“Go drown,” Ben said, and he thought it sounded pretty cool. Ben was starting to see how he would soon feel easy with them. Hutch and Evan walked down to the end of the dock and dove in, the only ones in the water.

Ben reclined again and closed his eyes. When he had started winning at squash he had expected that suddenly his body would change, that he would look more like a man.

“Hold on, ‘Weeksy’? Are you Teddy Weeks’s brother?”

Ben opened his eyes again. From the encampment to his left, another girl was looking at him.

She had a weakish chin and brown-green eyes that were slightly too close together. She was wearing a lightweight blue sweatshirt even in the heat but wasn’t sweating, and she sat up hugging her knees like the other girl had done a few minutes before.

“You’re Teddy Weeks’s brother?” she said again.

“No.” Ben had been working up this line for the last few days: “He’s my brother.”

“Wait, what?”

“Well…I just, why can’t he be my brother instead of me being his?”

“I don’t…follow.” The other girls next to this girl were listening now, one Asian and one blond-ish, neither of them particularly good-looking.

“Why do I have to be defined by him, I guess is what I’m saying.”

“Oh, good, because I was going to say he was an enormous asshole, but because you’re not defined by him, I don’t have to say that,” she said. “But you two were, um, born from the same woman? Who was impregnated by the same man.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so, what’s your name, Not-Teddy?”

“I’m Ben.”

They reached to shake hands, and Ben saw why she was wearing a sweatshirt. As she leaned over to him and extended her hand, the fabric went taut with the weight of her breasts. It was all Ben could do not to look down at her chest.

“Alice.” She let go and had to lean back slightly to bring her chest behind her legs again.

“I’m Ben.”

“Yup, you said that.”

The breeze turned and her smell came to Ben and then went away so quickly that he wasn’t sure it was hers. He understood that if he didn’t say anything the conversation would fail.

“Did he really jump off the boathouse roof?” Ben asked.

“Who?”

“Ted—”

“—I’m not sure who you mean, this ‘Teddy’ person…”