It had been several days since Jack, Vixen, Alan, and Summer had been to the little pond out in the forest. In fact, they hadn’t seen much of each other since the trial run of the still unnamed role playing game back on Monday, but that morning Vixen called Summer and suggested the four of them get together. The nice days of summer were going fast, and all too soon it was going to be too cool to lie around in the sun out there in nothing but their bikinis, or even less.

“Fine with me,” Summer replied to Vixen’s statement. “Let’s make a day out of it, too. You think Lyle and Ashley would want to come along?”

“Only if we leave early,” Vixen said. “Jack said that Howie told him Lyle did real well at football practice last night, so it looks like he’s going to stay with it for a while. Apparently Lyle is going to get together with one of the coaches this afternoon for some special practice. I don’t know what that’s all about.”

“Will wonders never cease?” Summer mused. “I mean, who would have thought that we’d ever see Lyle Angarrack playing football?”

“No fooling,” Vixen sighed. “Anyway, Jack and I did lunch last time and you guys did supper. Want to switch it around this time?”

“Sure, sounds good to me. Alan and I’ll have to make a run to the Super Market to get some stuff. Why don’t the two of you meet us here with the Jeep in an hour or so?”

There was some hustling around to be done – neither of the girls had informed the guys of the program for the afternoon. Since they’d had Lyle and Ashley with them the last time they’d been at the pond there hadn’t been any skinny dipping; it was clear it was going to be happening this time, so it didn’t take a lot of selling.

In little more than an hour the four of them were in the Jeep on their way to the pond. As always there wasn’t a lot of talking during the first part of the trip, since there was too much road noise on the highway in the open Jeep, but once they got on the nameless woods roads conversation picked up. “So,” Jack asked, “what have the two of you been doing?”

“Working on the game some,” Alan reported. “Making some progress, I think. We managed to identify some problems with our test session Monday, and it’s making us rethink what we’re doing about some areas. More and more it looks like a major rewrite.”

“I really don’t know much about it,” Jack said as he swerved to avoid hitting a rabbit, “but it seems to me like if you have to do a major rewrite, it ought to be now, rather than after you’ve got a whole lot of work done.”

“Yeah, we figured that out, I think,” Summer sighed. “It’s looking more and more like this is turning into a major project that’s going to take half the winter. So what have the two of you been up to?”

“Still tracking that eagle’s nest,” Jack said. “Early yesterday morning we went out to where the railroad crosses 919 and hiked up the tracks a ways to where we thought we might be able to see the nest. We climbed a small hill a couple miles in and got a glimpse of it another mile or two off, but we didn’t see any activity. At least we know where it is, now.”

“I’m surprised you just didn’t drive up the tracks,” Summer commented.

“Oh, hell no, no way,” Jack said. “And I’m damn glad we didn’t. We had two trains go past while we were hiking back there. That could have been a real pain in more ways than one.”

“I’ll tell you what was bad, and that was hiking back out again,” Vixen shook her head. “Crap, in this heat we were both so pooped I thought we were going to die. As soon as we got back to the Jeep we drove down to the Turtle Bay boat launch and jumped in the lake, clothes and all. God, that felt good!”

“So what’s the plan?” Alan asked out of mild curiosity – he really wasn’t that interested. “Hike in up the rail grade again when it gets cooler and bushwhack your way in on foot?”

“It may come to that,” Jack said. “I sure as hell don’t want to try it in this heat. After we got cooled off, we spent most of the afternoon with the aerial photos trying to figure a way to bushwhack a way in from the north in the Jeep, but we’re not quite ready to attempt it just yet. The hell of it is that I figure that there’s only about a fifty-fifty chance that the freaking eagles will even be there at all this year, so there’s no point in sweating it too much. The fall migration will be starting pretty soon, so that’ll make life a little more interesting. We’re still talking about making a run over to Seney National Wildlife Refuge along toward the middle of next month, that should be a ball.”

“We’re going to try to do it as an overnight,” Vixen added. “That way we could get on over to Whitefish Point and catch some of the activity there.”

“An overnight?” Summer perked up her ears. “You think your folks are going to let you do that?”

“Well, we hope so,” Jack said. “It’d be a lot easier if you guys were able to go with us. It might make the folks a little less suspicious if it was the four of us. You know, kind of chaperoning each other.”

