The Inn at Lake Devine Read Online Free PDF

Hotel.”
    I asked what it was like.
    “Kind of boring, but my parents like it.”
    “What kind of people go there?” I asked.
    “Boring people,” said Robin. “Old people. People who don’t even use the dock half the time.”
    I asked what people did at a lake if they didn’t use the dock.
    “Sit in big chairs and look out at the water through binoculars. Stuff like that. They’re old.”
    It sounded more peaceful to me than anti-Semitic. Old Jewish people liked to sit in lawn chairs and stare out at the water, too.
    For the remaining three weeks of camp, I employed all the tricks acquired at the knee of my sister, queen of brainwashers and cajolers.I began my campaign by saying, “I wrote to my parents and asked them if they could make reservations for the same week you and your parents would be at the Inn.”
    Robin began to sit with me at meals, copy my candy-bar choices at the camp store, squeeze next to me around the campfire. I gave her progress reports every few mail calls: “My mother’s checking with the Inn” or “They’re waiting to hear from Mrs. Berry.”
    Weren’t older sisters and brothers a pain? I confided. My sister bossed me around, never let me play with her and her friends or talk in front of them. She had her driver’s license and wouldn’t take me places just for fun, ever, unless my parents made her.
    “Me too,” said Robin. “Only it’s worse, because my parents don’t make Chip take me anywhere. They don’t trust his driving.”
    “At least you don’t have to share a room with him while you’re on vacation,” I grumbled.
    “That’s true,” Robin agreed.
    “I have to share a
room
with Pammy.” I shook my head, my eyes closed, as if the prospect of her slovenliness and general discourtesy were too much to bear.
    Robin pondered this, as I had intended: rooms, room assignments, roommates. I could see her silently counting beds in her single. Finally, she said, “If you’re there at the same time I am, maybe we could share a room and your sister could stay alone.”
    I said, “My mother wouldn’t like it. She’d think I was imposing.”
    “Why would you be imposing? My parents are paying for the room anyway.”
    “True,” I said. I promised to write to my mother immediately and to propose such an arrangement, despite her known aversion to imposing.
    “Tell her I’m afraid to sleep alone,” said Robin. “Which is kind of true. If I have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, I go next door to my parents’ room so one of them can walk medown the hall. And sometimes I can’t fall asleep because I’m nervous, so I make one of them sleep in my other twin bed.”
    It was all the ammunition I needed: I’d position myself as a companion. A baby-sitter. I’d be so nice, so well mannered, so appreciative, and I’d perform several custodial duties that would free Mr. and Mrs. Fife from the burden of Robin. I’d be Heidi helping Clara in Düsseldorf: She’d get out of the wheelchair and I’d get to experience a holiday on the other side of the tracks.
    It wasn’t that difficult to fake the rest: Soon I reported that there were no rooms at the Inn for us—my parents had made their inquiries far too late. Robin was bitterly disappointed. I reviewed the might-have-beens of our week-long partnership, the croquet and the sessions with Dippity-Do now evaporated. She thought it was her idea when she hit on the solution: “What if you came with us? I already told my parents that I was going to have a friend there.” She wrote immediately to her parents, and I wrote to mine, too, as soon as the Fifes formally invited me. I wrote, “Robin Fife, the girl from Farmington, Connecticut, has invited me to join her family on vacation in Vermont. She has two brothers who don’t play with her, so her parents want her to bring a friend. Can I go? Please?”
    They didn’t think to ask right away the name of the Fifes’ lodging, because I was careful to focus on