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  When I breathe in, the jaggedness of it surprises me. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to lose control and tell him the truth. He only thinks he wants it. He can’t possibly want it. How could he?

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Tommy wraps his long arms around me and pulls me to his chest. “It’s okay,” he says. “You can tell me when you’re ready. I’ll wait.”

  “Okay.” The word limps out as a few tears moisten his neck. Pulling back, I wipe his skin dry and try to stem the sniffling. “I’m sorry.”

  He pulls me back to his shoulder and says, “Go ahead. Cry all you want. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I let loose with a full-throated sob. “Thank you.”

  He places his hand on the back of my wig and I hold my breath in embarrassment. Then he strokes it very gently. “It’s okay,” he says.

  I wrap my arms around him and press as much of myself against his chest as I can manage. As soon as the well of tears dries up, he whispers as quietly as the breeze, “Jill.”

  But it’s not a question. It’s just a word, a sound. Then his lips are on my neck. After a few gentle kisses, they wander to my cheek, my forehead. He pulls back just enough to focus on my eyes, and my body goes liquid.

  Softly, our mouths connect. The sun appears and disappears behind the shadow of his face. He pulls himself impossibly close to me, our bodies growing hot against each other. I feel dizzy, like I’m falling. Then I realize he has been pushing me in the smallest of increments backward toward the blanket, his lips never leaving mine. With his hands firmly grasping the small of my back, he lays me down. Then slowly, gently, he lays his full length down on me. Our legs intertwined, he kisses me deeply. Our tongues connect. I feel pressure on the inside of my right knee. He’s pressing it. As his hands wander to my shoulders, then my face, the pressure grows until he’s slid both of his legs between mine.

  “Jill,” he says.

  I can’t speak. My lips can only find his and kiss him deeper. Always deeper. I can feel him pressing against my pelvis. My knees bend and he positions himself lower, sending a warm ripple of pleasure through my torso.

  His hand wanders across my shoulder to the top button of my shirt. The kiss grows harder. As I wrap my legs around his hips, he slips open the first button of my shirt, then the second, then the third. At the last button, he pulls his lips from mine, leans back and opens my shirt. His eyes flutter closed for a second. Then his face descends to my chest, over my bra and downward, his lips brushing the exposed skin of my ribs. Downward to the notch beneath my ribs, his lips find my stomach. He brushes them over the waistband of my jeans while fingering the front clasp of my bra. I don’t know where to focus. He’s touching me everywhere. After fumbling for a few seconds, he pops the clasp, looks up at me and pulls the bra open. An excited breath escapes his lips; then he pulls himself up and kisses my neck.

  I clutch the back of his head as my eyes squeeze shut, the sun making pinwheels of color against my lids. “Tommy,” I say. “Oh, Tommy.”

  I feel the wetness of his mouth on my neck as it slides lower. He’s moving faster now, his hands never stopping as they stroke and caress my arms, my legs, my stomach. My thighs squeeze tightly around his hips as my hands wander up and down his back. When he moves his face downward over my ribs to the soft flesh of my stomach, my back arches and I feel my head dig into the yielding sand beneath the blanket.

  Tommy sucks and bites at my stomach, then tugs at the snap of my jeans.

  I gasp.

  He looks up, eyes full of hope. His teeth come together in a knowing smile and he rips the snap open.

  I freeze.

  All feeling disappears.

  Eyes glued to mine, Tommy grasps the zipper between his thumb and forefinger and, with an impossible slowness, pulls it downward. The sun burns my eyes, but I can’t stop looking at him. As if challenging me to stop him, he stares back while pulling the zipper.

  The sound of metal against metal is huge, all out of proportion. Everything but my own crotch and Tommy’s hand on it disappears as the descending zipper reveals the pink cotton of my underwear.

  “Wait.” My hand clamps down on his.

  The unzipping stops. He waits for my signal.

  Everything’s wrong.

  His face. His hair.

