Jack and Vixen had a thoroughly enjoyable morning doing as they intended without interruption, but they were up and working normally when Howie showed up for a fast lunch of a sandwich and leftovers. It turned out they’d had plenty of time, but figured it was better to be on the safe side rather than be sorry. It was something else they wouldn’t have to concern themselves with when they were at college.

The two of them had a fair amount to do. Both of them hoped they wouldn’t be around Spearfish Lake much anymore. Oh, they expected to be around for occasional holidays and the like, but they also hoped to find internship jobs in future summers, preferably something to do with bird studies. Failing that, they hoped to have good summer jobs, hopefully making more money than they could expect from sitting on their dead butts around home for three months like they’d mostly had to do this year.

Southern Michigan University was a reach for Jack and Vixen financially, and they had to cut corners where they could if they wanted to minimize student loans without having to ask their families for too much assistance. It was especially a reach for Jack, mostly because he was the first of two brothers who would be going to college, and he didn’t want to cause too much financial stress on his family. There was at least a long shot that Howie could get an athletic scholarship somewhere, but that wasn’t something to depend on.

Knowing that they were not likely to spend much more time in Spearfish Lake, both Jack and Vixen had decided the time had come to get rid of a lot of crap and clutter that had filled their rooms and overflowed into their attics and garages. In fact, they had been desultorily picking away at the project all summer, but now that the time for them to leave was coming they had to buckle down and get it done. They were packing the things they would need at Southern, but there was plenty they wouldn’t want there, and some of it probably never again. Some things – actually quite a pile – went into garbage bags and then down to the garage for future pickup, and there were a few other bags held back for next spring’s city-wide garage sale.

At the same time, along with Alan and Summer, they had to collect a few items for the apartment, which came minimally furnished. Especially dressers, along with a kitchen table and chairs, and computer work stations. Much of that was already sitting in the garage at Alan’s house, but they also needed things like dishes, pots and pans, cleaning supplies, and the like – a nearly endless list of small things Jack had hardly considered when the idea of renting an apartment together came up. They’d been thinking about that for a while, and the city-wide garage sale a couple months before had gone a long way toward filling in what couldn’t be contributed from the attics of their four families.

They tried to work at the project a little bit at a time, changing off between his house and hers. They weren’t done yet, but had hopes of being down to a suitcase each of summer clothes and odds and ends in another week or so, along with important things like computers and birding gear.

They knew that Southern Michigan University was very heavily wired and dependent on student computers – in fact, going to school there at all would be nearly impossible without plenty of computer familiarity and connectivity. Both Jack and Vixen planned on taking their older desktops, but they’d also done some shopping around and came up with new notebook computers online at a very good price. These would be vital for things like class notes, tests, and other class work; very little actual paper would be used. It seemed a little strange to be going from an environment where individual computers in the classroom were frowned upon to one where they would be required; it clearly was going to take some getting used to.

Jack was busy going through some old class notebooks looking for something that might be worth keeping and not finding very much when Vixen’s cell phone sounded its ring tone: a very distinctive whippoorwill call. It sounded pretty tinny and fake in the little speaker. Jack didn’t have a cell phone – it was a financial corner he figured he could cut. His parents had suggested once or twice that one would be handy in case the Jeep broke down when he was out messing around in the woods. However, Vixen always carried her cell phone, and that argument didn’t carry the weight it once would have – they were almost always together when Jack was out in the woods.

Vixen had to dig a little bit to get her cell phone, but soon punched the button to talk. After a minute, she spoke up and said, “Jack, it’s Summer. She and Alan have hit a pretty good stopping point in her room, and they’re wondering if we’d like to go out to the pond.”

“Rather than stay here and work?” Jack grinned. “I think I could manage that. There’s nothing here we can’t put down.”

“We’ll be there shortly,” Vixen told their friend.

Since a trip to the pond had been on the likely list of activities for the day, Vixen already had a bikini in her birding gear backpack. It didn’t take up much space in the backpack because at best it didn’t cover very much when she wore it. She got undressed and pulled it on while Jack got on some short swim trunks, then both pulled their outer clothes back on. The four friends had often spent a few hours on warm days out at their little pond, and usually didn’t bother with swimsuits at all, but there was always the chance they might find someone else there, though it hadn’t happened very often.

Within minutes they were in the Cherokee, with a small cooler of iced drinks in the back, heading across town to Summer’s house. It didn’t take long, since Spearfish Lake is not a large town. Alan and Summer were waiting for them, dressed similarly, and carrying towels. “So how’s it going?” Jack asked as the two piled into the back seat.

