“No, sweetheart. I told you. You’re not. You’re beautiful. I love you, but you’re only thirteen. So we can’t be fooling around.”

He didn’t look at me when he said, “You’re beautiful,” so he might as well have said, “You’re invisible.”

“I’m sorry I made you dirty.” Saying the words felt like swallowing burning cigarettes, but I had to say them.

“You didn’t make me dirty. You couldn’t, because you’re not dirty, okay?”

“Then you’re not dirty.”

“Okay, I’m not,” he said.

I slid my hand along his belly toward his buckle, but he shoved my hand onto my leg and pressed on it to make it stay. “Don’t, Wavy.”

After that my words were hot enough to burn my tongue, but I couldn’t swallow them, either. They stayed in my throat, so that I almost couldn’t breathe. I stood up and went into the kitchen, because I wasn’t going to cry in front of him again. As quietly as I could, I pulled on my coat and slipped out the back door.

Orion was in the sky, but the clouds hid him, so there was no sense cutting through the woods, where it would be dark. I followed the safety rule—walk facing traffic—and made it as far as the second stoplight before the Panhead rumbled up behind me. Kellen rode ahead and turned around to pull up facing me.

“Get on. I’ll take you home if that’s where you want to go,” he said.

I ducked my head and kept walking. After I passed him, he turned the bike around and pulled up beside me, going the wrong way down the highway, his boots dragging in the dirt of the shoulder. His arms were bare, muscles tense as he braked and clutched. He came out in his T-shirt after me, so I was guilty twice. I made him unhappy and he was cold, but walking was the only thing that kept me from crying.

“Please, Wavy. You’re breaking my heart and I don’t know what to do.”

He was unhappy when I was there, he was unhappy if I went away, and I was miserable. Now I understood what Mama’s hot, scary eyes meant when she danced with Uncle Sean. They meant everything was broken.

“I broke everything that made me happy,” I tried to say, but I had to press my hands against my eyes to stop the flood.

Kellen grabbed my wrist and put my cold fingers to his warm mouth. After he kissed the ring, the worst of the words slid down my throat. He lifted me up to the gas tank in front of him and when I kissed his neck, he didn’t stop me. After I kissed his neck, I kissed his cheek. After his cheek, his lips, and then he kissed me back. He loved me. If the mouth was a dirty place and he wasn’t afraid to kiss mine, I wasn’t too dirty.

A car honked, and Kellen said, “Get on the bike, sweetheart. It’s cold out here and we’re giving everybody a show.”

After that we only pretended to watch TV. Slow was a game. While Kellen ate the dinners I cooked for him, I ran my hands along his shoulders until he took off his shirt to have his back rubbed. Once I rubbed his back, I could touch his bare chest and his belly. Almost to his belt buckle.

Even more than I wanted food, I wanted his flesh. I wanted to touch the places where he was hard, and the places where he was soft. He didn’t like his soft places, but I wanted them the way I wanted mashed potatoes made with real butter. I had nothing on my body like the warm damp crease between his tits and belly. Nothing like the muscles that bulged in his arms when he used the pulley in the shop ceiling to hoist engines out of cars.

Kellen’s slow game was different, like getting a wild rabbit to take a piece of carrot from my hand. If I tilted my head a certain way when he kissed my mouth, he might kiss my throat, too. If I reached my arms up around his neck, his hands would slide down to my waist, searching for skin to touch in the gap between my T-shirt and skirt. I had to invite him, like the stories where you have to invite the vampire in.

Sandy said, “The right outfit will make or break a date.” Kellen would never take off my dress, but he would help my T-shirt creep up and up. Sandy was right about that, too. The tight shirts made me look older. They made Kellen want to touch more than my hair, and he didn’t mind how small my tits were.

If I went slow enough, I was allowed to touch him almost everywhere. Almost. He said, “Slow down,” so many times that even when he let me go faster, I went slow to tease him. A different game. To make him say, “Faster.”

One night in the meadow, we kissed until our lips were raw, and my T-shirt was off and my panties were wet under my skirt from rubbing against his thigh. He would run his hand up my legs, but he was too nervous to touch me there. Finally, he let me unbuckle his belt and take him in my hand. I went slow, so slow, until he was breathing hard and his voice was deep in his throat when he said, “Wavy, you’re driving me outta my mind.”

“You said slow,” I whispered in his ear.

Laughing, he squeezed my arm hard enough to hurt, and said, “Goddamn, I know I said slow, but that’s not what I meant. You’re gonna kill me if you keep doing it that way.”

I didn’t kill him, but I made him beg, sweaty and gasping. He didn’t even beg for anything. He was just begging, with my name in between. “Please, Wavy, please,” until his hips lifted off the quilt and he came. A strange word for it, like he was leaving somewhere else and arriving in the meadow with me.

Summer played games, too. It changed time, changed fast and slow.

Secretly, I knew, Kellen wanted to go fast. He said, “No, don’t. We can’t, sweetheart.” Alone with me, he turned his back while I went swimming, unless I kept my T-shirt and panties on. When Donal came swimming under the full moon, though, I took off all my clothes to swim, and Kellen watched me. I came out of the tank naked and went to him, trailing water through the grass. When I put my arms around him and stamped my wet shape on his T-shirt, he didn’t say, “No, don’t.” He said, “Oh, Wavy,” in his begging voice. He ran his hands down my slippery sides to my hips, and kissed me until Donal said, “Ew, gross! No suck-face!”