  My exposed breasts, the smooth hollow beneath my ribs. All wrong. Where’s the fine trail of hair? Where’s the bulge beneath my jeans where Tommy’s face is?

  And why is it Tommy’s face? Why isn’t it—

  “Oh mal,” I hear myself say.

  Squirming out from under him, I pull my shirt closed. I don’t even bother to reclasp my bra, which dangles gracelessly from my shoulders.

  Tommy gets to his knees. “It’s okay. We don’t have to . . .”

  I button my shirt as quickly as my fingers will manage.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m moving too fast.”

  I don’t look at him as I battle with my zipper. I have to kneel to zip it.

  “I’m sorry, Jill. I—”

  “What?” I close the button of my jeans and glance around the dunes. No one is there.

  “Are you okay?” he says.

  The wind blows his hair so feebly.

  “I mean, we don’t have to, you know, if I’m moving too fast. It’s cool.”

  It’s anything but cool. My body’s on fire with a devouring hunger that’s all wrong. I want to run. I want to burrow into the dunes and disappear. Tommy’s face—the faint hint of stubble, the severe jaw—is all wrong. Everything is wrong.

  Saying nothing, we shake out the blanket and make our way back to the boardwalk and the parking lot.

  I’ve freaked Tommy out. He has no idea what’s going on. I know it’s up to me to say something, but I’m so afraid of what I’m feeling right now, I can’t speak.

  I drive him back to school in utter, agonizing silence, watch him walk back inside, then drive home and go straight to my room.

  Jack!

  He’s polluted my mind. All the disgusting things he does and thinks and dreams about have escaped his phase and are perverting mine!

  But I won’t have it. It’s bad enough that he’s driven a creepy wedge of uncomfortable pervitude between me and Ramie. He’s not taking Tommy Knutson away from me too.

  I put a note on the outside of my bedroom door telling Mom to leave me alone to meditate; then I do four and a half hours of it. I don’t care how long I have to lie here conjuring the black dot. I am burying that little pervert in an unmarked grave.

  When I get to school the next day, the Chemo Theory has become dogma. There’s even talk of making me prom queen as a final tribute before I snuff it. The worst part is I can’t refute the theory because I have no alternate.

  In art class, I’m washing blue tempera paint out of a brush when Ramie comes in with the bell.

  “Let’s ditch,” she says. “Want to hang out in Vietnam?”

  Vietnam is a big obstacle course in the woods behind the visitor bleachers of the football field. For three weeks every year, Mr. Gibbons uses it to torture sophomores to build self-esteem. His or theirs, I’ve never been sure.

  I shake out the brush and place it in the drying rack as the rest of the class gathers their stuff and vacates.

  “Come on,” Ramie says.

  “I don’t know, Rames.”

  I do not make eye contact, because despite all the meditation, I have not been able to evict the residue of Jack’s icky wrong feelings. Undaunted, she presses her body right up to me and sticks her bony finger in my side. “You’re coming with me, princess. This is a gun and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Try me.”

  I squirm away from her, holding my breath against the coconut scent of her hair. “I’ve got study hall,” I say. “I’m going to the library.” I grab my backpack from the table under the pitying gaze of Mrs. Warren, who, like everyone else at Winterhead High, believes I am moments a
way from death.

  Ramie charges around me and plants her ass on the table, gripping both of my wrists in her talonlike fingers. “Jill, please.”

  Mrs. Warren ambles over. “Come on, girls. You’re going to be late.”

  Ramie hops off the table and clings to me as I head to the door. When we get to the hallway, she takes my wrist forcefully and charges me toward the band room.

  “Ramie!”

  “Shut up.”

  The band room is empty and, more importantly, features its own exterior door, which none of the instrument-playing goody-goodies ever exploits.

  “Come on,” she says.

  She opens the door and yanks me outside. I don’t resist anymore, because when Ramie gets to this level of conviction, there’s no point. She takes my hand and we run across the football field and under the visitor bleachers to the woods. In a clearing, Mr. Gibbons’s dreaded obstacle course hangs ominously from some trees.

