Faith Falls

"You're staring at me," Hannah said softly.

"I-I'm sorry. I didn't mean to," I said, suddenly feeling ashamed.

Hannah giggled and said, "It's okay. It doesn't make me uncomfortable." Then, while looking into my eyes, she pulled down her shorts. I don't know what expression was on my face then, but it felt like my mouth was hanging open. I remember thinking, My God, she has a beautiful body. Her bathing suit, though a modest one-piece, really showed off her natural curves. When she bent over to place her shorts on her towel, her suit clung confidently to her bottom, and when she faced me again I could see the gentle slope of her pubic mound. I wondered then if she trimmed her hair down there, and immediately blushed. Hannah looked at me, puzzled, and then looked down, perhaps trying to figure out what I had been looking at before I blushed and looked away.

I detected that my cock had begun to harden, and I decided to escape to the water before Hannah noticed. I ran into the water, splashing madly and comically, until it was over my waist. Hannah stood on the beach for a few more seconds, giggling at what I had done, and then did the same. But she ran past me and began to swim out towards the platform in the middle of the swimming area, so I decided to follow her.

Hannah was a fast swimmer, and I was immediately glad we had only been joking about that million-dollar bet. I was an above-average swimmer, but she made it look much more graceful with her even, smooth strokes and strong technique. By comparison, I looked like an albatross attempting to land, and I reached the dock a good fifteen seconds after she did.

"You're a good swimmer," I said, somewhat out of breath. Hannah had her back against one of the posts of the dock, and she was kicking her feet and holding out her arms to stay afloat. At this point the water was about eight feet deep. I was holding onto the dock and trying to grip one of the posts with my feet. The post was slimy with algae, so I decided to do what she was doing and floated there a few feet from her.

"Thanks," she said, "You're not so bad yourself."

"Thanks. Did you swim in high school?"

"No, my school was way too small for that. I guess I just picked things up. I took lessons when I was little."

"Me too," I said, "I think this is maybe the second or third time I've been swimming this summer."

"Why? I love it out here," Hannah said.

"I don't know. Just shy, I guess. I don't really like doing things by myself. It's not as fun."

"Well, you should have asked me to swim with you. I would have," Hannah said. "Don't you love it? It's so quiet here."

"Yeah. It feels so isolated," I said.

Hannah pulled herself up onto the dock and looked around, then came back down into the water. She had a strange look on her face, and she was staring at me. She swam over to me and put her arms around me. I had to grab on to the dock to keep my head above the water, and the sudden weight caused my mind to panic for a split second before calming down and trying to figure out what she was doing. She just held onto me like that for a while. Her wet hair pressed against my cheek, and I breathed it in.

Finally, I dared to speak. "Hannah?"

"Mmm hmm?"

"What are you doing?"

"I don't know."

"You don't?"

"No," Hannah said, "I just... like you." She turned and looked into my face. "I like being here with you."

"I like being here with you, too," I said. I was now vaguely aware that my cock had hardened to its fullest, a reflexive reaction to the feeling of her body pressed against mine, her breasts pushing into my chest.

We floated like this for a minute or two, and then Hannah moved her face closer to mine and kissed me softly on the lips. My first real kiss. It seemed strange that I had already felt a girl's breasts, vagina, and more, but had never kissed a girl. Hannah kissed me three more times, in quick succession, but they never lasted more than a second or two each, and she never opened her mouth. They were sweet kisses. Then she turned her head and lay there with her head pressed against my face again. I was speechless. I didn't know what to think about what had just happened.

Then Hannah adjusted her body so that her legs were wrapped around my waist, and I think she had her feet on the post. My feet were now kicking gently, because I was still holding myself up using the platform. I was suddenly aware that her crotch was pressed against mine, and I knew that she could probably feel my hard cock pressing against her.

To my amazement, Hannah braced herself against the post we were up against and began to move her body up and down against mine, and though we were wearing bathing suits our genitals were rubbing against each other. I immediately knew that she had become aware of the situation in my bathing trunks. I knew there was a word for this: "dry humping," but I don't know if that term applied here because we were in the water. But still, it felt amazing. So amazing, in fact, that it caught my relatively inexperienced body off guard and, to my horror, after about thirty seconds of this I began to ejaculate into my swimming trunks.