“Mom stuck her nose in this afternoon,” Summer shook her head. “She says she’s never seen my room so clean. I’ve thrown out crap that I haven’t used since grade school, maybe even before then.”

“I’m thinking we ought to call the city and tell them to put on an extra garbage truck next week,” Alan teased.

“Oh, come on,” Summer grinned. “It’s not that bad. I guess I just haven’t been very good about throwing stuff out.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Alan persisted. “I kind of liked that essay about Halloween you wrote in second grade.”

“I said I wasn’t very good about throwing stuff out,” Summer said in defense. “We’re going to have to do better at school. There isn’t going to be any extra space.”

“Right, we’ll have to hold things down,” Jack agreed. “And that means all of us. Which reminds me. If you two approve, we’re been asked to haul some stuff down to Southern for someone else.”

“What’s this?” Alan asked.

“I had a call from Nancy Halifax this morning,” Jack explained. “It turns out she’s going to Southern instead of Meriwether and wants to sneak out of town without Mary Lou Kempa finding out about it. She’ll pay the difference on gas and a larger trailer.”

“Are you sure?” Summer asked. “Mary Lou was all over the school last spring about how the two of them were going to Meriwether.”

“Apparently not,” Jack said. “Nancy didn’t go into any detail, but it appears that Mary Lou was about as full of shit as usual.”

“Wow,” Summer shook her head. “The gossip in me sure would like to know more about that.”

“She didn’t say much more than that, except that Mary Lou was being a pain in the ass,” Jack replied. No discussion was needed after that. Nancy had been suspected, at least by the school gossips, of being a lesbian for years. After the fracas with the football team last summer and Mary Lou’s broken jaw being the cause of her being booted off or quitting the cheerleading squad – stories differed – a lot of the old cheerleaders and old football team members had fallen to squabbling, name calling and resentment over who was or was not at fault for the whole mess, or some major or minor part of it. Somehow out of all that, Mary Lou and Nancy had become friends, or at least lunchroom buddies.

Some of the gossips – and of the four present, Summer was the most plugged into the school gossip circuits – contended that the two were doing a lot more than just talking about football in the lunchroom. Though neither of them actually came out and admitted it, it eventually became pretty clear that the two were trying each other on for size, and that Mary Lou had become as much a lesbian as Nancy if not more so. The primaries weren’t talking and opinions differed over who pulled who into the arrangement. Since Nancy was a quiet, plain sort of girl who went out of her way to not be noticed, and Mary Lou was a loud, arrogant drama queen – though a damned good-looking one – who liked to have things her own way, the general opinion was that she had been the instigator.

That opinion got firmed up when Mary Lou announced that she and Nancy were going to Meriwether College and be roomies there. Although there had been a lot of speculation, no one seemed to know what happened after that, except that Nancy and Mary Lou hadn’t been seen together any more until graduation, when Mary Lou had rather publicly begged Nancy to come with her. The consensus of opinion was that the real drama-queen scene had changed Nancy’s mind, although no one had heard anything for sure and Nancy hadn’t been seen around town all summer.

“It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Mary Lou when she gets down to Meriwether,” Alan grinned. “Since Lyle and Ashley are going there and Ashley may be the town’s most serious gossip, I’ll bet we find out, too.” Lyle Angarrack and Ashley Keilhorn were friends of the four, and had on occasion joined them out at the pond. Lyle, who was huge but had severe exercise induced asthma, had been one of the guys who had come out to help the new football team after the old football team had gotten the boot the year before. His skills as a kicker had been rewarded with a half-ride athletic scholarship to Meriwether; when that offer had come down it had quickly settled where Ashley was going to college.

“Sounds like a pretty serious lover’s quarrel,” Summer shook her head. “This is the first I’ve heard anything about Nancy since graduation.”

“All I know is that Nancy pretty much said she was going to Southern, and had no intention of going to Meriwether, no matter what Mary Lou thinks,” Jack told her. “She also asked me to keep this real quiet since she’d like to get out of town without Mary Lou creating another scene.”

“Sounds to me like Mary Lou got dumped and isn’t willing to accept it,” Alan surmised.

“I can’t blame Nancy for not wanting to have anything to do with that bitch anymore,” Vixen said. “My only question is why she would have wanted to get mixed up with her in the first place. Mary Lou was always an asshole, but she’s even worse now that she’s a lesbian asshole, and there’s no doubt about the lesbian part, now.”

“Come on, Vixen, tell us what you really think,” Alan laughed. “Though it wasn’t one of the happier evenings of my life, I have to admit that watching you slam Mary Lou’s jaw into your knee was one of the more rewarding events I’ve ever witnessed.”

