And then Heather Hale walked by.

As always, she was in tight jeans and had perfectly curled hair. Blond wings framed her face; she had a ski-jump nose and a slight limp. Heather Hole, they called her. I liked her, but she never seemed to have much to say to me. She walked by the bush, avoiding the clearing. I could see her, heading for the subdivision cul-de-sac.

Heather walked like an old man, as though she was slowly going blind, unsure of her step.

Dean whistled, put his hand on my knee in that shut-up kind of way.

Hey hose, he said.

Hey garden hose, Bruce said.

Dale made a motion near his crotch, as if he was whipping a snake around.

Heather kept walking, but I saw her wilt. Wilt and crumple. God, get her some oxygen, I almost said. She was a tough stoner girl. She had a leather purse full of silver-foiled balls of hash and stolen Maybelline. Once, she’d changed her tampon in front of me while sipping her father’s gin. But now I knew she was soft. She should have known better. She had this soft, hurt look as she limped by.

What’s the garden hose? I asked. Heather had gone into her car, but I couldn’t see her face. Her windshield was covered with rain.

They answered me, probably only because a question from me caught them off guard.

So, lucky me, sitting in the enchanted forest, missing math class. Getting to hear all the details of how they’d spent Friday night putting a garden hose up Heather. After they’d gone there. Dean, Dale, Bryce, Bruce. One by one. Then they washed her out, washed her clean. She was really clean, man, she was so wet. And she loved it, they said, she loved the way we cleaned her.

Dean broke a branch with his hands as Bryce spoke. Bryce spoke, I wouldn’t say proudly. He spoke of the garden hose incident like it was a distant fun break, a video game. I kept looking at Dean, and I really didn’t know what to do because I didn’t know if this was normal, if burnout idiots did that shit all the time because they read in Hammer of the Gods that Robert Plant did the same thing to a groupie. I got up. I didn’t feel the fever, but I felt a warmth, like a thousand fists slamming up against taut skin. A hidden current you find, but what good is it? What do you do with it? I had no idea.