"Oh God!" I cried, partly in pleasure and partly in embarrassment.

"What?" Hannah said, sounding as if she had just come crashing out of a trance.

"Oh God, I can't believe I just did that," I said.

"What did you do?"

"I just... I'm sorry... I just came," I said, my voice shaking because my cock was still spasming and shooting little blobs into my trunks.

I expected Hannah to react negatively, but she began to laugh, and she put her hand over her mouth.

"You did?" she said, finally, when she had regained some of her composure.

"Yeah. I'm sorry; I'm so embarrassed!"

"Oh Tim, Tim, don't be," she said, and she pulled herself against me again. "I kind of got carried away there."

"It's okay. I just couldn't help it. It felt really good," I said, feeling a little calmer now.

"I'm sorry, I don't have any experience with this," Hannah said, "I didn't know what I was doing."

"It's okay, it's okay. It was... amazing."

"Really?" she said, and looked up at me again.

"Yeah," I said, and smiled at her.

"Well, then, I'm glad," Hannah said, and held close to me.

Eventually we swam back to shore and dried ourselves off. We didn't say anything for a while, because the mood appeared to be broken and I don't think either of us could find the words. But then we sat down on the sand and I finally dared to speak.

"Did you... like it?" I asked, feeling shy again.

"Yes," she said. "I could feel your... thing... and I liked how it felt against me. I've never felt one before."

"You're a virgin?"

"Yes," Hannah said, and she appeared to be blushing. "Are you?"

"Yes," I said. I debated whether or not I should come clean with her about what happened between Jessica and I earlier that summer. I decided that I should be honest with her.

"Technically," I then added.

"Technically?"

"Yeah. I... I'm not proud of it, but earlier this summer, I..."

"I know," Hannah said, and she put her hand over mine.

"You do?"

"Yeah. Jessica told me one day, maybe two weeks ago. I think she thought it would make me not want to hang out with you anymore," Hannah said.

"What did she tell you?" I asked.

"She said that she touched you there, and you touched her," Hannah said, and she was really starting to blush now.

"I guess that's sort of the gist of it," I said. "I was just desperate, Hannah. I felt terrible about it immediately."

"You did?"

"Yeah. That day that you found me in my cabin, and I had been crying. It's because I felt so ashamed about it. I wish that I had just walked away from her."

"It's okay, Tim," Hannah said. "Things happen."

"I'm glad it didn't scare you away," I said.

"Nah. In fact, I thought that maybe she was lying anyway, until you said something just now. Thank you for being honest with me, Tim. You're a good guy," Hannah said. She was now smiling at me again.

"We should probably start getting ready for the campers to arrive," I said after several moments of silence. I didn't want to leave, though. I wanted to sit there talking with her for hours.

"Yeah, you're right. It sucks that we won't see each other much this week," she said, and her face had grown a little sad. I couldn't believe that she, or any girl, for that matter, could feel anything for me.

"And there are only a few weeks left," I said.

"Yeah. I just wish..." Hannah trailed off suddenly, and closed her mouth and remained silent.

"Yeah," I said, feeling as if I understood.

The next week was a long and difficult one, and there was news of a big storm headed for us that would hit over the weekend and into the beginning of the following week. Because of that, the camp administration elected to cancel the following week's activities and give us the option of going home for the week or to stay and help prepare the camp's buildings and equipment for the storm. About half of the counselors were planning to go home following the departure of the current group of campers, but Hannah and I had both decided to stay and wait things out at the camp. When Friday evening arrived, the campers and a great number of counselors and staff departed, and Faith Falls became a bit of a ghost town. Some of us helped secure the canoes and other equipment in sheds and cabins around the camp, basically trying to find any suitable spot we could.

There were a number of old cabins around that were not being used for anything, so these became storage sheds. Some had wooden shutters while others just had screens. I spent a lot of Friday evening carrying equipment around and placing it in these buildings. One of the old, unused cabins, which was in a remote part of the camp off of a hiking trail, had wooden shutters, and I opened it to reveal an old mattress inside and an oil lamp. I realized that this cabin was probably being used as a rendezvous area for various counselor hook ups, and I decided to leave it undisturbed.

