I was standing there, my feet blistering, wondering why I didn’t just go lie down on my towel and wait for the time when I could safely wade back into the pool and . . . what, exactly? Just keep wading around and around, so you could never quite tell that I was alone? I hated the pool, but the A/C had blown out back home and it would be another day before it was fixed. I’d held out for two straight days, sweating and miserable, but finally hopped in the van with my brothers that morning. Honestly, if I had to be here, I wanted to see the fight over this thing. I wanted to hear the shouts and curses. I wanted to see violence done in the name of fun.

A boy was watching me from across the pool. I could see him, skinny and twitchy, probably about my age, and every single time I caught him looking at me, he’d smile this goofy smile and then stare down at the water, the sun reflecting off of it so brightly that it was blinding. I lost sight of him. Any second now, the lifeguards were going to blow their whistles. And then I felt somebody touch my elbow, which for some reason felt really intimate and weird, someone’s fingers on my rough, bony elbow. I whirled around, and it was the boy, his eyes black, his hair black, his teeth bright white and painfully crooked. “Hey,” he said, and I pulled my arm away from him.

“Don’t touch people that don’t like being touched,” I told him. He held up his hands in surrender, looking shy all of a sudden. Who touches a girl’s elbow and then gets shy?

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m new. I just moved here. I don’t know anybody. I’ve been watching you. It looks like you don’t know anybody, either.”

“I know everyone,” I said, gesturing to the entire congregation of poolgoers. “I know them all. I just don’t like them.”

He nodded. He understood. “Will you help me get this watermelon?” he asked.

“Me?” I asked, confused.

“You and me,” he said. “I think we can do it.”

“Okay, sure,” I said, nodding, smiling.

“All right,” he said, his face brightening. “What’s your name?” he asked me.

“Frankie,” I told him.

“Cool. I like girls who have boys’ names,” he told me, like he was the most open-minded boy who had ever lived.

“Frankie isn’t a boy’s name. It’s unisex.”

“My name is Zeke,” he told me.

“Zeke?” I said.

“Ezekiel,” he explained. “It’s biblical. But it’s my middle name. I’m trying it out this summer. Just to see how it sounds.”