hoped her twin sister, no doubt already poking around behind the Okie-Dokie Inn, was doing half as well.
     
Chapter Eleven
     
    The walk from Camp Pinewood to the Okie-Dokie Inn was longer than Chris remembered it being. The night before, as the pickup cruised along the main road, it seemed as if it were only a mile or so away. But as she trudged along that morning, the sun growing hotter and hotter with each step, she found herself wondering how she could have miscalculated by so much.
    She was also worried about whether her twin would be able to hold down the fort all morning.
    That’s the least of your worries, she told herself firmly as she tromped along the shoulder of the road, watching her beige leather sandals and her toes becoming coated with a thin film of dust. Sooz will be fine. She always was before.
    No, it was not Susan’s mission that she should be concerned about, she knew. It was her own mission.
    Now that she was headed for the Okie-Dokie, dressed in a lavender sundress that she hoped would make her look like just another one of the locals, rather than a representative of Camp