I slept late Saturday morning, so I missed breakfast. I took a shower and cleaned up my cabin, then went to lunch and sat with Hannah. I had barely seen her all week, and my heart felt overjoyed to see her. I wasn't sure how she would feel about what we had done in the swimming area now that some time had passed, but she seemed very happy to see me and we acted as if nothing had happened.

The sky was getting overcast, and the wind was starting to pick up, but it was still warm and humid. Since there were no activities planned for that day, or indeed the following several days, I asked Hannah at lunch if she wanted to take a long hike around the camp that afternoon.

"Sure thing," she said. She placed one of her bare feet --she had been wearing flip-flops, but she must have kicked them off of her feet after she sat down for lunch-- on top of mine, and smiled sweetly. I reasoned that what had happened the previous Sunday was just a one-time experience, something that just sort of "happened," and I had no expectations that anything else like it would happen. But I was okay with that. No one could ever take that experience away from me, and Hannah would likely always remember it, too.

A half hour after lunch, I was sitting on the steps to Hannah's cabin. She opened the screen door and pretended to kick me in the butt, to which I shouted "Hey!" in mock anger. She giggled, and I felt that there was something strange about how she looked at me. My heart stirred a bit, but I didn't know what it meant. Hannah was wearing a tight pair of shorts that caused me to take notice immediately. She hadn't been wearing these shorts at lunch. I was certain of this because I knew I would have noticed if she had.

We hadn't talked about what hiking path we would take, but somehow, in unspoken fashion, we seemed to be headed towards the longest route, the one that ran through the most remote and unused parts of the camp. I hadn't taken this path yet this summer, though I had been on it a few times as a camper.

A number of campers avoided this hiking path because it passed by the remnants of a row of decrepit cabins that hadn't been used in years, and the grass and vegetation around them had grown to such a degree that it was like coming across a long-abandoned village in the jungle. Over the years, a camp legend had been developed among campers and counselors that these cabins had been the sight of a terrible tragedy and that they were now haunted by the spirit of Tommy Stumps. Tommy Stumps, the legend said, was a young camper who had lost both of his arms in a tug-of-war contest gone wrong. He allegedly bled to death in the midst of these cabins and his spirit lingered on, forever looking for his arms. Tommy's ghost was said to wail incessantly on moon-filled nights, and whenever a coyote howled in the distance --a common occurrence-- campers would have to repeat to themselves, "Tommy Stumps, I don't have them," or risk encountering his armless ghost.

As a counselor, I learned that these cabins had been used in a leadership training retreat for college-aged men, and that when the camp discontinued that program they had no further use for the cabins. The unused buildings just sat there until nature reclaimed the area. I was told there was a similar set of abandoned cabins on the other side of the lake --the side of the lake Hannah and I were now on-- but none of the other counselors and staff seemed to know where they were, and the hiking trail did not come within sight of them. I also knew, though I had suspected for many years, that Tommy Stumps never existed and there had never been a camper who died at Faith Falls. Still, the memories I had of passing by those cabins caused the hair on my neck to stand up, and I was determined that, once we reached them, I would walk a little faster just to get out of their presence all the quicker.

Hannah and I were still far from those cabins, but we talked about the legend of Tommy Stumps and laughed until tears were in our eyes.

"I'm not sure when I first heard that story," I said, "I think it might have been my counselor who told me, maybe the first year I was here."

"Really? I didn't think counselors were allowed to tell that story," Hannah said, giggling but with a slightly incredulous expression.

"I'm starting to remember it now. We were all in the cabin, in our beds, and we heard that howling noise and we were all scared. I mean, I had my head under the covers and everything. Those coyotes... that sound they make, it's a really frightening sound."

"I know," Hannah said, "I hear it too, sometimes. It always reminds me of a woman screaming or something. Like a banshee."

"Yeah," I said. "Anyway, I hear one of the kids saying under his breath, 'Tommy Stumps, I don't have them,' and I was freaking out. It was like an occult chant or something. I asked what he was saying, and our counselor was like, 'Haven't you ever heard the story of Tommy Stumps?' And that's when he told us about it. I didn't sleep that night, I swear. I was just lying awake, listening. I don't think I slept more than a few hours each night that entire week."

