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pronounced, the feeling that swept through me, leaving me shaken, and, as she twirled her hair onto one shoulder to come nearer with a look of slight concern, I was too unsteady to escape, certain I would destroy something delicate if I tried.
    Growing up with two brothers who weren’t nearly as polite as they behaved around adults, and friends in school who weren’t nearly as innocent as they pretended to be, I wasn’t naive. At least, I wasn’t naive enough. I knew what it meant to feel my body respond that way, to be suddenly aware of parts of my body I didn’t usually feel. I just didn’t want it to mean that, knew it couldn’t mean that, that it was wrong.
    That I was wrong.
    Even knowing I was happier than I had ever been whenever Ariel smiled at me, that I felt more important each time she said my name, that I was elated when I noticed her noticing me, I could explain those things away. I could pretend they were something else, something wholesome that didn’t make me depraved.
    The shivers that moved like fingertips down my spine as Ariel stepped closer in her see-through chemise and took the tray from my hands to set it safely on the bench, though, they couldn’t be explained as anything other than what they were.
    “Are you all right, Elizabeth?” she asked, her hands on my shoulders pressing me down next to the tray, and I couldn’t answer her, because I wasn’t at all all right. I was anything but all right, and if she knew what I was thinking as her hands slid up my arms to push my hair back, she would never touch me so freely again.
    “Elizabeth?” Nan said, and I forced a smile as I met her worried gaze over Ariel’s shoulder, knowing it was important not to worry her.
    “She’s fine,” Ariel assured Nan when I couldn’t. “It’s just the heat.”
    Grasping at the excuse, I nodded, wishing desperately it justified what I was feeling.
    “It’s only eighty degrees,” I heard myself utter quietly to Ariel.
    “But it’s been so cool up until now,” she returned, and I could feel her fingertips on my jaw as they pushed the tendrils of wet hair away as if they were under my skin.
    That was all my fault too, I realized. I had done it to myself. I wanted it when I didn’t know what it was I was wanting, for her to touch me, but it was better when she didn’t. Maybe that was why she never would, why she had always been hesitant with me. Maybe she could sense it, the aberration inside me that made her touch so shamefully gratifying.
    “You’re not used to this kind of heat,” Ariel murmured, her voice stroking each of those places I shouldn’t have felt. “It can be overwhelming when your body isn’t expecting it.”
    It wasn’t just overwhelming, though. Her hands moving over my face and shoulders, I wanted them so much in the places I shouldn’t, it was almost obsession.
    “Here, drink this,” Ariel held a glass up to me, and I realized she didn’t know. She believed what she was saying, truly thought I was weakened by the weather, the sudden change outside, instead of inside of me. “It will help.”
    Though I knew lemonade wasn’t nearly strong enough of a potion to fight the sins in my head, heart, or in my body, I did as she told me, and, as Ariel’s hand smoothed over my hair in sympathy, I realized I had lied to Scott.
    When he asked if I was unwell, I told him I was fine.
    I didn’t know at the time how sick I truly was.
    D ay after day, I waited for the feelings to recede, to absorb enough sunlight through my skin to chase the dark thoughts from my mind, but they didn’t let up, not without good cause, and Ariel was nothing but lovely to me. When she saw me, she still smiled. She still cast those amused glances my way when she got Nan really going about something. She still asked me to the garden.
    They weren’t unceasing, but, after the first one, my impure thoughts about Ariel just became part of my days. At least, they felt impure. For the most part, they were