Strawberry Summer

“Attention, passengers. The bus for Lake Majestic is now boarding. Now calling all passengers for Lake Majestic!”

As the announcement came over the loudspeaker of the Whittington bus station, two travelers who’d just been dropped off at the side door began to scurry.

“That’s our bus, Chris!” cried Susan Pratt as the girls hurried across the bus station toward the departure area. “We’d better hurry!”

“Oh, I’m sure we have plenty of time. That was probably just the first call.” But Christine Pratt, Susan’s twin sister, broke into a slow run.

It was no easy matter, trying to rush with a heavy suitcase in one hand and the huge bag lunch their mother had packed for them in the other. Chris suddenly found herself wondering what would happen if her suitcase burst open, as she feared it might, right there in the middle of the Whittington bus station. The whole summer’s clothes would spill out onto the floor: shorts, T-shirts, bathing suits, sundresses, sandals, and sneakers. Not wanting to leave anything behind, she had packed everything she could possibly think of. Everything, as her mother had joked, except her winter coat.

Susan, on the other hand, had packed much more sensibly. Just two or three of everything—one to wash, one to wear, one extra, just in case. The suitcase she carried was much smaller and much lighter. She’d even had enough room to pack a few paperback novels she hoped to read in the next few weeks, during whatever moments of leisure she managed to grab, as well as a pad of drawing paper and a box of her favorite pastels.

If Susan’s suitcase ever opened up by accident, Chris thought, smiling to herself, everyone in the bus station would probably be awestruck by how well-organized my twin sister is!

“Here, let me carry our lunch,” Susan offered, noticing the difficulty her twin was having. “I can manage that besides my suitcase.”

“We probably should have eaten it in the car on the way over here. Then we wouldn’t have to carry it at all!”

Chris’s suggestion made the two of them burst out laughing.

“Don’t worry, dear twin,” Susan said when she’d caught her breath. “We’ve got plenty of time. It’s just that I’m so excited that I can’t wait to be on that bus, on our way to Lake Majestic!”

While the two sixteen-year-olds were identical twins, Susan and Chris looked hardly alike at all as they stashed their suitcases in the bus’s storage compartment down below and scrambled aboard. They both had the same dark brown eyes, shoulder-length chestnut hair, and facial features: high cheekbones, ski-jump noses, and winning smiles. But today, like most of the time, their similarities were hardly noticeable, masked as they were by their more obvious differences in appearance, definitely reflections of the differences in their personalities.

Chris, the more outgoing of the two, liked to dress fashionably. She was wearing a pair of pink jeans with a bright pink, blue, and green blouse that was one of her favorites. The blue barrettes in her hair, her oversize pink earrings, and the other gaily colored jewelry she wore all seemed to complement her cheerful, talkative personality.

Susan, meanwhile, preferred a good book or a few hours at an easel, painting landscapes or portraits or just about anything. And she tended to dress with much less flamboyance than her twin. Today, for example, she had donned a white blouse and a simple flowered skirt for the long bus trip ahead. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, designed to minimize the effects of the July heat. And the only jewelry she wore was a pair of simple earrings, the tiny hoops made of delicate gold that her parents had given her for her sixteenth birthday.

Once they had found seats on the bus and were finally settled in, both girls sighed with relief.

“We made it!” Susan nestled their big lunch bag between them. “And now that we’ve got a three-hour ride ahead of us, I’m really glad we didn’t eat all this food already!”

“I’m so excited, Sooz!” Chris was staring out the window at the other people who were lining up to get on the bus. “The two of us getting jobs as camp counselors for the summer was one of the best ideas you’ve ever had!”

“Thanks, but it wasn’t exactly my idea, remember? It was Mom’s.”

“Oh, that’s right. Once she saw how bored we were getting, she realized she’d better come up with
something for
us to do!”

Chris laughed as she thought about how the summer had started, with her lying in the hammock in the backyard, complaining about the fact that she had absolutely no plans for the next two months. Applying for camp counselor positions at Camp Pinewood and half a dozen other camps nearby had been their mother’s solution.

It wasn’t until they both were accepted for a six-week stint, from mid-July until the end of August, that Chris and Susan realized how much they’d been hoping it would work out. It was late to be applying, they knew, and they were pleased and surprised at being hired. Susan was going to be a counselor in arts and crafts, her favorite hobby as well as the area in which she was most talented. She even hoped to go on to art school after graduating from high school. Chris was going to teach swimming, something that her lifelong interest in the sport prepared her for well.

Beyond their special interests in art and swimming, the Pratt twins were simply looking forward to spending the summer out of doors. Being camp counselors, they reasoned, had to be almost as much fun as being a kid at a summer camp. According to the brochures they’d received along with the acceptance letters, Camp Pinewood offered boating, hiking, archery, and nature walks. And making some new friends was something else they wouldn’t have the chance to do if they stayed at home in Whittington. All in all, it seemed as if their mother had come up with the perfect way to spend their seventeenth summer.

“Well, I just hope they don’t work us too hard,” Chris complained cheerfully, leaning back comfortably in her seat as the bus driver slammed the door closed and started up the engine. “Over the next six weeks, I intend to indulge in every single one of my favorite summertime pleasures.”

“We know for sure you’ll have a chance to do some swimming,” Susan teased. “And I’ll certainly have time to work on some new art projects.”

“I’m talking about all those things that make summer the very best season of the year. Like getting a gorgeous tan ...”

“And drinking lemonade.”

“Catching fireflies—and then letting them go.”

“Going barefoot. Don’t forget that!” Susan couldn’t help wiggling her toes at the mere thought.

