THE FIRST TIME

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE - SUMMER HOLIDAY

"We're all goin' on a summer holiday

No more workin' for a week or two

Fun and laughter on our summer holiday

No more worries for me or you

For a week or two

We're goin' where the sun shines brightly

We're goin' where the sea is blue

We've seen it in the movies

Let's see if it's true"

CLIFF RICHARD AND THE SHADOWS (Single from 1963)

"You want to go camping? You can't actually be serious!"

Those sarcastically spoken words from Abby, while they were spacing out after work in Jen's room and watching "Ernest Goes to Camp" (Abby's all-time guilty pleasure movie, that they'd rented from the brand spanking new chain store, that had replaced "Screen Time") on her small TV, were what had set an avalanche rolling in Jen's brain, that once it got started, simply couldn't be stopped again.

Growing up in the biggest city on their entire continent and without having had any sort of wild nature anywhere around her, one thing that Jen had fallen love with almost instantly in Capeside was having it so close all the time, that it was like the scents of it followed her, everywhere she went. She could remember too how, when she was a kid, she would spend the first days after returning to New York dreaming herself back to those couple of weeks every year, that she would spend visiting her grandparents in what at that time, had felt like a veritable utopia to her younger and very impressionable self. Trying for once in her life what it's like to live right in the middle of nature, if only for a few days, therefore didn't seem as foreign to herself as it did to Abby, who flat out had refused to come along.

"Are you absolutely sure? This is your last chance to change your mind!" Jen cheerily asked her, while they were waiting for Jack, Andie and Eve to show up in Jack and Andie's mom's car, that they'd borrowed for the occasion.

"Do I want to be eaten up by untold thousands of hungry mosquitoes, while I have to go to the toilet into a hole in the ground and as an added bonus, have to worry about wild animals sneaking into the tent that I'm sleeping in, while I'm sleeping? As incredibly tempting as it sounds, I'll stay behind here where it's civilized and where I belong, Jen!" Abby answered in a way, where the sarcasm was almost dripping off every word, that came out of her mouth.

"Jack told me that there's a spray, you can spray on yourself, that makes the mosquitoes stay away from you and where we're going, there won't be any dangerous animals. At least, I don't think so" Jen tentatively answered, although she was around as unsure of that final part of her answer, as she could be.

"Trust me, you'll hate it, just like I did, when I was ten years old and my parents thought it would be a great way for me to make friends, seeing as I didn't have any, if I joined the girl scouts! Can you picture me out in the middle of nowhere, living practically like a completely clueless cavewoman and surrounded by a bunch of preppy, do-gooder girls, who all liked me even less, than I liked them? Believe me, it's a pretty accurate picture of how that went down!" Abby headshaking recounted, in a way that made it clear, how little she'd enjoyed the experience.

"Which is exactly why you should come with us, to erase those bad memories from the past and replace them with new ones, where you had a blast with your friends" Jen tried selling the idea one last time to Abby with, but her friend seemed immovable on the subject.

"Only when hell freezes over and even then, it would only be a reluctant maybe! Anyway, I already have plans with Melissa tonight, that I don't feel like missing out on, if you know what I mean?" Abby asked her with a small wink of the eye, that told Jen nearly everything, that she needed to know.

"And what are they, she asked not wanting too much graphic information, but still enough that she doesn't feel like she's being left entirely out of the loop?" she slyly asked Abby, who was already smiling with anticipation for what was to come later that day.

"Let's just say that Mellissa's parents, who should be leaving their home just about now, won't be home from their trip to Bangor for another two days and we've been planning for weeks on making the absolute most out of it! I've already told Grams that she shouldn't expect me to come to home until tomorrow evening, at the earliest" Abby grinningly shared and while it wasn't much in the way of information, it was still close to all that Jen needed to hear.

"Basically, an entire weekend spent naked together, is that what I'm hearing?"

"That's what it will be, if I have things my way! Am I detecting a hint of jealousy? After all, if you'd played your cards right, before I met Melissa ..."

"That's a job, I'm happy to leave in her, what I'm sure are very capable, hands!"

