She tried to move through the crowd like it was a dance. She put a reason behind each step she took. Dee had danced the part of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland at the end of the semester in her ballet class. She still remembers how the steps, the chaînés, arabesques and développés became something different the moment she felt like a caterpillar. So now each step she took was a dance, heading toward a great romance. She imagined people (boys) watching her as she passed, though she couldn’t see anyone actually watching. She imagined their thoughts. How long and glossy her hair was, how different she seemed to other girls, how mysterious, as if she had a secret. She imagined it really hard so that the other thoughts didn’t come in, like about how her butt was too big and her chin was a weird shape.

She picked her way to the shoreline and sat down in the damp sand at the water’s edge. In the shallows was a flotilla of bobbing toddlers in water wings. Farther out, by the buoys, the lake was still, showing back the treeline and the sky in dark, upside-down perfection. She could imagine monsters out there, lurking just below the sleek green surface. The air smelled of burgers grilling and Dee made her yeeeugh face. Her thing at the moment was to despise food. It seemed important to maintain it, even if only to herself. Ballerinas don’t eat burgers.

“Hi.” Something loomed over her, throwing a tall shadow. Then it sat down, scuffing sand, and became human-sized. It was a guy. He was thin, yellow-headed. She could see swirls of white lotion on his pale skin.

“Hi,” said Dee. He had to be at least nineteen. She was suddenly aware that her palms were sweating and her heart was beating nervous and light. What would they talk about?

“I’m Trevor,” he said, and offered a hand to shake, which was very dorky and made Dee smirk. But she was also relieved because it made him seem familiar, what her mother would call “raised right.”

Dee lifted one eyebrow, something she had just learned to do. “How’s it hanging?” She didn’t take his hand.

Trevor blushed. “OK,” he said, wiping his hand on his shorts as if that was what he meant to do all along. “Are you here with your folks?”

Dee shrugged. “I managed to lose them,” she said.

He smiled, like he appreciated the joke. “Where are they?”

“All the way over by the lifeguard stand,” she said, pointing. “They were sleeping and I was bored.”

“Your parents?”

“And my little sister.”

“How old is she?”

“Six,” Dee said. She didn’t want to talk about her family anymore. “Where do you go to school?”

“UW,” he said.

“Cool.” So he was in college. “I go to Pacific,” she said. It was nearly true.