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Cheryl?"
    "Maybe Sally dumped him. Maybe he likes the way Cheryl dances." Ellie swings her purse by its long strap. "She was really getting on my nerves last night, acting so superior, like we were dumb kids faking being drunk."
    "We were drunk," I say, "but not so drunk we went off in the woods with a boy."
    Suddenly neither one of us likes Cheryl. We criticize her clothes, the tight shorts and low-necked blouse she wore last night, the way she danced with Ralph. We're sure she bleaches her hair even though she swears she doesn't. Nobody's a natural blond except Scandinavians.
    Ellie says, "Cheryl had a big pimple on her chin this morning, did you notice?"
    We laugh and sing the Clearasil song.
    "What's so special about Cheryl anyway?" I ask. "Why do boys like her so much? She's not all that pretty. Her teeth are so big she looks like a chipmunk."
    We laugh again.
    Ellie reminds me of the time Cheryl sneaked out of a slumber party and stayed out all night with Buddy.
    I was there. I definitely remember.
    "That's why they like her," Ellie says. "She pets and stuff."
    What exactly does petting mean, I wonder. Letting a boy touch your breasts or put his hand on your knee, maybe more. Stuff you'd have to confess, that's for sure. But Cheryl's not Catholic, she doesn't have to tell a priest what she does with boys.
    "What do you think she was doing with Ralph down in the woods last night?" Ellie asks.
    We look at each other, wondering...
    By now, the trees have closed in around us, silent in the morning coolness, their trunks tall and straight. Slants of sunlight knife down through the leaves and dapple the path.
    Ellie tells me about a story she read in
True Romance
magazine. "The girl was a tease. She got a bad reputation and..."
    While Ellie talks, I glance over my shoulder, suddenly alert to a difference in the silence. A rustling in the leaves, a branch snapping, a sense of being watched, just like last night.
    I glance at Ellie. She's fallen silent. Has she noticed something too?
    A crow takes sudden flight from a branch. His alarmed cry sets off a chorus of caws from dozens of crows. They all fly up into the air and circle the treetops. A murder of crows, that's what my English teacher calls them—a flock of sparrows, a gaggle of geese, a murder of crows.
    "I knew a boy once who had a pet crow," Ellie says. "He taught him to talk. And then some older boy shot him with a BB gun and killed him. It was so sad. Tommy really loved that crow."
    "That's horrible." I swing my purse at a bee. "Get away!"
    A few minutes later we come to the footbridge. Buddy's leaning against the rail, smoking a cigarette. It must have been his eyes watching us through the trees.
    "Have you seen Cheryl?" he asks.
    Ellie shakes her head. "She and Bobbi Jo left for school early." "We overslept," I added. "They didn't want to wait for us."
    Neither one of us gives him Cheryl's message. I hate to say it, but he looks so miserable I almost feel sorry for him.
    "I wanted give her a ride to school," he says. "I thought maybe if I told her I was sorry, maybe she'd, I mean..." He lets the words trail off into a shrug and takes a long drag on his cigarette.
    I watch him exhale a thin stream of smoke. My face feels hot with embarrassment. He's pathetic, pitiful, not like he was in the picnic grove. I glance at Ellie. Neither of us says anything.
    "You want a ride?" he asks. "You'll be late if you walk."
    We look at each other. He's right. Even with a ride we might be late, but not
as
late.
    Ellie nods and we follow the path out of the woods and through a field of tall weeds. Buddy's old black Ford is parked at the end of Chester Street. All three of us crowd together in the front seat. I'm in the middle, jammed so close to Buddy our shoulders and arms touch. This is where Cheryl used to sit, I think, with her hand on his knee. I look at his knee and wonder what it's like to put your hand on a boy's knee. And then break up with him.
    At first no one says