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or something lunging from the shadow than by the thought that some punishing, responsible adult would barge in on the two of us. I continued to feel physically aroused in a new, unfamiliar way. I couldn’t stop thinking about the sexy Swedish movie Billy had told me about that night, and I entered the men’s room with a mix of confidence, terror, and excitement.
    Billy was standing in the center of the room, bare-chested, a skimpy white towel around his waist. At sixteen, he towered over me, and must have weighed twice as much as I did, too. He was handsome, with olive skin and sandy, straight hair like corn silk, almost down to his eyes. Instead of saying hi, or even greeting me, he said only, “Give me your dime and I’ll let you pull the towel off my waist.”
    I didn’t understand. Billy persisted. He knew that I wanted to see him without his towel, he said. I began to say something, but felt my stammer rise up and clamp the back of my throat. I was trying to buy some time. I started to say something again, and then I simply decided to relax. My arms felt light and funny, my knees boneless. What would it be like, I wondered, to go skinny-dipping with a boy? My crush on him, or whatever it was, was growing bigger by the second.
    Billy repeated his invitation. In fact, he now dared me to pull down his towel. “Either you can do it now, or we can go down to the pool,” he said, implying he was offering me an opportunity that few other girls would dream of declining.
    That first time, at least, I didn’t fall for it. Instead, the two of us made our way down the cement steps toward the swimming pool. It had turned into a soft, beautiful night. It wasn’t going to rain, after all.
    At the pool, Billy began badgering me again about skinny-dipping. First I would take off his towel, and then I’d strip off my own bathing suit, and the two of us could jump into the pool together. It’s easy, Carly. It wasn’t a proposal, or even a request, more like an order. I was starting to think this was a semi-dangerous idea. Billy stood beside me, half lit by the pool’s dim floodlights. He’d let his towel slip slightly from his rear end, the front of him still holding it up, as if it was dangling off the end of a pole.
    I wasn’t thinking, and had no idea what would happen next, when I moved forward and quickly pulled off his towel, accidentally scratching his skin with my fingernails and making him cry out, “Jeeeesus!” Nor did I sneak a glance at what the towel had been covering. At the same time, I knew I had just crossed a line, one that I wasn’t ready for.
    In a second, Billy had jumped into the pool, naked, and was asking me—no, again ordering me—to take off my bathing suit and join him. I made up the excuse that I was freezing and had to get into the shower, and I took off across the lawn back toward Stoneybroke and the women’s changing room.
    I kept my bathing suit on as I stood under the hot water in the ladies’ room shower, feeling like a character in a scary movie. I was waiting to see if Billy would follow me in, half praying he wouldn’t, half hoping he would. Two minutes later, Billy was standing in the shower stall next to me, naked. I stared down at the tiles on the floor of the shower, doing everything I could not to look at him. Billy told me not to be scared—that it was perfectly okay if I didn’t want to remove my bathing suit, the bigger point being that Joey and Lucy both “did this,” though he wasn’t clear what “this” was. Then Billy took the soap and began lathering his own naked body. Up and down. Side to side.
    Joey and Lucy did this? Did what? I was positive Billy was lying. Even though the shower water was hot, I was shivering. Billy, though, didn’t seem nervous in the least, nor, surprisingly, did he appear at all happy. No, the expression on his face was something else entirely: strange, focused, private. There was a look of determination. I can’t say I knew what he