Now the girl was beside Eddie, and as though in a gesture of respect she dropped to her knees, looking like a child beside him, with a soft smile and a face like a seal pup’s.

“Rhonda—dis haole Joe Sharkey.”

Sharkey awkwardly got to his feet but could not think of anything to say, not even “Hi.” He felt so conspicuous among the other boys.

“Go wid him.”

“Aloha,” Sharkey said, swallowing hard, and walked across the sand to the parking lot where he’d left his car, glad for the darkness that closed over him. He was careful not to look back, but when he got to his car, the girl was behind him. She slipped into the backseat, leaving the door open.

Sharkey got into the driver’s seat and gripped the steering wheel.

“What are you doing back there?” he said.

“Taking my clothes off.” Her first words, a squeaky island voice, singsong, baby talk.

“Why?” he said, and did not recognize his thick throaty voice.

“Come here and find out.”

He was trembling as he sat beside her, taking care to close the door so that it hardly made a sound. As he began to hug her, leaning to kiss her, she took a wad of gum out of her mouth and flicked it through the window.

“What are you doing?”

“I don’t want it,” she said, her breath thick with the sweetness of bubble gum.

“What do you want?”

“I want you in my mouth.”

The spoken words worked on him with more force than if she had caressed him, and she said them again in a hot urgent whisper. Then her little hands were snatching at his shorts and her head was nuzzling his lap, until he lay back and rested his hands on her bobbing head, her warm hair in his fingers.

Like the first time he’d surfed a barrel, shooting to the end as the wave closed over him, flinging himself into the sunlight, this was explosive, a relief, filling him with joy and promising more—promising happiness.

The Colonel had warned him, his mother had warned him, and now he knew why. Desire was dangerous to them; they knew they’d lose him to it and never learn his secret.

Rhonda sat up and sighed, shrugged her breasts back into her torn T-shirt and at the same time passed a fingertip across a gleaming snail trail on her cheek, drew it to her lips, and licked it. Then she let out what Sharkey heard as a giggle of wickedness and complicity, but it was only a shy girl’s laughter.

“I want more,” he said into her hair.

“Me too.” Her mouth warmed his ear.

“I have to go now, Rhonda.”

“I see you tomorrow, Joe.”

“You know me?”

“Everybody see Joe Sharkey, but you nevah pay no attention.”