Rae wiped sweat from her upper lip and stared down into her book with a frothy, unsettling feeling in her groin. She wanted so much more out of this world.

Out in the water, Kimmy was creating bubbles in her palm and releasing them one at a time to the surface. She said to Ryan, “Does your sister like boys or girls?”

“What?”

“Because there’s a boy at my school who grew his hair out long and it’s because he likes boys. He’s gay, that’s why he wants to have long hair and look like a girl, because he likes boys. I just wondered, with Alex doing that with her hair, I wondered if she likes boys or girls.”

Ryan looked at Kimmy. “Neither,” he said.

Kimmy laughed. “Really?”

Ryan laughed too, then he went underwater for a moment, and when he came up he had a small shell in his hand.

Kimmy said, “I like Alex. I don’t care if she likes boys or girls. I was just curious. But I really don’t care one way or the other.”

Ryan said, “Me either.”

He held the shell out to Kimmy. It was beautiful, the outer cone brown and grayish, soft pink on the inside vortex. He said, “This is a hawk-wing conch.”

Kimmy said, “Hawk-wing conch.”

“Doesn’t look like there’s a little guy in there now, but these shells house marine gastropods.”

“Gas—what?”

“Sea snails,” Ryan said.

Kimmy examined the shell. “I want to put it on a necklace. Could you keep it in your pocket for me?”

Ryan put the shell in the zippered pocket of his swim trunks. He wiped salt water from his eyes and dug his toes deep into the sand.

Kimmy did a headstand, then came up and said, “I heard that in West Virginia the kids get a day off school to go hunting. Is that true? Like a day off, like a holiday? That is so weird!”

Ryan nodded.

Kimmy said, “Do you do it?”

“I don’t like hunting myself, but a lot of my friends go with their dads on Hunting Day.”

“Is West Virginia full of hicks? It must be, if you get a day off school to go shoot animals in the woods.”

Ryan ran a hand through his wet hair. “Some people there rely on hunting to eat. They haul in a buck, that’s fifty pounds of meat they can freeze and eat all winter long, when they might not be able to afford to buy that much meat from the grocery.”

Kimmy’s easy smile and happy mood vanished immediately. She felt something bad and hard inside and said, “I’m sorry.”

Ryan laughed generously and dropped low into the water and kicked back so that he was floating. “Don’t be. I’m sorry I made you feel bad. That’s just life where I’m from. I know it’s different where you’re from.” He remained afloat on his back without moving a single muscle. He said, “Can you float?”

Kimmy said, “How do you mean?”