Free Patiently Alice by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor Page B

did act like a dork at times, and if anybody could discourage him, it was Pamela.
    We got back to the table and saw that Phil and Sue were holding hands. And for the first time I noticed Sue wearing an engagement ring. They were our most senior counselors, next to Connie and Jack, and I wondered if they’d met here—if love had blossomed at Camp Overlook. I could see how it could happen.
    There was definitely something exciting about being away from home overnight, even for me, the Girl Who Wasn’t Looking for Romance. Just being up here in the mountains with six available guys around, I guess, gave me the feeling that maybe we’d go a little further than we ordinarily would.
    When we got back out on the floor for the second set, Ross was dancing between Pamela and Elizabeth, Gerald on the other side of Pamela. The dancing was even more vigorous this time, and I stumbled over my feet a lot. I felt as though everyone else was wearing tap shoes and I was wearing clogs. But when the number was over, Pamela suddenly threw her arms around Gerald’s neck and kissed him, a long hard kiss on the lips, like a dramatic flourish to the end of the dance.
    Gerald didn’t move away. He held his hands tentatively on Pamela’s waist, but he didn’t try to prolong the kiss, either. There was an embarrassed, fake smile on his face, and I think we all cringed when we realized that Gerald wasn’t enough of a dork not to know that this was a put-up job.
    What Pamela didn’t see, though, was that when she moved away from Ross on one side of her for that dramatic kiss with Gerald, Ross missed it entirely, because he had turned toward Elizabeth, lifted her hair up off the nape of her neck, and was gently blowing on her to cool her down.
    Hey, hey! I thought.
    Elizabeth looked absolutely radiant.
    It was a good night. For everyone but Gerald, I guess. On the way back to camp Richard and Craig taught us a bawdy song the counselors had made up one year, sung to the tune of “Oh, Susannah.”
     
    Oh, she came from south of Overlook,
    A virgin tried and true,
    She’d saved herself for Billy Boy,
    Back in Timbuktu.
     
    But Billy Boy was feeling sad,
    And found himself a sheep,
    The virgin up in Overlook,
    Cried herself to sleep.
     
    Oh, Susannah,
    Oh, don’t you cry no more,
    The fellas up in Overlook
    Will even up the score.
    We laughed, and even in the dark of the van I could see the puzzled look on Elizabeth’s face and wondered if I’d have to explain it to her later.
    “Too bad we don’t have any sheep up here,” said Joe.
    “Yeah,” said Ross. “Even a motherly goat would do.”
    “A chicken, even,” said Andy.
    “A chicken ?” the guys all said, and we laughed.
    Elizabeth gave me a questioning look.
    “Don’t ask,” I whispered.
    The minibus came out of the woods on an open stretch, and Phil suddenly pulled over to the side of the road. “Look at the stars!” he said.
    We all piled out. For five or six minutes we stood leaning against the bus, looking up, Sue leaning back against Phil, his arms around her.
    “This is where we should come in August when the Perseid meteor shower comes along,” said Sue. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a sky so bright. There must not be any cloud cover at all.”
    I don’t know what made me say what I did or why I was the one to break the silence then, but I heard myself saying, “I wonder if Dad and Sylvia are looking at these stars.”
    There was another moment of silence, and then Andy said, “Who?”
    “My dad’s getting married next month,” I said.
    “Ah!” said Phil.
    “To her seventh-grade English teacher,” Elizabeth explained. “They’ve been an item for several years, and it’s been quite a romance. With a little help from Alice.”
    Then I had to tell them about how I’d invited Sylvia Summers to the Messiah Sing-Along without Dad knowing and how he’d won her away from our vice principal, Jim Sorringer, by writing such wonderful love letters when she