"Oh, they are very capable hands, alright! You're not in any way wrong there!" Abby just had time to (slightly dirtily) quip, before Jack and Andie's mom's car came into sight. Moments later, it pulled up to the side of the road, right in front of them, with the twins having occupied the front seats and leaving herself and her half-sister to share the backseat between them.

"Ready for a weekend of fun in the sun?" Andie cheerily asked her, even before she'd gotten the door closed.

"As ready, as I'll ever be!" Jen replied, while trying to sound as gleeful, as she could.

In reality though, some of the things that Abby had warned her about were still floating through her head, while they drove the ten or so miles to the campsite, that Pacey and Dawson had used to frequent, back when they were kids and would be her home for most of the next two days.

When Jen had presented the idea of going camping to Jack, it had felt like the perfect scenario, at that particular moment. Not only would it be a chance to get out into the nature surrounding them and explore it, but it would just as importantly be a very welcome break away from the depressing world, he called his home life.

Ever since his and Andie's mother had subjected them all to an evening of the likes of horrors, that no one would want to subject themselves to again, she'd been admitted to a mental hospital, located in the next town over and around thirty miles from their house. Every day, they (meaning himself and Andie every day and their dad on less than half of them) drove down there and every day, he left there hoping that it wouldn't be long, until they could bring their mom back home with them. However, even if he kept trying to tell himself that they were doing the right thing for her, by following her doctor's orders, the worst thing about visiting her was seeing how the light in her eyes was disappearing and for the first time, he was starting to seriously worry if it would ever return again.

Even Andie, who was the undisputed master of seeing the glass as half-full, wouldn't say more than a few words on their trips back from that utterly soul-sucking place and when they got home, it wasn't like it was all that much better. Their father, who had never been a man that found intimate talks with his family appealing, or an easy thing to deal with, was already burying himself in his new job and copying the exact same pattern, that he followed after Tim died, something that in essence left Jack to be the man of the house, while Andie was trying her hardest to fill in for their mom. All of this left their house feeling like an abstract picture, where one essential part in the middle was missing and until they got it back, this was what their lives looked like. Something, that made little sense to anyone, not even those who were living through it.

For this reason, too, Andie had been a bundle of joy for days afterwards, after he'd told her about their camping plans, leaving him no choice except to invite her along. Jen didn't mind this either, especially since it gave her a chance to introduce her long-lost half-sister to them, if we didn't count the few times where they'd had short conversations with her, down at the Ice House. Eve seemed like a perfectly nice girl to him too, even if he had a distinct feeling that she was mentally undressing him with her eyes, every time that she'd been given the chance to.

"Have you ever been to this spot, we'll be camping at?" Eve asked him, seemingly very innocently, while they were unloading the last of their camping gear from the car. With Jen and Andie already having walked ahead as pathfinders (and only carrying the bare minimum) it clearly left himself as the number one pack mule among them.

"No, but Pacey gave us a detailed description on how to get there and it didn't sound like it's hard to find" he casually replied to Jen's photo model pretty half-sister, who from what he could tell wasn't nearly as shy about her ability to carry things, as her two fellow girls on this little trip were.

"I haven't been camping, since I was your age. That sure was a fun weekend to remember!" Eve recollected with a small smile to herself, making him instantly a bit curious to find out why.

"Where was this?" he asked, not really because he cared, just out of sheer curiosity.

"Close to Lake Tahoe. I only went there with my three older brothers, because they kept teasing me that I couldn't hack it out in the wild. What they didn't know of course, was what kind of wild things were going on inside of my tent, after they'd fallen asleep!" Eve told him with a cheeky smile, that he found it hard not to return.

"I bet that those Lake Tahoe boys had no idea, what had hit them!" he jokingly replied, although it also had the adverse effect of making Eve look flirtingly back at him.

"Is that your adorably shy way of telling me, that you want to get it on with me, Jack?" Eve bluntly asked him, but before he'd shaken his shellshock off enough to answer her, she'd already burst out into a wide smile.

