Summer Secrets.

Cherri Red Book 1.

JT Harding.

Chapter 1.

I sat on a rock blasted from the hillside pretending to play with my camera while I studied the blonde girl sitting across from me. She hunched over, knees pressed together to catch peel from a bright red apple, shavings curling to collect in her lap. The girl wore a short chiffon skirt, dusty blue with small red flowers, and a dark pink tank top. The straps of her top crossed and re-crossed the red straps of her bra, chasing each other to her shoulders. Her focus captivated me, her eyebrows pulled together, mouth pursed. The small penknife curled waxy red peel from the apple. The more she cut the more she wanted to finish without any breaking.

In the final stage she slowed right down. Her tongue appeared at the corner of her mouth, stripping five years from her age. All around us another sixty-odd eighteen year olds milled and chattered, but this girl and I were encased in a cocoon of silence. Might as well have been only the two of us on the side of this dusty road. The girl disturbed me, triggering emotions I wouldn't understand until much later that summer.

The last sliver of peel fell away and her pretty mouth lifted into a grin showing white teeth, pink tongue sliding back inside as she glanced up to catch me staring and my face warmed. The girl's grin broadened. She sliced a curve of apple and held it out.

"Want some?"

I shook my head. "After so much effort you deserve it all."

"Tell the truth I'm not so hungry. I'm just trying to take my mind of needing to pee." She laughed and withdrew the offered slice, popped it in her mouth and chewed. She cut another piece and this time I accepted.

"Me too," I said.

"You need to pee?" Delighted, as though I'd deliberately planned this and the three cokes before we left Bakersfield had nothing to do with the pressure on my bladder.

"For the last hour," I said.

"I'm going through the woods."

"Me too."

"I'm Cherriawith an i and two r's."

"I'm Dani. Also with an i but only one n. Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise. D'you think they're ever gonna stop gassing and start walking, 'cause if they don't I'm gonna have to pull my panties down right here and let rip."

I giggled and ate the piece of apple, firm and sweet in my mouth, the taste making me think of the apple taste on Cherri's lips as she chewed another slice. That thought, forming sudden and complete in my head, confused me. I looked past Cherri's shoulder searching for distraction. The camp owner and his wife, talking together as they had for the last ten minutes, didn't seem any closer to a decision. Two buses were pulled up on the road, one with a flat and no spare, the second with a spare, but the spare was flat, and the bus couldn't get past the first on the narrow dirt track. According to the man we were three miles from Pinecrest Lake. Their discussion was about whether to walk us all down the road together, or if the man might take a group of us along a trail through the woods which would cut out two miles, but meant climbing a ridge between here and camp. I hoped he was taking us along the trail, for the same reason as Cherri with an i. I needed to pee so bad my eyes were starting to float out their sockets.

Cherri cut another piece of apple and waved it to attract my attention. I reached over and took it, bit into a corner.

"What you going to be doing here, Dani?"

"Photography," I said. Obvious, I guess. A battered Nikon F2 hung around my neck, and I wore a fisherman's vest with pockets full of spare film, light meters and two extra lenses.

"Yeah? Who'd have thought. Fuck, I'm gonna bust if they don't get their act together soon."

"What about you? What're you doing here?"

"Music. My guitar's on the bus."

I nodded, finding it easy to picture her as a musician, standing on stage wowing a crowd. She was short, not much more than five feet with honey-blonde hair cut to her chin, curling in the breeze coming up the valley, catching the almost noon sun and flashing white. Her eyes were bright blue, brighter than the sky. The filmy skirt was cut short and showed a whole lot of exquisite thigh and leg all the way down to neat sandals. Her tank top hugged her small breasts and I had to stop thinking about her breasts, about the rest of her too. I didn't know what was happening. I'd never had thoughts about another girl the way I was having thoughts about this Cherri Red.

"You any good?" She interrupted my thoughts, confusing me for a moment.

"With this?" I lifted the Nikon.

She nodded.

"I think so."

She nodded again. "Me too. Singing, that is. You go to college to study pictures?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. In the fall. I graduated high school a week ago."

"Me too. I thought you were older. Thought you must be in college already."

I wasn't sure how to take that, still young enough to be flattered she thought me more mature than my eighteen years, old enough to worry I might be starting to age. I wondered how I must appear to her. Too tall, too skinny, dressed in gray combat pants and cotton shirt and the fishing vest, dusty hiking boots, long black hair tied back in a ponytail. I wasn't beautiful like Cherri, and the thought comforted me. She was going to be chased by all the guys and I wouldn't need to worry about this stupid crush I'd developed out of nowhere.

Behind her the conversation was resolving toward a decision. Mr. Simmonsacall me Jeffawaved his arms in the air.

"Okay, okayaeverybody listen up. Chrissy will take those who want to go with her along the road. I'm cutting across the ridge. Anyone who hasn't got suitable footwear or is worried about a small climb can go with Chrissy. Anyone who wants to experience real country follow me." He grinned and turned away, not waiting to check how the groups split.

I glanced at Cherri. "You ready?"

"And willing." She rose from her rocky bench and cut another slice of apple, cut a second and handed it to me and I accepted, my fingers sticky from the juice of the earlier piece. We walked across the road and into the woods where a wide trail twisted through trees. Off to one side tall sequoia rose high, but here the trail cut through Douglas fir and Ponderosa pine. Even as I identified the species I experienced a touch of guilt at recognizing them. I blamed my Dad, always pointing stuff out, always asking did I remember what this was called, what that was, difficult to blame him for anything too much because he'd made me who I was, and I liked myself well enough to be grateful.

Cherri put her hand on my arm and held me back.

