Over the summer, she cut back on the sabotages, lest anyone become suspicious, but, knowing that Sunday was Byron’s only day off, she let it slip that she always spent Sunday afternoons down at the town beach. The first Sunday, he came with his friends. The group of boys set up several yards away from where Dolly and Jane lay on their towels, Dolly in her brand-new red two-piece, and only when everyone was in the water did he acknowledge her with a splash. By the end of the summer, though, they habitually set up their towels side by side, and whenever they went in the water together, he dunked her. She had her heart so set on him that, although she hated to be dunked, she would come up laughing. She loved the way he looked with droplets of water sparkling on his face and his long eyelashes, the way his smile looked in the sun.

Jane got impatient before Dolly did. “The way he treats you, it’s like you’re his little sister,” she told Dolly.

“He’s just trying to figure out how he feels,” Dolly said. “He’s very attracted to me, but he thinks I might be too young for him.” Somehow, she felt she knew him better than she knew herself.

“Well, show him you’re not, then,” Jane said.

“You’re not suggesting—”

“You haven’t so much as hinted to him that he should kiss you,” Jane said.

Jane was right, Dolly realized, so the next Sunday she let Byron chase her through the water out behind the diving platform, and when he dunked her, she came up sputtering and looking at him with big eyes.

“Hey, I’m sorry, Doll,” he said, laughing, reaching out to hold her elbow. “Did I catch you off guard?”

She let the water push her closer to him, and rested her hand on his biceps. She batted her eyes once, helplessly.

“Jeez, Doll,” he said. “I guess you know everyone’s talking about us.”

“No, I didn’t know,” she said, telling the truth.

“They’re laughing at me ’cause they say I’m stuck on some kid. You’re only sixteen.”

“I’m almost seventeen,” she said, and closed her eyes.

So that was that. Once he kissed her, his lips wet with lake water, the practiced kiss of an older man and not the sloppy fumblings she’d encountered with the two boys she’d kissed before, she knew she would never kiss another man in her life.

It was brief, though, and when he pulled away, he looked rueful. “I shouldn’t have done that,” he said, and pushed away from her, splashing water over his face with both hands. This only made her love him more.