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about to refuse. Except for a couple of surfers in wet suits near the pier, the beach was nearly deserted. She was suddenly afraid of being alone with him, but he could hardly harm her there, in sight of the houses lining the Strand.
    He led her through the opening in the wall onto the sand. A group of gulls alighted near them, watching with beady eyes as they passed. She shivered; Tad, in a tweed jacket and jeans, did not seem to notice the chill. “It’s colder than I expected,” she said. “I guess all that propaganda made me think you have an endless summer out here.”
    “I was surprised to see you,” Tad said. “I wanted to speak to you on the pier, but then I thought you might not want to see me. I was thinking of the last time—”
    “I was hoping you’d forgotten that,” she said quickly.
    “Oh, I can’t blame you. I must have seemed pretty hopeless.”
    She slipped her arm from his and walked toward the ocean. It was all coming back to her now, more vividly than she had ever recalled it before.
     
    He had been the fat, pimpled boy who sat next to her in geometry. She had paid little attention to him, but he had surprised her by calling her up one day to talk about their homework.
    Tad did not ask her out; she doubted he had ever dated anyone. But she pitied him a little and could talk to him about her ambitions, the books she read, the interests she usually cloaked. She did not ask him to her house, but occasionally met him in places where her friends were not likely to see them—at the playground for small children near her street, or at a delicatessen in the city adjoining their suburb. They met only to talk; she did not think of their meetings as dates. She might have guessed that Tad would assign more importance to them.
    He called her early one Friday evening. He had walked two miles from his house to her neighborhood and was calling from a pay phone; he wanted to come over. Carelessly, she agreed.
    Patti, Louise and Dena arrived only moments after she hung up. Her face burned as she listened to the babble of her friends and tried to think of how to get rid of them. Patti was saying something about a party; Jacqueline could guess what her cousin would think when she saw Tad.
    Her friends were unusually perceptive that evening and noticed her nervousness almost immediately; she had to speak. “I can’t go,” she blurted out. “Someone’s coming over.”
    “Who?” Patti asked.
    “It’s—well, it’s Tad Braun. It’s just—he’s supposed to help me with some homework.”
    Dena rolled her eyes; Louise looked disgusted. “Tad Braun?” Patti shrieked. “You’re going to see Tad Braun on a Friday night?”
    “It’s almost like having a date with him,” Dena said.
    “I need some help in geometry,” Jacqueline mumbled. She knew it was a poor reason to give as soon as she spoke. The other girls were aware of her grades; they had copied her homework often enough.
    “Maybe Jackie likes him,” Louise said maliciously. “Wait until I tell—”
    “I don’t!” Jacqueline cried, terrified of what the other girls might do. She was in the middle of denying Louise’s suspicions when Tad came to the door.
    She knew that she should have sent him away quickly, tried to tell him she would call him later, but that hadn’t been enough for her friends. They pulled him through the door, ushered him to the sofa, and made the bewildered boy sit down as they grouped themselves around him.
    Their words, their callous remarks and cruel comments about his weight, his complexion, his clumsiness, awful clothes, and wretched personality had been designed to show him his place and rob him of any shred of self-esteem. His face grew mottled with humiliation; Jacqueline saw the message in his pained eyes as he looked at her. Tell them I’m your friend, his eyes said; tell them that you hate what they’re saying, that I mean something to you.
    But she said nothing; she even laughed with her friends. He