“She attacked me, and I defended myself!” Vixen said hotly. Although things had worked out very well, it was not one of her prouder moments. “Can I help it if I’ve watched too much TV wrestling with my Dad? Anyway, I told Jack I have no problems with us helping Nancy get out of town, especially if Mary Lou winds up with more egg on her face.”

“I have to admit it would be better than a knee in the face,” Summer smiled. She was the only one of the four who hadn’t been present at that memorable incident. “I guess I don’t have any problems with it. Nancy has always been like us, one of the outcasts from the popular crowd, and we have to stick together when we can.”

“I’d say do it,” Alan agreed. “I’m not exactly Mary Lou’s biggest fan either. Even though the old cheerleading and football team doesn’t count for squat any more, I sure am going to be happy to be leaving them behind me. I just want Summer and me out of town and away from all the gossip. I’m tired of covering things up.”

“I am too,” Summer added. “Goddess knows I’m tired of it. I just want to be where we can be ourselves.”

Jack glanced over at Vixen, who nodded back, the message passing between them without any need for words. They didn’t need to say anything, but they knew that Summer had just touched on their biggest concern about the four of them living together at Southern.

When the idea of the four of them sharing an apartment had come up last fall, Alan and Summer had been generally in favor of the idea but a little reluctant to actually agree to it. It took a while for the reason to come out, and it had been a surprising one to Jack and Vixen: Alan and Summer had admitted they were both pagans, and pretty serious about it. No one had ever had a hint about it, and Summer and Alan had been very reluctant to admit it to their friends. Nancy had been put down for years for being a lesbian, whether she had been one or not up until the previous winter. But no one, Jack and Vixen included, doubted that the vocal Christians around the school would have had a huge shit fit to discover that a couple of their classmates worshiped ancient pagan gods and goddesses.

In truth, Jack and Vixen hadn’t been very sure what to make of it themselves. When Summer and Alan rather bashfully admitted the truth, they’d decided their friendship had been more important than religious issues. Neither Jack nor Vixen was very religious at all in any sense of the word. Jack just didn’t care; Vixen’s mother had shoved Christianity down her throat as a little girl until she’d rebelled loudly and aggressively, so she was much more assertively anti-religious, or at least anti-Christian. Both Jack and Vixen had told their friends that it didn’t matter what they believed, and it was fine as long as Alan and Summer didn’t try to drag them into it. Alan and Summer told them they had no intention of it, but would welcome honest inquiry.

There it sat, at least officially. However, Jack and Vixen had some doubts – not about their friends, but that religion wouldn’t cause unneeded complications in their lives while at school. There was going to be enough to keep them busy. It wasn’t a deal breaker or a friendship breaker, but it was a concern.

Probably one of the things that made them uncomfortable with the whole idea was that being pagan seemed so unlikely for both Alan and Summer. Well, not Summer so much, although it was a bit of a reach; her mother had more than a little new-age feel to her. But Alan was the class valedictorian, very science oriented, and planned on studying theoretical math at Southern. He was already a math whiz, far beyond anything Jack or Vixen could ever have contemplated. But in the few details the pair had revealed of their beliefs, Alan seemed no less serious about it than Summer, and Jack and Vixen had no idea why.

Much of Alan’s and Summer’s time over the winter had been spent in developing a role-playing game they called Witches versus Inquisitors when anyone but their closest friends were around; only when they were with Jack and Vixen did they use what they considered its real name, Witches versus Christians. Since both Alan and Summer considered themselves to be witches, at least to some degree, it had been difficult to keep from slanting the game too far in the witches’ favor.

They’d been working to have the game ready and complete when they left for school. They’d had difficulty finding enough people who had any interest in role playing games to really give it a good test in Spearfish Lake, but they hoped to find at least a few people interested in the game at college. Jack suspected there was a little more to it than that; it might be that Alan and Summer thought they might turn up another pagan or two on campus.

Still, it was an issue that seemed like it could cause trouble somewhere down the line. Jack and Vixen had talked it over privately on several occasions, and had ultimately come to the tentative conclusion that considering the friendship involved, the advantages of the four of them sharing an apartment outweighed the disadvantages. Whether it would work out that way in practice, neither of them knew. About all they could do was to wait and see what would happen.

It was a fairly long drive out to the pond in the woods, about ten miles out of town, but much of it was on rough gravel and two-rut woods roads, so they couldn’t go fast. The last half mile to the little pond Jack had discovered while birding years before was a loose sand track that demanded four-wheel drive, which the Cherokee had, of course. The pond was not large, perhaps a quarter of a mile long by half that wide. It was shallow, which meant that this time of year it was considerably warmer than the big lake, which never warmed up to the point where it was comfortable to swim in it for very long.