"I never heard about the chant," Hannah said, "I guess the girls figured we were safe because the cabins are on your side of the lake."

"Yeah, but you have your own creepy cabins somewhere in the woods out here. Nobody seems to know where they are, though. I don't know why they're not near the trail."

"Maybe we should look for them," Hannah said, and she gave me a slightly mischievous smirk.

"Yeah right," I said, "Look at the clouds. If we got lost out here and it started raining, where would we go?"

"I don't know," Hannah said, then thought for a moment, "Wouldn't it be really creepy if we got lost and it started raining, so we started running, trying to find shelter, and then we came across those cabins, all overgrown and doors hanging off the hinges?"

I shuddered. "That would be awful. I think I'd rather be out in the rain than step inside one of those cabins."

"Why, are you superstitious?" Hannah laughed.

"No, but it's like it's ingrained in me to be afraid of that whole Tommy Stumps story. Every time I think about those cabins it makes my skin crawl. I'm surprised I haven't had nightmares about it."

To be honest, I had. A few years ago, in the middle of winter. But I wasn't about to tell anyone about it.

"Is that where you and Jessica went?" Hannah asked, laughing, "Because maybe that's why you're afraid of it."

"No, but I might have to add that to my list of things to be afraid of," I said, starting to feel a little uncomfortable. We walked on in silence for a few minutes.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have joked about that," Hannah said.

"It's all right. I'm not proud of it, but it happened."

"So what exactly did you do?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"I don't know," Hannah said, "I guess I'm just curious."

"I was... desperate, I guess. Unhappy. I think it's hard to understand if you're not a guy, but she... she wanted me to do it. She practically forced me. I was weak."

"So what happened?"

"What do you mean?"

"What did she do to you? What did you do to her?" Hannah asked.

"Didn't Jessica tell you?"

"She was vague."

"Oh," I said. Then I told her about everything Jessica and I had done. I hadn't meant to go into much detail, but she prodded me and I let it all out. I finished the story by telling her about my becoming nauseous in the woods and vomiting.

At that, Hannah burst out laughing. I couldn't help but laugh, too.

"Oh my God, poor Tim!" she said, "I'm sorry for laughing!"

"No, it's okay. I'm glad I can at least get it off my chest."

After she had recovered, she stared at the ground for a little while. We were both still standing there on the hiking trail.

Hannah and I had not spoken of what happened the previous Sunday since that day, but I had the impression that, in that moment, she was thinking about what we had done. I didn't know how to approach the subject, so I just stood and stared at her. When she turned to look at me, I made a silly face and she began to giggle.

"Tim, you goofball! I was going to bring up a serious subject and you made me laugh!" Hannah was doing her best to sound offended, but there was no conviction in her voice.

"What subject?"

"Umm..." Hannah said, and then gnawed on her thumbnail for a few seconds.

"Is it about last Sunday?"

"Yeah," she said. "I just... I never intended for that to happen."

"Oh."

"No, no, I don't mean it like that," she said, and she grabbed my hand again. "It's just that, my plan has always been to save myself for marriage. But..." As she trailed off, I noticed her face turning red. I didn't say anything in response. I didn't want to push her.

Hannah looked around us, as if expecting someone to be hiding in the bushes, listening to us. Finding no one, she continued: "It's just that, once we were like that, holding each other, I could... feel you against me. And something just took over. It was all me."

"Well, I could have stopped you if I had wanted to," I said, "but I didn't want to."

"I didn't want you to, either. I just don't want you to think less of me. I don't want you to think I'm someone like Jessica."

"Like Jessica?" I said, incredulous. "No, no, you're nothing like Jessica. Hannah, I will never think that about you, no matter what. You will always be special to me, and I'll always..." Now it was my turn to trail off.

"What?"

"Love you. I will always love you." I had never told a girl, at least someone other than my mother, that I loved her. Even though in high school there were plenty of girls I thought, at one point or another, I was "in love with," I had never spoken those words to any of them. I tried not to visibly cringe after saying those words, but I wasn't sure how Hannah would react so I was trying to steel myself for the worst.