"Chill, Jack!" she reassured him. "In spite of what some ignorant people in my hometown think of me, I'm not some self-loathing slut, who'll drop my panties for the first guy that takes pity on me and no offense, but the last time that I hooked up with a sixteen-year-old was when I still was one" Eve explained, drawing a sigh of relief from himself. Having had one straight girl fall for him this year was bad enough, without adding another name to the list, after all.

"I'm not really into one-night stands either" he semi-lied to her, just to say something, although he'd only tried one of them (with a bubbly and cute girl named Mia, shortly before he'd become an item with Kate) and it had ended, practically before it had begun.

"There's nothing wrong with having a one-nighter once in a while, as long as you're both agreed beforehand on that being all, it's going to be. I mean, I'd never try to start a relationship up with someone like you, but I could easily pretend that you're eighteen for a few hours, if that's what I had to. It makes for some interesting food for thought, huh?" Eve rhetorically said, before she was on her way to following in the footsteps of Jen and Andie, that were easily visible from all of the high grass, they'd had to pass through.

"Not again!" was all that he annoyedly whispered to himself, before he followed after her. At a reasonable distance, it should be added.

If there was one thing that Jen would gladly admit to not being, it was a handy woman. For some odd reason, whenever a tool was placed in her hands, her natural reaction had always been to pass it onto someone else, who was hopefully better at using it, than she would have been. For this reason and since Jack was kind of a control freak, when it came to putting up their newly bought tents, she'd volunteered to gather firewood with Andie, who also happened to be "blessed" by being born without any sort of talent for masonry.

"Look!" Andie implored her, while she pointed out a chipmunk, who was busy trying to open up the nuts, that would no doubt make up its late lunch.

"We had chipmunks back home too; in case you didn't know. It is pretty adorable though; I won't deny that!" Jen had to concede, before spotting a small bonanza of usable firewood, only a few feet distance from where they were standing.

"Sorry, if I'm getting too excited over nothing, but I've been looking forward to this like it was my birthday and Christmas, rolled into one. Just being out here, where there's no pressure from anyone to succeed, and all you have to worry about is finding enough wood to yourself keep warm at night is kind of nice, you know?" Andie asked her, before wiping what little sweat there was from her brow.

"They don't call it the simple life for nothing! is that really how you feel, though? That there's a lot of pressure on you to succeed in life?"

"Right now, the things that I know are the only things, I can wrap my head around. School, my family, my friends and so on. I'm sure that Jack has told you what happened to our mom".

"He has, but in any great detail. Are you doing okay?" she concernedly asked from knowing that the last time things went this wrong in their little family, it ended with Andie being sent to the same kind of place, their mom was now calling her temporary home.

"I'm hanging in there, I guess" Andie quietly answered, although the tone in her voice said that this wasn't something, she was in the mood to talk about. "What's it like to all of a sudden have a sister of your own?"

"It's fair to say that we're both still getting used to it. Introducing Eve to her long-lost family members has been an experience that I'll never forget though, I won't deny that" Jen answered and wasn't lying either. She'd begun with introducing Eve to Grams, which as you would expect had been a heartwarming and tear-jerking affair, but it was when she'd introduced Eve to her biological father, who'd been just as ecstatic to meet his daughter, as she had been to finally meet him, that even Jen's own waterworks had been put into a state of overdrive. Now, Eve was even talking about moving in with her dear old dad; to begin to make up for all of that time, they'd already lost over the eighteen years where they'd been apart.

"There's something, you don't see every day!" Andie suddenly exclaimed, before pointing out yet another thing to Jen, probably the tenth time in the last two hours, that she had.

This time though, Jen had to admit that Andie was spot on, when she saw the most adorable little black bear cub, that she'd ever seen in her life, rummaging through the forest bed with its snout for food, only fifty yards or so from where they were standing. In truth, she'd only seen one other bear cub (at the zoo, when she was a kid) and she couldn't remember which type of bear it was, only that it had struck her as kind of depressed looking, a stark contrast to this one, that from the looks of it was in its perfect element and leading a pretty sweet life. If you're a bear cub, that is!