The summer before, the four of them had gotten used to swimming nude with each other, at least out here at the pond. They weren’t always nude; sometimes the girls wore extremely tiny bikinis, mostly to tease their guys, and somehow their excuses for swimsuits made them seem more naked than if they didn’t have any clothes on at all. Not this time; the four of them went straight to skin just about as soon as they were out of the Cherokee and were soon splashing and carrying on in the warm waters of the pond.

It was very refreshing; while they hadn’t been working hard, coming out here was a special way to share their friendship, and it was something none of them looked forward to leaving behind when they left Spearfish Lake. They wouldn’t have anything like this at Southern, that was for sure.

Jack and Alan had agreed a time or two that it was a lot of fun to watch the girls naked in the water; they seemed to be their best and sexiest when wet. Buried deep in a Windows application folder on Jack’s desktop were some digital pictures of a nude Vixen taken out here on occasions when just the two of them had been here. While Vixen was admittedly no Mary Lou Kempa for being pretty, she could be striking if carefully posed, and she’d enjoyed seeing the results because it gave her some indication of how Jack viewed her.

Summer was fun to watch, too, and the two girls were built very differently; the blonde Summer had curves where Vixen mostly had tangents and angles. Once Summer had offered to let Jack take nude pictures of her, but he’d never taken her up on it, not wanting to give Alan any reason to object. He did think she would be interesting to get in front of a camera without any clothes on though.

After a while the swimming and splashing and horseplay started to pall, and they wound up on towels between the Cherokee and the pond, taking in a little sun in the nude and desultorily talking about their plans for the next few weeks. Eventually their discussion made it back to Nancy. “Hey, Jack,” Summer asked. “Do you have any idea if she’s going to stay in a dorm, or get an apartment, or where she’s living?”

“No idea,” Jack replied. “She said she had some furniture to send down with us, so I suspect she’s not going to be in a dorm.”

“Do you know what she’s planning on studying?”

“I know,” Alan smiled. “Nanotechnology. Lots of math, lots of physics, lots of engineering, all for little gadgets that are microscopic at their largest. I expect to be crossing tracks with her quite a bit.”

“I probably won’t,” Summer replied. “There probably won’t be much we’ll share, with me in the nursing program. I can’t help but wonder if maybe she’ll have trouble with Mary Lou.”

“It’s possible, I suppose,” Jack mused. “After all, Mary Lou is going to Meriwether College, and that’s only – what? – sixty or seventy miles from Southern. It’s not like they’ll be that far apart. I think Nancy wants Mary Lou faced with the reality that they’re not going to be together, but you have to wonder just how well Mary Lou is going to accept it.”

“It won’t go well,” Summer said thoughtfully. “Mary Lou, well, she wants what she wants and expects to get it. That’s the way she’s always been. It sure seems strange that she’d turn into a lesbian, after screwing most of the old football team.”

“That sort of says something about the old football team, doesn’t it?” Alan laughed. “I mean, they thought they were such cocks of the walk, and they were so bad their primary punch board turned lesbian.”

“I’ll bet a few of them wouldn’t think much of that if they could come up with an original thought at all,” Jack replied snidely. “It was sure nice to be around to see some of those jokers get theirs.”

“Yeah,” Alan smiled. “That did make last fall pretty interesting. But, you know, thinking about Mary Lou going to Meriwether makes me think that we ought to get in touch with Lyle and Ashley every now and then.”

“Yeah,” Summer grinned. “Just to be nice to Nancy, maybe we could ask them to keep an eye on Mary Lou for us.”

“Well, yeah, that too,” Alan agreed. “From what I know of Meriwether, it’s a pretty small place, half the size of Southern or less. Lyle and Ashley are probably going to trip over her every now and then. But I was thinking that maybe after we get the game going at Southern, we could talk them into coming down to join in some time.”

“It’s an idea,” Jack agreed. “In fact, it’s an idea both ways. Ashley is such a gossip she’s bound to pick up stuff about Mary Lou, and I’ll bet Nancy would like to have a little warning if there’s trouble coming. But yeah, it would be nice to see them sometime, and the game is a good excuse.”

“It might not be a bad idea to drop Ashley an e-mail or give her a call to let her know what’s going on with Mary Lou,” Vixen suggested. “She’d probably appreciate the heads up.”

“Could be,” Jack said. “But let’s not do it too soon. I think we’d better give Nancy time to get out of town first. Even if Ashley is at Meriwether, I’ll bet she’ll still be gossiping all over town.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Vixen agreed. “Mary Lou will throw a shit fit when she finds out about it, too. It might be fun to watch, but I’m just going to be glad I won’t be here to see it.”

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