  “Yuck.” I stare at the slats of wood nailed into a tree going up at least twenty feet. “I got halfway up that thing and panicked,” I tell Ramie. “Mr. Gibbons was holding the rappelling harness or whatever it’s called and he said he wouldn’t catch me if I bailed out. He said I had to climb all the way to the top, ring that lame-ass bell and then jump. What a psycho.”

  Ramie lowers herself to a felled tree trunk. “Yeah,” she says, “you know it’s called Vietnam for a reason. Don’t know the full story. He came back a changed man or something. Definitely a sadist, but you can’t be too harsh on him.”

  I sit down on a tree stump. “I guess.”

  “So,” she says. “Obviously you’ve been avoiding me because you don’t want to talk about what happened to your hair.”

  “Ramie—”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “I’m not going to ask again.”

  “Really?”

  Ramie nods. “But I am going to ask about the bars on your window. What’s that about?”

  “Oh,” I say. Then I try to think of something quick. “You know. Parents. Kind of paranoid. Crime and stuff.”

  “They’re only on your window,” she says.

  I poke at the dirt and pebbles with the toe of my shoe. “Yeah, well, they started with my window. They’re putting them up everywhere.”

  “Why?”

  I shrug and consider drawing my weirdo father into the hastily improvised cover story. Conversely, I could blame my control-freak mother. But I haven’t researched either of these lies and I am no good at improvised deception. “I don’t know,” I say. “Why do parents do any of the things they do?”

  She stares at me and nods slowly. Then she leans back and looks up at the sky. “So I’ve been thinking.”

  “Hold on. Let me put on some safety gear.”

  She laughs. “About the prom.”

  “Yeah?” I pick up a twig and start peeling the bark off. “What about it?”

  “I was thinking maybe we could go together.”

  “What?”

  “Tommy’s not going, right?”

  “I haven’t exactly given up on that yet, Rames.”

  “Yeah, but, you know. This is his first and last year at Winter-head High. The prom doesn’t have any significance to him. But for us . . .”

  “Since when does the prom have significance for you? I thought it was a stupid sexist tradition.”

  “No, Jill, homecoming court is a stupid sexist tradition.

  Prom is just stupid. At least I used to think that. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “I didn’t think that was possible.”

  “Rare,” she says, “but not impossible. Think about it.” Her face brightens as she walks over and crouches in front of me. “We can style ourselves to the teeth. I mean whole hog. All out.”

  Visions of Ramie wrapping me in burlap and plastic sheeting dance in my head.

  She puts her hands on my knees. “You never know. Might even make old Tommy jealous.” She winks at me, then walks back to her felled tree and sits down.

  “What about Mr. No-name?” I say.

  Her face falls.

  I’m stunned. Why would I bring up Jack at a moment like this? Why would I bring up Jack ever?

  Ramie rests her elbows on her knees and studies the dirt. “You were right about him.”

  “I was?”

  She stands up and paces in front of the log. “Yeah, I guess I can check One-Night Stand with Peeping Tom off my list of things to do.”

  “Ramie,” I say. “I’m really sorry it turned out like that. You know you deserve better. He’s a jerk.”

  She shrugs and kicks at the log. I wonder if Jack realizes how much he’s hurt her with his little stunt. He should have known we’d put an end to it. He was reckless and stupid and now Ramie’s paying the price. What a selfish jerk.

  Between my feet, a black beetle emerges from behind a thick blade of grass. I position my gold flat above it, then decide at the last minute to spare its life. When I look up, Ramie is climbing the slats of the twenty-foot tree.

  “Uh, Rames.” I get up and stand underneath her, my head level with her ankles. “What are you doing?”

  “Climbing.”

  “Well, stop it. Climbing down is much harder than climbing up. That’s how Mr. Gibbons made it so you’d have to jump.”

  She keeps going, getting smaller and smaller as she rises.

  “Ramie, stop it!” I step on the first slat and start to make my way up. But I only get about five feet off the ground when I realize that first, I’m too scared to go any higher, and second, I can’t exactly carry Ramie down on my shoulders. I feel for the lower slat with the toe of my gold flat and slowly, awkwardly make my way down.

