She strolled over to where Larry slumped behind the HELL GATE 10 CENTS sign, immersed in the latest Adventure magazine.

“Hey, Larry.” Pin peered over the railing. “Any good?”

Larry held up an illustration of a man in a loincloth stabbing a shark with a knife. “So-so. Not as good as that Yasmini story.”

He set the magazine aside to take two dimes from a pair of high-school girls wearing flared skirts instead of the hobble skirts that had been fashionable for the last few years. “Watch your head inside the boat, ladies; Horace there will help you.”

He watched the girls walk off, their skirts barely grazing their ankles, and whistled softly. “They’re about fryin’ size,” he said, and turned back to Pin. She twisted her head to read the title of the story he’d been reading.

“Can I borrow that when you’re finished?”

“Yeah, sure.” Larry folded the magazine and stuck it in his back pocket, eyeing several more girls as they approached the booth. “Come by later, I’ll be done by then.”

With a mocking salute, she ambled off, idly watching as the line for Hell Gate grew longer. People her own age or a few years older waited for the rowboats to appear, one at a time, alongside the loading area. Three young couples amused themselves by kicking each other’s feet. The boys wore boaters and sailor suits, the girls blue-and-white sailor dresses and Panama hats. One boy grabbed a girl by the shoulders and pretended to push her into the canal.

She shrieked, and Pin whispered a curse. She hated girls who acted like sissies, and hated even more that boys liked it. Sometimes Ikie and the others would grab some girl’s hat on the Pike, just to make her scream. Pin refused to join in.

“What if that was your sister?” she said once to Ikie.

“You ain’t got a sister, why d’you care?” he retorted.

She replied before she could stop herself. “I used to have a sister.”

Ikie laughed. “Used to! Used—”

She punched him and ran off before he could retaliate.

“Billy, stop!” The girl in line for Hell Gate shrieked again. With a scowl, Pin stalked toward a small rise, a man-made hill where a stand of tired-looking sycamores provided some shade.

Up here you could catch the wind, even on the hottest days. Pin sat on the grass and shut her eyes against the sky’s blue glitter. After a minute, she opened her eyes, turned, and looked back down at Hell Gate.

Two more people had joined the line, a man and a young girl. The man wore a boater, like just about every other dude at Riverview, a suit, and a bow tie. The girl wore a buttercup-yellow dress, her dark ringlets spilling from beneath a floppy yellow bow nearly the size of her head.