We looked at each other. He lifted a strap of my bathing suit off my shoulder then set it down again. “You were a little crooked there. In your rush.”

“I should get these down there.”

“You should.” He stepped even closer, closer than I’d ever been to a boy before. “But let’s just step in here. Just for a couple of minutes.” He took my hand and led me back into the bathroom and shut the door and looped the hook on the door into its metal eye.

“Now. You,” he said. The whole thing was like one of my stories at night. It was actually happening. “You are trouble. I, like my mother, think you are trying to seduce me.” He came close to me again. “Are you?”

I didn’t know how to respond.

But he wasn’t listening for an answer. He reminded me of my dad, going in and out of focus like that. He breathed heavily. I smelled mayonnaise from the ham sandwiches Margaret had made us for lunch. He slid his finger under the strap again, this time hooking it and pulling it off my shoulder. He did not lean in to kiss me, which was how I thought these things were supposed to go. Up close his beard was sparse, too much space between reddish shafts.

He pushed me with his body against the changing table. One hand started kneading my right breast and the other went up into the suit from below. It was a tight fit. The suit was from last year. I felt his fingers wiggling around like they were looking for a dime in a small purse.

“I know you want this,” he said in my ear, in a voice I didn’t recognize. “I can give you this.”

He started rubbing me hard both on the chest and down below. “You like me. I read all about it. All about it. And I can do this for you.”

He kept rubbing. I knew what he was talking about. I hadn’t done it to myself, but Gina had told me about it. I wanted to wait until I had a boyfriend so that the first time I felt it I would be with someone and not alone in my bedroom and it would be special. I also knew there were times when it was not special. But I didn’t know that it could be not special with someone you liked. This was not special. This felt like Hugh was doing some kitchen chore inside my bathing suit.

Sweat had broken out all over his face. “I can give pleasure, not just receive it.” His head was tilted toward the window, as if there were other people down on the grass he was talking to. “I do care about other people. Other people are real to me. Cara. You are real to me.” One of his fingers inside my bathing suit was poking into me.