“We’ve talked camping and talked getting a motel,” Vixen smiled. “We could have a guys’ tent and a girls’ tent, or a guys’ room and a girls’ room if we wanted.”

There was a subtle hint in Vixen’s last words that made it clear that the option of splitting up the other way was a possibility – well, more than a possibility. Summer thought that while she and Alan had been getting a little physical and seemed likely to be getting more physical sooner or later, things hadn’t quite gotten that far yet. She didn’t think Jack and Vixen had either, but it seemed likely that it wasn’t going to be far off in the future – like, say, about the middle of next month. “It’s something to think about,” she admitted, flashing a sexy grin at Alan.

Alan seemed to have caught the possibilities in Vixen’s words as well. He shot a big grin back at Summer and said slowly, “I’m not all that big on camping, and by the middle of next month it could be getting real cool at night. I’d say a motel if we do get to go.”

“Oh, camping would be all right if it was just camping,” Vixen replied with another grin, making her real intentions just as clear as could be.

“All we can do is ask,” Summer laughed, amused at the amount of unspoken messages in the conversation. “We’ve got some time to work it out.”

Before too much longer the four were headed down the faint but familiar two-rut to the pond. As always, Jack parked the Jeep in the shade back away from the shore, and they quickly piled out. “I don’t know about anyone else,” Alan said, “but I’m about ready for a swim to wash off the road dust.”

“Yeah, might as well get wet,” Jack agreed. “As hot as it is, it’s going to feel good.”

“No wet swimsuits, right Summer?” Vixen smiled.

“Of course not,” the little blonde laughed, already stripped to the waist as she said it. “God, you know, I hated having to change clothes in the locker room for phys. ed. but when I’m with you guys out here I’d rather not have clothes on in the first place. Go figure.”

“No figuring about it,” Vixen replied with a laugh. “We’re among friends who don’t have anything to hide from each other, so why should we hide our bodies?”

Soon, the four were all in the water, nude, splashing and swimming and having fun – but Summer had a nagging little problem in her mind. Maybe they were the best of friends, but she and Alan had been keeping a secret from Jack and Vixen, a big and potentially dangerous secret. While working with Alan the last couple days it had come up for discussion more than once, and after Vixen’s words Summer felt even guiltier about keeping the secret than ever.

It was still hanging on her when the four of them got out of the water and headed up to shore to dry off, although she’d had no chance to talk to Alan about it. As Summer dried off, she watched Vixen pull on an extremely skimpy and thin red thong bikini that would get her arrested in a minute if she tried to wear it on the beach downtown. “Now, that’s a bikini,” Summer shook her head. “What it does cover, it doesn’t cover very well. I wish I had something like that I could wear for Alan.”

“I thought Jack might like it,” Vixen grinned and held up a plastic package. “I got it online, and they had a sale with a second one for a dollar. Would you like to try on the other one?”

Realizing that she wasn’t going to say no, Summer just grinned and held out her hand to take the package. There really wasn’t much to the thin white bikini – she had underwear that was heavier and covered much more – and she felt really exposed wearing it. “God,” Summer said once she had it tied on, “I honestly feel more naked than if I was naked.”

“If it’s any help,” Jack laughed, “you don’t look quite as naked as if you were naked, but both of you look sexier than when you’re naked. Vixen, you look so sexy it makes me want to take that right back off you.”

“Not now, lover boy,” she said. “Let’s see what Summer and Alan brought for lunch.”

“The hell with lunch,” Jack laughed. “You look good enough to eat.”

In spite of Jack’s protests, they were soon spread out on an old blanket, digging into a cooler. Summer was still feeling that nagging guilt, but she hadn’t had a chance to say anything about it to Alan. Again, sitting around so exposed by the alleged swimsuit she was wearing just brought home to her that she was keeping something covered up from her friends. It was something that she’d hidden all her life, except from Alan, and now she was more ashamed about that than she was about how she was dressed.

That was going through her mind all the time they just sat and casually talked about one thing and another. The four of them hadn’t been together as a group since lightning in the form of Mrs. Wine had struck the football team on Tuesday. Of course they had to dissect that, commenting about how they didn’t feel sorry in the slightest for the kids who had been booted from the team.

