"When it happened to us it was sudden. It was in late August. I'd gotten a job in the dime store by lying about my age and filling out the forms wrong. I was squirreling the money away. I spent Sundays with Timmy. His brother and his father didn't like him to see me, but he managed it.
"He had a basket on the front of his bike and we went off on a Sunday picnic. We went a long way into the country. Fifteen miles, I guess. We walked the bikes up a trail. We found a place under trees where it was like a park. It was far away from anybody. We could have been alone in the world. Maybe we were. We ate and then we stretched out and talked about how high school would be when it started in September. It was hot. We were in the shade. He went to sleep. I watched him while he was sleeping, the way his eyelashes were, and the way he looked like a little kid when he slept. I felt a big warmth inside me. It was a new way to feel toward him. When I couldn't stand it any longer, I slipped my arm under his neck and half lay across him and kissed him. He woke up with me kissing him.
"He was funny and kind of half scared and sort of half eager at the same time. I'd had a pretty liberal education as you can well imagine. I guess it was pretty sad. Two kids being as awkward and fumbling as you can possibly imagine, there on that hill in the shade. But awkward as we were, it happened.
"We hardly talked at all on the way back. I knew enough to be damn scared. But fortunately nothing happened. From then on we were different with each other. It got to be something we did whenever we had a chance. It got better and better for us. But we weren't friends the way we were before. Sometimes we seemed almost to be enemies. We tried to hurt each other. It was a strong hunger. We found good places to go. It lasted for a year and a half. We never talked about marriage or things like that. We lived for now. There was one place we would go. We'd take one of the boats and—"
She stopped abruptly. We looked into each other's eyes.
"Now you know where he meant?" I asked her softly.
"I think I do."
"Where?"
"I don't think we can handle it that way, do you?"
"How do you mean?"