  Ramie keeps going. “Hey, you can see Daria’s house from up here.”

  “Ramie, get down.”

  “Why should I?”

  I take a few steps back. Her long dark form looks so small against the green sun-dappled canopy. “What is wrong with you?” I say. “Do you know how dangerous that is?”

  Hugging the tree with both arms, she climbs higher.

  “Ramie!”

  “Wow!” she says. “This is really high.”

  “Ramie, you’re going to fall! Is that what you want? Is this some cry for attention?”

  “Hah!” Her black boot finds another slat, but when she presses her foot to it, it slips off.

  “Ramie!”

  She slides down over three slats but stops herself by hugging the tree. I turn away and wait for the thud, but when I look up, she’s climbing again.

  “Ramie, stop it right now!”

  She places one foot on either side of a large slat of wood and loosens her grip on the tree. “So,” she says. “My woman of mystery.” She inches her torso away from the tree.

  “What are you doing!”

  She pushes herself farther out. “You think this is a cry for attention?”

  “What?”

  “You think I like making my friends worry about me?”

  “Ramie, please don’t do this. I’ll tell you everything. I promise.”

  Clinging to the tree with both arms, Ramie lifts one foot off the slat and swings her leg out.

  “Ramie!”

  Her big silver belt buckle glistens in the sun.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so sorry. Please just stay put and let me get Mr. Gibbons.”

  “It’s too late for that,” she says. Then, in one breathless moment, she pushes herself off the tree, leaving a horrifying gap between it and her falling body.

  My feet carry me forward to catch her, but her body does a strange thing. It stops falling downward and starts falling sideways, past the tree and over my head. Dumbfounded, I watch her fly across the clearing.

  It wasn’t a big silver belt buckle. Ramie wasn’t wearing a belt.

  “Kowabunga!” she screams as the now-visible rappelling rope carries her to a pile of sand at the edge of the clearing. With her legs hinged out in front of her, she lands with a thud and collaps
es in a heap on the sandpile.

  I run to her, tripping over the tree stump.

  “Ramie!”

  When I get to the pile of sand, she rolls over and disconnects herself from the rope.

  “I could kill you,” I say.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?”

  “You went up there without a safety rope.”

  She shrugs, still lying in the sand.

  “You could have fallen.”

  “I know.”

  She sits up and I drop to my knees in front of her.

  “Why?” I say.

  There are tears in her eyes.

  “Why!” I say.

  “I love you,” she says. “I’m supposed to be your best friend and you’re not telling me something so important it scares you.” She wipes her nose across the back of her hand. “If you think you’re sparing me, trust me, you’re not. I’m in hell I’m so worried about you. I don’t know if you’re sick or if your mother is locking you up and performing lobotomies on you.” She wipes her nose with the back of her arm, then dabs at her eyes with her knuckles. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

  Still on my knees, I move closer to her. “Ramie, I . . .”

  She sits up fully now, her face only inches from mine. “Tell me, Jill. Please.”

  In the distance, Mr. Gibbons blows his whistle twice.

  “Tell me,” she says.

  There is so much hunger in Ramie’s eyes. So much fear. She takes my hand and interlaces her fingers with mine. “Tell me.”

  The smell of coconut drifts up from her hair. “Please,” she says.

  Her lips part, her white teeth just visible.

  “I . . .”

  “It’s okay,” she says. “Whatever it is, we can get through it together.”

  Her red lips curl and stretch around the words.

  “I . . .”

  “Just say it, Jill.”

  “But I . . .”

  “You know I love you, no matter what.”

  “Oh, Ramie.” I lean in and press my lips to hers.

  For a brief moment, we connect, the warm fullness of her lips squishing against mine.

  Then Ramie pulls away. Eyes wide, her body stiffens. “Oh.” Her face softens as she runs her hand down my arm. “Jill, I didn’t know. I mean . . .”