"Are we going to skinny-dip?" asked Chris, looking at me in a peculiar way.
"No. We are going to swim in our underwear."
The trouble was, I didn't own a single bra. But now that we were here, silly prudery wasn't going to stop me from enjoying that moonlit water. "Last one in is a rotten egg!" I called. And I took off, on the run toward a short dock. But when I reached the end of the dock, I somehow sensed the water might be icy cold, and most gingerly I cautiously stuck a toe in first--and it was ice cold! I glanced back at Chris, who had taken off his watch and flung it aside, and now he was coming at me fast. So darned fast, before I could brave myself to dive into the water, he was behind me, and shoved me! Splash--flat down in the water I was, soaked from head to toe, and not inch by inch, as I would have had it!
I shivered as I came to the surface and paddled around, looking for Chris. Then I spied him crawling up a pile of rocks, and for a moment he was silhouetted. He lifted his arms and gracefully made a swan dive into the middle of the lake. I gasped! What if the water wasn't deep enough? What if he hit the bottom and broke his neck or back?
And then, and then. . . he didn't surface! Oh God,. . . he was dead. . . drowned!
"Chris," I called, sobbing, and began to swim toward the spot where he had disappeared beneath the cold water.
Suddenly I was seized by the legs! I screamed and went under, pulled down by Chris, who kicked his legs strongly and took us both up to the surface, where we laughed, and I splashed water into his face for playing such a dirty trick.
"Isn't this better than being shut up in that damned hot room?" he asked, frolicking around like someone demented, delirious, wild, and crazy! It was as if this bit of freedom had gone to his head like strong wine, and he was drunk! He swam in circles around me, and tried again to catch my legs and drag me under. But I was wise to him now. He kicked to the surface and backstroked, he also did the breaststroke, the crawl, side- stroked, and named what he did as he performed. "This is the back crawl," he said as he demonstrated, showing off techniques I'd never seen before.
He surfaced from a dive under, and treaded water as he began to sing, "Dance, ballerina, dance,"--and in my face he threw water, as I splashed it back at him--"and do your pirouette in rhythm with your aching heart. . . ." And then he had me in his embrace, and laughing and screaming, we fought, gone crazy just to be children again. Oh, he was wonderful in the water, like a dancer. Suddenly I was tired, extremely tired, so tired I felt weak as a wet dishcloth. Chris put his arm about me and assisted me up onto shore.
Both of us fell on a grassy bank to lie back and talk.
"One more swim, and then back to the twins," he said, lying supine on the gentle slope beside me. Both of us stared up at a sky full of glittering, twinkling stars, and there was a quarter-moon out, colored silvery-gold, and it ducked and hid, and played hide and seek with the strung-out long, dark clouds. "Suppose we can't make it back up to the roof?"
"We'll make it, because we have to make it."
That was my Christopher Doll, the eternal optimist, sprawled beside me, all wet and glistening, with his fair hair pasted to his forehead. His nose was the same as Daddy's as it aimed at the heavens, his full lips so beautifully shaped he didn't need to pout to make them sensual, his chin square, strong, clefted, and his chest was beginning to broaden . . . and there was that hillock of his growing maleness before his strong thighs, beginning to swell. There was something about a man's strong, well- shaped thighs that excited me. I turned away my head, unable to feast my eyes on his beauty without feeling guilty and ashamed.
Birds were nested overhead in the tree branches. They made sleepy little twittery noises that for some reason made me think of the twins, and that made me sad and put tears in my eyes.
Fireflies bobbed up every so often and flashed their lemon- colored tail-lights off and on, signaling
male to female, or vice- versa. "Chris, is it the male firefly that lights up, or the female?"
"I'm really not sure," he said as if he didn't care. "I think they both light up, but the female stays on the ground signaling, while the male flies around looking for her."
"You mean you aren't positive about everything-- you, the all-knowing?"
"Cathy, let's not quibble. I don't know
everything--a long way from it." He turned his head and met my eyes; our gazes locked and neither of us seemed capable of looking elsewhere.
Soft southern breezes came and played in my hair and dried the wisps about my face. I felt them tickling like small kisses, and again I wanted to cry, for no reason at all, except the night was so sweet, so lovely, and I was at the age for high romantic yearning. And the breeze whispered loving words in my ears . . . words I was so afraid no one was ever going to say. Still, the night was so lovely under the trees, near the shimmering moonlit water, and I sighed. I felt that I'd been here before, on this grass near the lake. Oh, the strange thoughts I had as the night-fliers hummed and whirred, and the mosquitoes buzzed and somewhere far off an owl hooted, taking me quickly back to the night when first we came to live as fugitives, hidden from a world that didn't want us.
"Chris, you're almost seventeen, the same age Daddy was when he first met Momma."
"And you're fourteen, the same age she was," he said in a hoarse voice.
"Do you believe in love at first sight?"
He hesitated, mulling that over . . . his way, not mine "I'm not an authority on that subject. I know when I was in school, I'd see a pretty girl and right away feel in love with her. Then when we'd talk, and she was kind of stupid, then I didn't feel anything at all about her. But if her beauty had been matched by other assets, I think I could fall in love at first sight, though I've read that kind of love is only physical attraction."
"Do you think I'm stupid?"
He grinned and reached out to touch my hair. "Gosh, no. And I hope you don't think you are, because you're not. Your trouble is, Cathy, you have too many talents; you want to be everything, and that's not possible."
"How do you know I'd like to be a singer and an actress, too?"
He laughed soft and low. "Silly girl, you're acting ninety percent of the time, and singing to yourself when you feel contented; unfortunately, that's not very often."
"Are you contented often?"