“The only downside to the whole deal,” Jack commented, “is now it looks like Howie is going to be the starting quarterback.”

“So, assuming he likes to play football, what’s wrong with that?” Alan said around a bite of potato salad, “especially now that most of the jerks are off of the team.”

“It means that I have to go to the games,” Jack sighed. “Hell, I can’t think of a worse way to louse up a Friday night during migration season. I’m going to be sitting up there in the stands, watching a game I have no interest in whatsoever, and thinking about all the birds I’m missing.”

“And if Jack goes, I guess it means I have to go, too,” Vixen added. “Well, I can think of a worse thing to do than to go to a football game with my boyfriend. At least it makes it clear to people that I really have a boyfriend.”

“Well, when you put it that way, it has a certain appeal,” Alan nodded, noting Summer’s relative silence in the last few minutes. “Maybe Summer and I will go with you some time, just to show you some moral support and advertise that I have a girlfriend.”

“Hey, I about have to go to the games, too,” Summer grinned. “I’ve been able to get out of going to most of the JV games with my sister Autumn being a cheerleader, but now that she’s a varsity cheerleader I may not be as lucky.” She smiled at Alan and added, “But I’ll admit, it would be nice to show off that I have a boyfriend.”

The four of them teased each other along that line for a while before Summer decided that it would be a good time to change the subject. “So has anyone besides me looked at the Southern Michigan University web site?”

It turned out that all of them had. “I’ll have to admit,” Jack said, “that the program looks pretty good for what I want to accomplish. They have a really solid biology program with a concentration in wildlife biology, and that would get Vixen and me close enough to what we want to do to get us there.”

“The only question,” Vixen sighed, is the money. I just don’t know where I’m going to come up with bucks like that. As far as I’m concerned I still need to be looking at community colleges.”

“And I’m roughly in the same boat,” Jack reported, “but we haven’t even started to make an application for a Clark Foundation grant. That may make the difference for us.”

“Well,” Summer sighed, “it turns out I’m not in quite as bad a shape as I thought I was going to be, since my grandmother is going to help me out. Southern Michigan is still a possibility for me, but it’s going to be a reach.”

“Maybe not,” Jack pointed out. “From what Cody and Jan said, as a nurse you might have a better shot at a Clark Foundation grant than Vixen or I do.”

“Well, I guess all we can do is make applications and wait and see,” Vixen shook her head. “I still like the idea of the four of us all going to school together some place, and Southern really seems like a fit, but if it’s not going to be, it’s not going to be.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “If we’re going to be someplace as far away as Southern, it would be real nice to know we have some friends around. With the four of us being good friends, if we thought we could live on top of each other and share one apartment, it could be a pretty good cost saving.”

Oh, crap, Summer thought. Here we are at that point again. This has got to end, win or lose. “Alan,” she spoke up, “I think it’s time.”

“You know what I think about that,” he replied simply.

“Time for what?” Vixen asked.

“Time to tell you something,” Summer said. “Alan and I have been keeping something from you and it’s been wrong of us to do it. It might affect our being able to share an apartment, or even go to the same school.”

“We’ve been worried about telling you about it,” Alan added. “It’s not . . . well, we don’t think it’s bad, but even if you decide you can’t put up with it, we’d like you to not tell anyone about it. If it gets out, well, it probably wouldn’t be all that bad for me, but it could be tough on Summer and make things even worse for Autumn, considering the way the rumor mills work in this town.”

“You make this sound pretty bad,” Jack said gently. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

“Jack, Vixen,” Summer started. “We know that the two of you aren’t very religious . . .”

“I’m not,” Jack shook his head. “I’m not much for believing in things I can’t see and examine for myself. I believe in the cycles of nature, in the survival of the fittest. I’ll admit to some curiosity, but I can’t believe in the hand of God watching every sparrow’s fall. Nature doesn’t work that way.”

“I’m pretty much the same way,” Vixen said. “Mom tried to shove religion down my throat and it didn’t work. That taught me to make up my own mind about things. Are you telling us that you two are secretly religious, or something?”

“Well, yes,” Summer admitted. “We’re Wiccan. Both of us.”

“Doesn’t surprise me, I guess,” Jack said. “Summer, I always thought there was something strange going on with you, but I guess I’m surprised to hear it about Alan.”