“And what about eating strawberries?” Chris closed her eyes and smiled dreamily. “Ummm, I
love
strawberries. I hope Camp Pinewood has them for dessert every night at dinner. Strawberry shortcake, strawberries and cream, strawberries on vanilla ice cream ...”

“It’s true; it just doesn’t feel like summer without strawberries,” Susan agreed. “Well, no matter what happens, one thing’s for sure.”

“What?”

“This is definitely an adventure!”

“Not exactly our usual kind of adventure, either!” Chris’s brown eyes were twinkling as she turned to face her sister.

Susan knew exactly what her twin was talking about. Twice before, the Pratt girls had created their own “adventures” by trading identities, pretending to be each other. The first time, they had bet on whether or not they could switch places—Chris becoming Susan, Susan becoming Chris—for a full two weeks without having anyone figure out what was going on. The purpose had been for each girl to find out what the other’s life was like. The stakes of the bet had been a banana split. That little caper, which they had nicknamed the Banana Split Affair, had convinced them that they really could pull off a scheme like that—and learn a lot while doing it.

The second time had been earlier that summer. When Chris had been selected as the honorary “Queen” in their hometown’s celebration of its hundredth anniversary, she and Susan took turns at being Christine Pratt. It seemed only fair, since Chris had been chosen on the basis of a history project that in reality both girls had worked on together. And while they had been slightly less successful in this second attempt of theirs, it had all ended up working out fine. The celebration at the end of the Hot Fudge Sunday Affair, as they dubbed that week of trading identities, was well deserved.

“I think that for the rest of the summer, we’d better hang on to our own identities,” Susan said with a rueful grin. “I don’t know about you, but I find it much easier to be
me
than anybody else— even my very own twin.”

“Then I guess I’ll just have to be content with being Chris Pratt for a while. Unless, of course, something comes up ...”

“Oh, no!”  Susan groaned, pretending to be exasperated. “Enough! I want to live my life as
Susan
for a change!”

“Well, okay ... I guess. But let’s keep in mind that switching places is always a possibility. After all, what good is having a twin sister if you can’t pretend to
be
her every now and then?”

“All right. We’ll see.”

Despite her protests, Susan knew that her twin was fully aware that she had enjoyed those two escapades as much as Chris.

Susan let her thoughts drift to Camp Pinewood. Neither of the girls had ever been there. They knew little about it, aside from what they’d seen in the few pictures in the brochures they’d received in the mail. Yet here she was, traveling there on a bus, prepared to spend six whole weeks at this place she’d never even seen. For the first time, she began to feel butterflies in her stomach. This really was a kind of adventure....

“Hey, Sooz?” Chris interrupted her daydreaming. She sounded unusually serious.

“Yes?”

“I wonder what Camp Pinewood is going to be like.” It was as if her sister had read her mind—not the first time one twin had a kind of sixth sense about what the other was thinking or feeling. “I wonder if it’s big or little, modern or old-fashioned....”

“Well, no matter what it turns out to look like, you and I have already got one advantage over all the other counselors going to work there for the summer.”

“What’s that?” Chris was genuinely puzzled.

“We’re both bringing along a built-in friend!”

Both girls found that thought extremely comforting. The spell of nervousness that had plagued them momentarily vanished as quickly as it arrived.

Chris glanced at her watch. “Gee, we’ve already been on the road a good fifteen minutes.”

“So?”

“So, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting hungry.”

“But Chris! It’s eleven o’clock in the morning!”

“I know. But aren’t you dying to know what’s in this tremendous lunch Mom packed for us?”

The two girls exchanged mischievous glances, then pounced upon the big brown paper bag sitting between them.

“Here’s some juice, and napkins, and straws.... And these look like tuna fish sandwiches.” Susan arranged everything she had retrieved from the bag in her lap while Chris delved in further.

“Oh, yum! Look, Sooz, some of Mom’s homemade peanut butter cookies.”

“And what’s this, in this container?” Puzzled, Susan pried the cover off a small round plastic jar.

“Oh, look!” Chris exclaimed. She put aside the rest of the lunch goodies, no longer interested in any of them. “Strawberries!”

Chris and Susan looked at each other and burst out laughing. Suddenly, the two girls realized what high hopes they had for the rest of their summer. And they both had the feeling it was going to live up to every one of their expectations.

“What do you think, Sooz?” gulped Chris. “Do you think we’re in the wrong place?”

The taxi the twins had hailed at the bus station had just dropped them off at the side of the road, the driver insisting that this was where they wanted to be. And sure enough, in front of the driveway where they now stood there was a wooden sign reading “Camp Pinewood.” But the sign was split and badly in need of repainting, the driveway was overgrown with weeds at the edges, and there seemed to be no one else around for miles. The two girls stood at the side of the road, clutching their suitcases nervously, not quite sure of exactly what to do next.

“Well, there’s only one way to find out,” Susan said bravely. “This driveway must lead somewhere. Let’s follow it and see what Camp Pinewood is all about.” Feeling very much like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz,
she started down the road.

Chris, still hanging back hesitantly, finally gave in and followed her.

“You don’t suppose this place is
haunted,
do you?”

“You’ve seen too many movies, Chris! Besides, I think I see signs of civilization. Look, there’s a house up ahead!”

“And look! There’s the lake! Oh, Sooz, it’s gorgeous!” Chris, awestruck, dropped her suitcase in the road and ran to the edge, where she could get a better look. “I had no idea it would be so huge!”

It was true; Lake Majestic, seen from atop the hill they were on, was truly impressive. It was tremendous, much larger than Chris had ever imagined. Its crystal-clear blue surface was illuminated by bursts of sunlight, caught on the gentle waves created by light breezes. Far in the distance, small groups of buildings dotted the shoreline.