“When exactly do you go back?” Annie called.

“Couple weeks,” Raj said.

Lew looked up. “Why do you have to go back there?”

“I was only here for the summer.”

“Do you want to go?” Annie said.

Raj shook his head. “I hate it there.”

Alvin released himself, landing with a splash in the branch.

“You’ve soaked my dress, you stupid dummkopf,” Nora shouted.

Alvin grinned like a little carnivore, full of manic energy. “We can hide him, keep him in Lew’s barn with the pigs.”

“Wish you could live with us,” Nora said.

“You could live with me,” Lew suggested. “Don’t guess my pop would mind.”

“Why can’t you stay with Miss Winters?” Annie asked.

“She’s not family.”

“Water moccasin!” Alvin shouted, pointing at Nora’s legs. Nora screamed, but there wasn’t anything. She chased Alvin, but he was too quick, climbing that same tree.

“I wish we could all live in a house together,” Annie said.

Nora waded out of the stream and sat on the pale shale of the far bank, her body in a clear pool of sun, her blond head in leaf shade. She had turned her skirt up, tucking the hem into the elastic around her waist, and, with most of her strong, pale, wet thighs exposed, was sorting carefully through a collection of promising stones, gathered in her lap. Annie, from her high vantage, became aware that Raj and Lew, as well as Alvin, hanging once more from his branch, were also staring at Nora. It was a captivating sight: Nora’s childish attention to those stones in contrast with her new womanly body. In the bright sun on her soaked cream dress, Annie could see Nora’s bra clearly; that her nipples were erect. It was motherly, childish, sexual, and Annie, strangely excited and disturbed, could almost feel that weight of warm stones between her own legs. Wrapping her arms around her chest, she felt like a silly girl: How childish her make-believe games and notions were. An intense loathing for herself spread—a scum of skin upon the small and stagnant pond of her.

Abruptly then, Alvin freed them all, singing, “I can see your panties; I can see your panties.”

“Shut up, you.” Sitting up, Nora pushed her dress between her legs.

The spell broke. Annie’s self-loathing sank back into her, and the boys returned to their search.

Annie had never felt quite this vulnerable. She was heartbroken that Raj was leaving. He and Lew were hers, though she felt a little jealous of them sometimes. Miss Winters’s house was close to Lew’s, so Raj and Lew were often together without her, sharing the mysterious life of boys. She would find them in the fields with stick rifles, or playing basketball at that hoop nailed to a tree in the field behind Harper’s place, or at the sinkhole. She wanted the three of them to be always together, imagined them like the Lost Boys, or the Pied Piper’s children: never found, just the sound of laughter in the rocks. Raj was completely comfortable with Lew but shy around her when Lew wasn’t with them. And her relationship with Lew was strange. They kissed sometimes, and things had gone a little farther than that. It was awkward, though, and for some reason, as if it were an unspoken pact, they never touched each other in front of Raj.