"Is it dangerous?" she quietly asked Andie, who was usually a fountain of information, when it came to things like knowing if a bear is interested in eating you or not.

"Not really. I mean, they are omnivores, meaning that they can eat just about anything and still pass it through their system, but I'm sure that if it came face to face with us, it would just become scared of us and run away. If we'd been a pair of tasty looking fish however, then we'd have to worry a whole lot more!" Andie joked and it was nice for Jen to hear that in spite of everything that had happened over the summer, it hadn't made Andie lose any of her dry wit, that was what Jen first found out that she liked about her.

"Let's not disturb it's life any more than we already have. After all, this is its home and we're only the guests here" she told Andie, who seemed to agree with her and seeing as they already had more than plenty, when it came to firewood for the next day or so, they made their way back to the campsite.

Jack had expected their camping trip to be a time to kick back and relax, while they took in the wonders of the wild and if he was lucky, he could even forget his troubles back home for a short while. Every hope of that had evaporated by the time it was becoming dark though, and Andie and Jen still hadn't returned yet. Even the usually almost "Too Cool for Comfort" Eve had stopped with her double-entendres and was starting to look worried, too.

"Do you think that we should go out looking for them?" she worriedly asked him, after they'd finished eating their roasted hotdogs on a stick for dinner, that he'd brought with him from home. With the only light source, apart from the rising moon, being the small fire that was also keeping them warm, it was a fair question and one, he'd been asking himself too.

"I have a flashlight in my backpack, so we could, if we wanted to. Only ..."

"What if we get lost out there too?" Eve finished his sentence for him.

"You had that thought too, huh?"

"We can't just sit here and do nothing, either. What if something has happened to them?" Eve asked concernedly and since it would have been worse to just sit around and wait in ignorance, they quickly put out their fire, before Jack found his flashlight and they made their way into the wilderness.

"I told you that we should have turned left back there! Now, we can't even see the road anymore!" Andie complained both whiningly and loudly, something that wasn't helping Jen with keeping a cool head in this unfortunate situation, they were finding themselves in.

"Chill, Andie! You're stressing me out even more, than I already was!" she replied to the shrill girl, who would surely soon start to seriously get on her nerves, if she didn't keep her always working trap shut for a minute or two!

"I should have stayed home, where it's warm and safe!" Andie complained, sounding like she was on the verge of tears. Perhaps this was why Jen decided that if one of them was going to take charge of this situation, it had to be her and not the one, who was on the verge of giving up already.

"Look, Andie" Jen began saying, as she grabbed a gentle hold of Andie's slender and frail hand. "We wouldn't have been out here, if it wasn't for me, so I'll get you back to Jack safely, okay? If I can survive on the mean streets of Manhattan at night, then this should be a walk in the park, right?" she tried to convince Andie (and herself, if she had to be honest), whom she could just see through the faint light of the moon was giving her a small nod of confidence, although small would probably have been the imperative word in that sentence.

One thing that Jen knew more or less, was which direction they had to walk in, to get back to their campsite, so what she tried to do was simply steer them that way and hope for the best. They had to step carefully of course, and she made sure to warn Andie well in advance, whenever there was something to look out for, seeing as the last thing they needed at this time was one of them breaking a foot or an ancle. It worked too, to her giant relief, only when they got back to their camp, there was no sign of either Jack or Eve, save for a note that one of them had left behind. Judging by the poor handwriting, she guessed that it was probably Jack.

"Have gone out to look for you. If you get here before us, don't do the same! We'll see you, when we see you. Our food is in the cooler box" Andie read aloud from the note, that looked like it had been scribbled in near darkness from the looks of it, after they'd gotten a small fire going, which could warm their lightly dressed for summer bodies up again.

"There you have it. All we can do is stay here and wait. Now, what's for dinner?" she asked Andie, and it wouldn't be many minutes later, before the two girls were preparing a small feast of cheaply bought junk food for themselves.