"Let aem get ahead, Dani. I need to swing off and empty my bladder before it empties itself."

I laughed, lifting my hand to muffle the noise. "Good idea. I don't think I've ever felt so much like I'm about to explode."

She rolled her eyes as we slowed, allowing the other thirty or so kids in our group to draw ahead. As soon as they rounded a turn in the trail we stopped. Cherri looked to the right, me to the left, searching for some spot where we could slip aside and cut loose.

"How 'bout here?" Cherri stopped and pointed to a small clearing in the pines.

I glanced back, forward. "What if somebody comes along."

"If we go here, yeah. But a kind of smaller track goes up the far side. We'll be out of sight. Come on."

We turned and strode up the track, narrow, overgrown, barely a track at all. I pushed past Cherri and kept moving up the slope. A good spot appeared behind a boulder that had broken loose and tumbled down the hillside. I turned off the path and practically ran to the side of the rock.

Cherri was still with me. I stopped.

"I'm gonna pee here," I said.

"Sure. This is a good spot. I thought I'd pee here too. You don't mind, do you?"

"Uh... I guess not."

She laughed. "Come on, ain't like I've got anything you haven't seen before." She stepped around me, turned away and squatted. She lifted her short chiffon skirt with the pretty red floral print and pulled her panties down to her knees. She obviously needed to pee as bad as me because the stream that emerged was violent. The sound of splash-ing made my bladder start letting go and I had no choice. Frantically I unzipped my cargo pants, pulled my panties down and squatted. Relief flooded my body while urine flooded the ground between my hiking boots.

In front of me Cherri finished. She tugged at a handful of grass to wipe herself.

"I hope this isn't poison fuckin' ivy."

I laughed, relaxed now as my own stream continued. I could have set her mind at rest, knowing what poison ivy looked like, but it was too weird to carry out a conversation while squatting the way I was. I seemed to have been peeing for minutes. Cherri pulled her panties up and stood, letting her short skirt fall back to cover herself. As she turned I became aware how I was squatting in front of her, still loudly peeing. Cherri turned away, casual, as if she'd seen the sight a million times before.

Finally my stream became a trickle and stopped. I grabbed a handful of leaves and wiped, pulled myself together.

Cherri turned back when she heard me zipping.

"Well," she said, "I guess we've been introduced now. I'm Cherri Red, but you know that." She held her hand out and I stared at her fingers. She laughed. "Oops. Maybe we'll leave the introductions till later."

"I'm Dani Walker," I said. We started back down the track. "Is your name really Cherri?" I glanced at her, glancing down because she was at least six inches shorter than me.

"Cheryl Redmond. That's the name my folks gave me, but I prefer Cherri Red."

"As in the fruit."

"You got it." She looked me up and down. "I guess you being a photographer explains the weird clothes."

Weird clothes? "They're practical."

"That's what I said. You're pretty, Dani, but you don't make much of yourself, do you?"

Right then Cherri confused me. As the summer went on I grew to realize she was incapable of holding back even the smallest emotion or thought, but this early I found her openness a little shocking.

I had no idea what to say, fumbled around and finally managed, "You're pretty. I'm just ordinary."

She laughed, delighted. "I am pretty fuckin' hot, ain't I? But so are you. Wear something short and sexy and you'd be a knockout, babe. You're so tall, so elegant, and your hair..." She rolled her eyes and I laughed. I liked this Cherri Red. Not as much as I grew to like her later, but I liked her pretty fine from the start.

We reached the main track we seemed to have left an hour before and turned left. In reality we could only have been ten minutes, but now there was no sign of the others. We stood on the track and listened. Wind in the trees. Somewhere the sound of running water. Nothing else. No footsteps. No conversation. No shouts.

"D'you think this track goes all the way to camp?" Cherri asked.

"Dunno. I guess."

"We could go back to the road, try and catch up with the others."

"It must go to camp," I said.

"Yeah. Surely does." She went ahead. I watched her short skirt swing from side to side, the way her slim legs covered the ground. As we walked Cherri passed through occasional beams of sunlight which caught her honey-blonde hair. It seemed hotter in the woods than a moment before. I lifted the battered Nikon, released the lens cap and fired off three fast shots.

Cherri heard the shutter and turned, saw me with the camera raised. She grinned and I caught two more shots. Then she pushed her leg out and posed and I got three more and she laughed.

"Is there any film in that thing?"

"Sure." I wound on ready for the next shot, replaced the lens cap. The camera swung between my boobs as I caught up with her. My fisherman's vest chinked and tinkled with spare cans of film, two light meters, one pocket weighed down by a 200mm lens, another by a 35. The camera itself carried an 85mm lens, my favorite length, ideal for portraits and candid shots. I knew all about cameras, had known about them since I could walk.

Cherri waited for me to pass and I glanced back.

She waved me on and I frowned.

"Go on. I want to stare at your ass now."

The way my mouth dropped open made her laugh wildly, the sound filling the forest and echoing back from a bluff.

Chapter 2.

Ten minutes more walking and the path started getting seriously steep. We stopped, hands on knees as we caught our breath. Cherri leaned forward, the front of her blouse opening to reveal her red bra. She had small, neat breasts, not at all like mine, and I envied her their firmness.

"I can still hear that stream," Cherri said.

"Uh-huh."

"Isn't the camp on a lake?"

I nodded.

"And water runs downhill."

"Last time I looked."

"Come on then." She turned and stepped off the trail, pushing through ferns.

"Cherri!"

She stopped. "What?"

"D'you have any idea where you're going?"

"Sure. Saving us some serious sweat. Come on, sweet buns, stream's this way."