“We’re both pretty serious about it,” Alan said. “I know it surprises some people to hear it about me, but it’s a tradition that goes back in my family for at least hundreds of years.”

“Possibly thousands,” Summer added. “The trail gets real faint when you get back that far, but in general our beliefs go back at least as far as the Romans. I should point out that Alan’s family tradition and mine are not the same. Well, we mostly share the same beliefs, but the traditions that have passed down through the families are pretty different – about the difference that you’d have, oh, between a Methodist and a Catholic.”

“Maybe not that much,” Alan disputed. “Maybe the difference between an Episcopalian and a Catholic, but that’s not important for right now. The big difference is that in Summer’s family it’s only passed down among the women, and the men aren’t involved. In fact they’re not even supposed to know about it.”

“Dad doesn’t know very much,” Summer told them. “I mean, he knows that Mom has some unorthodox beliefs on some things but doesn’t take them as being religious. I’m afraid some of the women in my family are going to be a little upset with me for taking up with Alan.”

“My family’s beliefs are a little more non-sexist,” Alan said, “although my folks aren’t believers, either of them. Most of what I know came from my grandmother. We’re going to try to make a long day of it Saturday to go down and see her.”

“Well, you believe what you believe, I guess,” Jack shrugged. “I can’t see that knowing about it changes how I feel about you guys. I mean, so long as you don’t practice bird sacrifice or something.”

“Oh, I believe in sacrificing a large turkey every Thanksgiving,” Alan grinned, “but that’s not religious, that’s just overeating.”

“Well, you know what I mean,” Jack grinned. “What do you think, Vixen?”

“Believe what you will,” Vixen said. “Just don’t try to force feed me with it. That would piss me off. I’ll have to admit, while I’m not interested in converting, I would be interested in knowing a little more about it sometime, if nothing other than to compare it to the stuff my mother tried to cram down my throat.”

“You would have to come to us,” Alan said, seemingly a little more ethereal than they had come to know him. “It has never been the practice of either of our families to reach out to others.”

“Never in my family, unless you’re a woman relative, usually a descendant,” Summer said. “We’ve spent too many centuries trying to keep it secret, which is why I’m having to pull away from my family a bit in order to join with Alan. So, anyway, you guys are all right with it?”

“As far as I can see,” Vixen said. “Like Jack said, knowing it doesn’t change how I feel about you guys, and we certainly shouldn’t let it get in the way of getting the most we can out of college. If the four of us can do it better than two of us, so much the better.”

Jeez, the heat is ridiculous, Coach Kulwicki thought as he walked out of the locker room a few hours later, but still well before it was time for practice. It just goes on and on, and it acts like it’s never going to end. That’s got to be hard on the kids, especially the ones who couldn’t be bothered to get into shape. Well, they’re paying for it now.

He could remember some hot summer training camps, agonizingly hot, and could remember some pros who couldn’t be bothered to get into shape before camp opened, either. At least they should have known what was expected of them, he thought, not that some of them did. These kids – well, some of them had never been taught that simple fact of life. That’s something they need to be lectured about whether this turns into another year or not.

Not much was happening yet, and he wanted to have a few words with his coaches while it was still quiet, and maybe with some of the kids who showed up early, too. If nothing else, maybe some of those might be just a bit more eager to learn to play right. He turned the corner around the stands to see an incongruous sight: back on about the forty yard line sat a lawn chair and a beach umbrella, currently unoccupied. I wonder what that’s all about, he thought as he walked closer. All of a sudden he realized that whatever it was all about, one of his problems seemed to be solved – a football player wearing nothing but shorts, cleats and shoulder pads took a snap from a coach who was acting like a center. The kid snagged the ball – it was a little high – and drilled a picture perfect punt downfield, clear into the end zone, not far behind the goal posts. Rick knew it was a hell of a punt for a high school kicker. Good God, someone found us a kicker, he thought.

“Ready for another, Lyle?” he heard Coach Evachevski call.

“A couple more, anyway,” he heard the kicker call back.

Good God, it was the Angarrack kid! Brandy had told him pretty forcefully the night before to not push him, and he hadn’t – mostly because he hadn’t had much time to work with him. There were too many other things to do, too many other kids who had needed attention, so he’d asked Evachevski to work with the kid to find out something about his skills. He’d made a mental note to talk later about what could be done with the kid, but there had been too much to do and he’d never gotten back to it.

