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while they were supposedly watching the movie.

    � 34 � The Last Summer (of You and Me)

    Paul lived with a housekeeper during those summers, while his mother spent most of the time visiting friends in Europe. He lived with a different housekeeper every summer from age twelve to age eighteen. He suspected that his mother didn't want him to get too close to any one of them for fear it would seem like she was losing her job. Paul spent all his time next door anyhow.

    Kids got their independence younger here than in other places. The main predator of children and deer was the automobile, and there weren't any cars on the island, so the children and the deer were mangy, plentiful, and free. "It's the one place in the world where I don't have to worry about abductions," he remembered Judy, the news junkie, saying one time.

    "What about alien abductions?" Riley had asked.

    There had been alien abductions. Or so it had seemed to them. Rosie Newell, for example. He remembered the fateful night when she'd made a lot of noise about organizing the whole group into a circle. The movie projector was busted for the third week in a row, so most of the little kids had gone home. There were probably fif teen or so kids left between the ages of eleven and fourteen. And then there was Alice, of course, who must have been ten at the time. He remembered sitting on one side of Riley, with Alice on the other. He remembered that Riley was wearing the T-shirt they had tie-dyed for an arts-and-crafts project at camp the year before. They had no idea what was coming until Rosie, surrounded by her gum-chewing, belly-baring posse, produced a bottle from behind her back with a flourish. It was a clear glass beer bottle, Corona, Paul remembered.

    � 35 � Ann Brashares

    "I'll go first," Rosie had declared.

    "Go first at what?" Riley asked. She looked suspicious.

    "Isn't it obvious?" Rosie replied, looking to her friends, girls like Becca Fines and Megan Cooley, for backup. She went ahead and spun the bottle. "If you're a girl and it lands on a girl, you spin again," Rosie explained, all business. "If you're a boy and it lands on a boy, same thing."

    "What if you're Riley?" Becca said.

    Immediately Becca's gang of friends were giggling and making a show of trying to cover it up.

    Paul remembered staring straight ahead as the shame and agony unfolded. He wanted to pretend like he hadn't heard it. He wanted to pretend Riley hadn't heard it, either. He couldn't even turn his head to look at her. He remembered the feeling of blood pounding in his temples.

    "Shut up, Becca," Alice said through her teeth.

    "Go away, Alice," Becca shot back.

    Paralyzed, Paul stared straight ahead as the bottle spun slower and settled.

    "It's on Paul," Rosie declared, even though it was really closer to Alice. Riley was already on her feet. Rosie stood, too, looking mischievously at him.

    "It has to be on the lips," Jessica Loomis shouted.

    This broke Paul's paralysis. He remembered Rosie walking toward him straight through the middle of the circle. He stood up and took a step back.

    "You have to, Paul. It's the rule," Becca declared, chomping her gum aggressively.

    � 36 � The Last Summer (of You and Me)

    "He never said he was playing," Riley said in an even voice.

    "I'm not playing. It's a stupid game," Paul said. He'd wished he'd had half of Riley's dignity. "Let's go," he said to Riley.

    "Chicken," Rosie taunted.

    Riley cast a look at the part of the circle where their friends sat, Alex, Michael, Jared, Miranda. Paul expected them to get up and fol low, but none of them moved. The girly-girls had always resented Riley for being the leader, for being the one girl all the boys wanted to play with. Paul expected nothing good from them, but he was sur prised about the other kids. Only Alice tagged along after them.

    After that, he remembered, they'd broken into the market and stolen 3 Musketeers bars. They'd skipped stones at the bay, where Riley