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stupid.”
    “But—”
    “I don’t want to talk about it anymore. Hey, look. Here come Tad and Billy. I wonder what they’re doing all the way over here?”
    She finally sounded happy, but my stomach clenched. We were out here alone, miles from the beach, and boys were coming. Big boys, bigger than we were. They were both wrestlers; they won prizes for keeping people pinned on mats. “We’d better leave,” I said. “Do they see us?”
    “What? Of course they see us, dodo! They’re coming to say hello. What’s your problem?”
    “Nothing,” I said, although I felt as if I were about to be sick. I didn’t see how Jane could be so comfortable around boys. It must have been because she had all those brothers. “I don’t like them, that’s all.”
    “Huh. Well, I think Billy’s cute, personally. Hey, Billy!”
    Billy sat behind me in social studies, and I thought he was a dumb hulk. But she was calling him and waving, and we were on the dock, on a thin piece of wood sticking out into the water. They could stand at the end of it and keep us from getting back onto shore; they could throw us down and pin us and no one would know because we were so far from the beach.
    I never should have brought Jane here. I was safe here by myself, but she attracted too much attention, and now everyone would know where I went when I wanted to be alone, I needed a place to be safe, and she’d ruined it. But I’d never been safe, had I? Everyone had known about the dock all along, I hadn’t been safe at all.
    “How you doing?” Billy asked, slouching towards us. His fingers were as big around as sausages.
    Tad trailed behind him, looking hot and bored and stupid. “Hey, Jane. Emma. Just hanging out? I thought you geniuses studied all the time.”
    “Nah,” Jane said. “Too nice a day.” She started talking to Billy about the math test while Tad stared at her breasts beneath the thin cotton. Nobody was paying any attention to me.
    They’d seen us here and knew we were alone, and Billy was distracting her while Tad stared at her, just stared, stared all he wanted and thought about what he wanted to do to her. I could see the gleam in his eyes, see him wiping his palms on his jeans.
    How could she keep talking about math? Couldn’t she tell what was happening? She wasn’t even paying attention, just sitting there chattering at Billy. He started boasting about the latest wrestling meet, and Tad took a step closer to Jane.
    “There’s an old rowboat around here someplace,” he said, interrupting Billy’s description of his winning hold. “Somebody just left it on shore. We were going to look for it and see if it would float and go out in it. Want to come?”
    “Sure,” Jane said. She stood up, and her breasts jiggled, and Tad wiped his hands on his jeans again. “Does it have oars? You mean somebody just left it there?”
    “It’ll be an adventure,” Billy said cheerfully, and I hated him because he was using my word. Had he and Tad heard me talking to Jane about Ginny’s room? Had they been spying on us? “If it sinks, we can all swim back to shore.”
    The boat wasn’t hers any more than the ladder was. It didn’t even belong to her family. How could she do this? “It’s not yours,” I said, too loudly, thinking of how much more Jane’s tank top would show if it were wet. I knew I should warn her, but my throat wouldn’t form the words. You mustn’t ever tell anyone, he’d said, and I couldn’t. “You shouldn’t take it if it isn’t yours. Right, Jane?”
    They all looked at me as if they’d forgotten I was there, and Billy laughed. “Oh, come on, Emma. Whoever had it, they don’t want it anymore, or they wouldn’t have left it there. They abandoned it.”
    “It’s not safe,” I said, looking straight at Jane. There were two of them. She didn’t have her baseball bat with her, and I’d be no help at all. I’d never been any good at fighting. “The boat’s not ours and we have to go