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little, and having accepted no so readily my whole life. Probably I should be thanking him, because if he’d been any more of a father to Lulu, she would have only been more of a sister to me, and as it stood, she was so much more. Without her, I may just as well have been silent, because most people could not seem to hear my voice. Often when I spoke to the twins, they looked at me like Saint Bernards. I’ll admit there was a genuine eagerness to connect in those big, dull eyes—a light of recognition that fl ashed now and again, causing them to tilt their heads in wonder—but no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t speak Saint Bernard. I couldn’t speak Big Bill, or even Willow. Couldn’t speak gym teacher, or math teacher either. I could only speak Lulu, and through Lulu I could speak to the world.
    I was willing to share anything with Lulu without fear of shame or betrayal. There was no secret that I could possibly keep from her, nor she from me. And fi nally, one evening in the trophy room, where we congregated under the pretense of Scrabble, beneath the waning light of dusk coming through the window, Lulu showed me everything without embarrassment. Lifting her blouse over her head and deftly unclasping her bra, she revea led to me the milky-white protu berances budding beneath her blouse. She let me run my hands once over them, let me heft the plumpness in the palm of my hand and run my thumb over the impossibly soft pink skin of her areolas until the nipples began to rise. Nothing that came before had ever prepared me for such a thrill. And more thrilling still was the promise of more—a lifetime of more.
    Before I knew it, it was over, and she was fastening her bra. “You still haven’t showed me yours,” she said.
    “It’s not the same,” I pleaded. For, indeed, there remained one diminutive hairless secret, which I was loathe to reveal, the same secret that inspired my tardiness to swim meets, which found me straggling into the locker room three minutes after the bell so that I could undress in solitude.
    “It’s easy just showing me your boobs,” I observed. “It’s different with mine.”
    “I’ll show you more, then.”
    And so my fate was sealed. Lulu kept one eye on the doorknob as she unzipped her jeans and leaned back against the dresser. She slid the dark denim down with her underthings, over her knobby knees, until the cloth was gathered about her ankles and I could see a little spotting on her underpants, which I knew to be period blood. Numb with expectation, my eyes sought hers for approval, and when it was granted, I got down on my knees and gazed upon the downy hair of her lap. It formed a lovely letter V, cleft down the middle by a fl eshy delicate thing, an exotic fruit I’d only dreamed of. I was so close to her lap that I could actually inhale the odor of it, the faint muskiness of a perfumed neck on a hot afternoon. I knew its softness without touching it. I did not even attempt to touch her, though I suspect that Lulu would have allowed me. I wanted to savor that for later.
    And that, my friends, is the mark of innocence. I could’ve kneeled there the rest of my days looking and smelling, and probably would have, had Lulu not prompted me otherwise.
    “Get up,” she said, pulling her pants up, her gaze still split between the door and her jeans.
    And when the time came for me to hold up my end of the bargain, the blood went out of me, and I wanted for the life of me to disappear.
    “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to,” she said.
    “But I do. It’s just that … ” Ever so deliberately, as though I were undressing for the gallows, I unfastened my jeans. “It’s really small,”
    I cautioned.
    “So?”
    “I mean, really small.”
    “Just show me.”
    When at last I exposed my willy to the cold air, I clamped my eyes shut, and when Lulu did not laugh, or gasp at my abnormality, I unclamped my lids to fi nd her kneeling before me, gazing in wonder at my