She was afraid of change. After one long summer Louise returned to school to find everyone had changed. The tomboys giggled now and the boys were tough. They had all outgrown playground and curfews. They had worn out the idea of heaven and hell and carnal sin. The girls in classes behind her had grown breasts. Most of the boys were taller than the tallest nun. Rumor was that Melveena Big Beaver wasn’t just fat, she was heavy with child. They were growing too old for childish pranks. They were growing too old for a school that hid their longings. Some girls wore red lipstick at the powwows. And their silk stockings and panties hung on the bushes with their boyfriends’ sighs. The boys smoked without choking now. They stood in the back of the schoolyard sharing invented stories, broad shoulders huddled together, faces haunted by cigarette smoke and thoughts of women.

The nuns held them all in check, slapped at the girls’ round hips, bound their breasts with tape, sniffed the boys’ sheets, separated the fidgeting boys and girls in quiet rows they forever paced with the metal-edged threat of rulers.

She found herself waiting for Baptiste at times, holding onto the chain-link fence with one hand, letting her body swoop toward the pavement while her fingers grasped the metal links, becoming a semicircle drifting, hoping to be saved from the nuns, ignoring school, waiting for something or someone to save her. When Baptiste did show up she took to standing outside with him, neither talking nor listening to him, but waiting still until Mr. Bradlock sent her away to the all-white school in Dixon, to save her.

From the all-white school in Dixon Louise was sent to the all-white school in Thompson Falls, because the Dixon boys had lifted the back of her skirt to find she wore no panties. She had fought the Dixon boys, slapped their hands and scooped her skirt down tightly to her knees while the teachers had stood by or clapped their hands but made no real attempt to stop the boys who were attacking her. Louise had kicked at them, had spat at them, punched and scratched them. She felt a boy’s fingers in her hair and she had slammed the butt of her palm into his chin until she heard the pop of his jaw. She caught one weasel-faced boy in the groin with the heel of her shoe, and he had bent over wheezing, and still no one came to help her. The boys had lifted her skirt high up over their heads, a tent, a worn umbrella, and finally she had stood still and let them have their look, let them see her bare ass. And she had been the one sent away, not the hooting boys who swooned at her lean nakedness.