“All right,” Coach Kulwicki heard Coach Evachevski call. “Try to get it left of the goal post this time.” He bent over, got into the center’s hike position, yelled, “Eenie! Meenie! Miney! Mo!” and snapped the ball, not too skillfully. It was easy to see that Evachevski hadn’t ever played center in his life, at least not this side of a grade school playground, since the ball went wide to the side. But Angarrack quickly moved a couple steps sideways, snagged the ball, wound up and gave it a hell of a kick. The ball went high, end-over-end, heading for the end zone about halfway between the goal post and the sideline.

Only as Kulwicki watched the ball come down did he realize it was going to get caught by a big, heavy-set girl wearing shorts and a bikini top – maybe a little too daring for a girl her size, but it was hot – and realized that it was Lyle’s girlfriend Ashley. She had a net bag half full of footballs sitting near the goal post, and once she smoothly managed her fair catch, she trotted easily over to the goal post and added the ball to the collection.

Kulwicki stood back and watched as the Angarrack kid punted a couple more balls. While he didn’t have a stop watch on the kid, he didn’t seem to be wasting time. If an offensive line gave him any time at all, he’d have plenty of time to get a punt off. “OK, Lyle,” Evachevski called. “Good enough for now. Take five. I’m out of balls, anyway. You doing all right?”

“Fine so far,” Lyle said, and walked slowly over to the lawn chair and the shade provided by the umbrella. Evachevski took his own time walking over to him, while Ashley started up the field with the bag of balls over her shoulder. Kulwicki decided it was time to get closer himself.

“You were getting them out there pretty good that time,” Evachevski said. “The next series, let’s try for a little more range. Try to get them out of the end zone this time. That’ll save the trouble of setting up again.”

“OK, I can do that,” the kid said. “It was a little hard to hold it down.”

By that time Kulwicki was up to the lawn chair, where the Angarrack kid was sprawled. In spite of the heat, the kid wasn’t sweating, and didn’t appear to be breathing hard, either. Well, not surprising, Kulwicki though – at that rate he probably hasn’t done twenty seconds of actual exercise in the last five minutes. “Looking good, kid,” Kulwicki said. “You were getting them out there real nice.”

“Yeah, it was time to be taking a breather, though,” the kid said phlegmatically. Once again, he didn’t seem all that enthused.

“Hi, coach,” Evachevski said as he walked up. “I’m beginning to think we might have turned up a punter.”

“Looks like it,” Kulwicki smiled. “Gonna need some practice, but he’s got the power. How’d you figure out he could kick?”

“I had him kick a few when we were messing around last night,” Evachevski reported. “I thought he had some potential, so we agreed to come out early this afternoon and try to work on it some. Ashley offered to come along and snag balls so we could work more efficiently.”

“You sure don’t seem to be wasting a lot of energy,” Kulwicki said. “You tried any kickoffs yet?”

“A few,” Lyle said. “I can do three or four and then I have to sit down, I can’t take the running that well. I have to keep myself from getting worked up. If I do, my heart works harder, and that means I have to breathe harder. There’s a limit to how far that can go.”

“Is that why you don’t get excited about anything?”

“Pretty much,” Lyle said. “I’ve had to train myself to not let myself get worked up too easily.”

Kulwicki turned to Evachevski. “How are the kickoffs looking?”

“Pretty good,” the furniture salesman turned part-time coach replied. “Like I said, we haven’t tried many of them but he’s getting them right down field.”

“You tried any field goals yet?”

“No, I thought I’d let Lyle get a little better at punts and kickoffs before we get into that. I wouldn’t be surprised if he does all right with them.”

“Get Mitch to work with him some,” Kulwick smiled, realizing that one problem had more or less been solved and some others seemed well on the way. Having a halfway reliable kicker with good distance on punts and kickoffs was a rarity in high school sports, he knew. If this kid worked out it would put a new twist on things. And if he could kick a field goal or an extra point halfway reliably – it would be a huge ace in the hole. “He probably doesn’t have any more experience kicking than you or I do, but he used to room with a kicker in college and he might have picked up something.”

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