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changed a law or something, because we rode fancy motor coaches on any longer trip from then on. I settled up against the window and Alex slipped in next to me.
    It was a long ride. They had a movie playing on a tiny monitor up front but we couldn't hear it.
    Alexis fell asleep on the way up, and her head fell on my shoulder.
    For some reason, I was mortified, but nobody cared. There was something else I noticed, like it was the first time ever.
    It was, ah, cold on the bus that day.
    Alexis didn't wake up until we got off the interstate, and we chatted about rides and things until the bus came to a stop at the park and we got off.
    The next thing I remember the most vividly is when we went to the wave pool. There was a water park there but we spent most of the morning on the other rides- roller coasters, and such.
    We changed to swim. For me, it was easy. I just took off my shirt. Alex went into the bathhouse and had to lock her stuff up and wear a key on a little elastic band around her wrist.
    When she walked out into the sunlight it set off something in my head.
    I'd seen Alexis in a bathing suit before. Lots of times. We used to swim at the pond up at the game lands, swim at the pool at the YMCA before it closed, swim in people's pools. I'd never seen her wear a two-piece before. A bikini. It wasn't particularly risqué or anything, it just bared her midriff and showed a lot of cleavage, more than I'd ever seen her show before, even at the prom. I stared at her. Then she went into the water. It was one of those big, artificial wave pools. She ducked under the first wave and came up sopping wet, water running down her back in big drops and streaming from her hair, and she turned around and swam back into the water and looked back at me.
    I bolted for the water and ran in after her, chased her, splashed her. Our bodies collided in the water. Nothing feels like soft, smooth skin underwater. Her legs slipped around me once and she gave me an odd, almost confused look before she wriggled away and swam deeper into the waves, and I followed.
    There were water slides and all that but we spent the entire day in the wave pool, just swimming around and circling each other like the world's most confused sharks. The only time we separated was to head into the bathhouses and get changed and dry off. Alex just put her t-shirt and shorts on over her bathing suit and her hair was damp. Even now, if I smell chlorine, it reminds me of the smell of her hair as she sat next to me on the back of the bus and put her head on my shoulder.
    She slept all the way home. I stayed awake, looking around the bus, wondering when somebody, a teacher or whoever, was going to give us shit for displaying affection in public. When no one did, I put my arm around her and she settled against my side, yawned without waking and put her arm around me.
    Somebody was watching us. One of the teachers. I never had her, she was too new, she just started teaching to years before, right before the bridge collapsed. She was weirdly shy for a teacher and tall for a woman. Lots of my friends had crushes on her, and the more crude ones talked about her until somebody told them to shut the fuck up. She looked tired and lonely sitting there watching us from the corner of her eye, toying with the end of her super long braid. I swear the thing was past her waist.
    She could have said something any time but she never did, just kept an eye on us now and then. Not like I'd try anything on the bus.
    As the journey home rolled on, I started to dread the end of the trip when Alexis would wake up and pull away from me and the magic moment would be over. It was like that morning still; I looked at her and saw all that she was all these years, but now I looked at her and saw something else, too. It changed the way I remembered everything. That day she was standing on the rock with the rays of light shining down between the trees, she was changed in my mind into this wood nymph, delicate