"Am I the first girl, you've slept with?" Eve cheekily asked him, as they made their way back to the small campsite, where his sister and his ex-girlfriend would hopefully be waiting for them. Prior to this had gone a night, where they (after having come to the realization that they too had become hopelessly lost in this area, they'd never been in before) had kept one another warm by embracing tightly, while they waited for the sun to rise, and it would be far easier to find their way back again.

"I don't know about you but sleeping sitting up against a tree isn't something, that I feel like trying again!" he answered her, in the most neutral way that he could, without divulging anything personal to this girl, whom he still only barely knew.

"You're so cute, when you try to sneak out of answering a personal question! You don't have to tell me, if you don't want to, I was just goofing around. Anyway, I'm sure that you have at least half of the single, sixteen-year-old girls in Capeside knocking down your door, to try to get a date with you?" Eve flirtingly asked him, in a way that did little to hide that she was starting to become sweet on him.

"Not really. I'm more of the "Find the right one and stick with them" type of guy, if you want the truth" he carefully replied, making sure not to hint at anything, that could give away his sexuality to someone, he had known long enough to trust them yet.

"Isn't that what we're all hoping to find someday? Of course, no one's saying that the looking for someone part can't be all sorts of fun too, are they?" Eve asked him, while he took a glance around at their surroundings, to see if any of it rang a bell with him. Not that it did, but it was still worth a try.

"Look, Eve. I'm not on the market for a girlfriend right now. It's a very long story, that it would take literally hours to fill you in on, but there are a lot of things going on in my homelife, that you wouldn't want to have happen in it, and before all of that is back in some kind of working order, it's better if I stay single. For now, at least" he began trying to explain to Eve, who looked understanding, at least.

"I was only putting it out there, Jack, because you seem like a sweet and honest guy, that's all. The kind of guy that I'd want to have by my side, if I was to get lost in the woods at night" Eve sweetly told him and to their luck, it wouldn't be too long, before they could spot their tents and were reunited with their respective relatives.

"Was I right or was I right, when it comes to camping in the wild?" Abby asked Jen, on the evening after she'd returned from what had been a couple of days out in the wild, that while some of it was okay, she could have done without for the most part. They were helping one another with doing the dishes after their dinner, that since it was cooked by Grams, was also a huge step up from the excuse for food, she'd had for dinner the day before.

"You were right, mostly!" Jen conceded, which drew a slightly triumphant smile on Abby's mug. "I think that if I learned a lesson this weekend, it's that I love nature, but only in small enough doses that I can sleep in my own bed at night".

"We're sort of the same that way, I suppose" Abby casually answered, before wiping off the last of the plates and beginning to put them back into their assigned cupboard.

"How was your girlfriend weekend with Melissa?"

"Very nice, until her parents came home half a day early and almost caught us doing something, I'm guessing that most parents wouldn't want to catch their daughter doing to another girl!" Abby eye-rolling answered, and Jen couldn't help herself from giggling, even if she probably shouldn't have. "If there was such a thing as a recorded world record for how fast that a lesbian girl has gotten dressed and wiped off the edges of her mouth, then I'm sure that both of us shattered it!"

"You're bordering on T.M.I. here, Abby! Just saying!"

"Living with Grams for the past year has turned you into such a prude, Jen! Speaking of beds to sleep in, I told you about how the Potter's are selling the Ice House and buying a bigger and better house for some of the dough, they're getting for it, didn't I?" Abby slightly nervously asked her and already, Jen had a creeping feeling where this was heading.

"A few dozen times, yes" she understatedly answered, although with the number of times Abby had talked to her about it, combined with the number of times that Joey had, Jen was practically an expert by now, when it came to the subject.

"I was talking to Bessie and Bodie at work and they asked me, if I wanted to move into it with them. I love living here too, you know that it's just ..."

"That they're your family?" Jen understandingly asked Abby, finishing her sentence for her.

"They're the closest thing that I have to one. I really miss living with them, Jen. I hope, you can understand that" Abby asked of her with enough gleam in those hopeful eyes of hers, that it was impossible for Jen to give her anything, except for her fullest blessing.

Something, that Grams did too, only a few minutes later.

END OF CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE