"Somehow that doesn't improve my mood."

"Not saying it should. But you can't blame her. There she was, living dumb and happy with your brother, nice enough guy, fun to look at and treats her good, mostly, and then along comes his baby sister and boom, she's like-Mom, with sixteen-year-old kids hanging around, and that guy she's so into doesn't hardly give her the time of day anymore. Of course she's p.i.s.sy about it."

I stared at him. "I'm seventeen. Not that it's any of your business. And how old do you think Jack is, anyway?"

"Oh, I'm not saying I don't have my opinions about your brother," he said. "I've got plenty of those. All I'm saying is that if Becka's not happy with the way things are, well, it's her house, and you've got to make do with that if you want to hang around. Which I guess you do."

I gave him my iciest look and said, "Exactly what opinions do you have about my brother?"

Michael shrugged. "I never trust anybody with that much charm." He pulled a pair of sungla.s.ses from above the sun visor and put them on. "Come on. I didn't slog all the way out here to sit in the car."

I followed him, carrying the rubber sandals that Becka had bought me. The sand was hot and the water, once we got there, was clear and inviting.

"I thought this was a lake," I said. "Why are there waves?"

"It's a pretty big f.u.c.king lake." Michael took off his shirt and draped it over a rock. "Are you wearing a suit under that?" He gestured toward my shorts and T-shirt.

"Don't have a suit."

"Well, it's a hot day. You'll dry. Can you swim?"

"Sure."

He pointed at the lake. There was a cl.u.s.ter of rocks jutting out of the water about fifty feet from sh.o.r.e. "Let's go out there and come back."

"Why?"

"Give us something to do."

I stared at the rocks, gauging the distance and the calm water. "Want to race?"

Michael was wading into the lake. The water was already above his knees. "We're doing this to kill time," he said over his shoulder to me. "Why rush?"

Out in the water, which was warmer than I expected, he kept to his word, stroking slowly and lazily and sometimes turning over onto his back so that he could look at me.

"Watch out for the sharks," he called to me at one point.

"Funny," I called back.

But the truth was, as my arms and legs stretched in the warm, gla.s.sy water, my mood was lifting. I didn't look at Michael as I swam the last few strokes to the rock. The side was too slippery and steep to climb up, so he was treading water a few feet away, his wild hair slicked down against his skull.

"Better?" he said.

"What do you care?"

Michael took a mouthful of water and spit it out. "Don't get p.i.s.sed off at me. I'm just the babysitter." Then he dove underwater and headed back to sh.o.r.e. He stopped to wait for me in the shallows.

"No fair," I said. "You didn't give me a chance to rest."

"Nope." He flopped down on the hot sand.

I flopped next to him. "So what did Becka say when she asked you to do this?"

"Exact words?" He put on Becka's accent: "'Mikey, sweetie, Jack's weird little sister is visiting and I need to get her out of my hair for a day or so. You think you can take her out, show her a good time?'"

I stared at my sand-covered feet. "She called me weird?"

"She might have called you a freak. I can't remember exactly. Don't bother trying to brush that off yet. Let it dry."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Well, the way you've been doing things clearly isn't working," he said. "And I know Becka pretty well. Better for you to know where you stand."

I had nothing to say to that. I looked at his tattoos. A huge Chinese dragon, snarling and intricate, covered his left leg; the right had his name, Michael, written down the length of it in elaborate gothic script. One of his arms was completely covered with black and red ink, and the other had a bracelet of barbed wire drawn around his biceps. They were a little disturbing-I wasn't quite sure why-but beautiful.

"Did you do your tattoos yourself?" I asked him.

"Nope. The ones on my legs I had done in high school. The others a guy I work with does for me."

"Why don't you do them yourself?"

"Zenon's a better artist than I am."

"Does it hurt?"

"Get one and find out."

"Pa.s.s."

"I'll do it for you," he offered. "For free. It's not often I get to work on teenaged-girl flesh."

I turned and stared at the waves, my cheeks burning. I was suddenly conscious of the way my wet clothes were clinging to my body. "I think I'm going to go back in the water."

I started to swim back out to the rocks, but I changed my mind when I was halfway there and turned around again. Michael was lying on the sandy beach, basking in the sun like a snake. He wasn't looking at me.

Jack and Becka were somewhere else, I thought. Jack is off with a woman and I'm off with a man. People who see one of us alone have no idea that the other one exists. The thought gave me a tiny, inexplicable thrill. As I swam back to the shallows, I thought, I could be any girl in the world. Michael could be my boyfriend or my brother or even a friend.

I stood up in the shallows for a moment, looking at him. His head was turned away; he couldn't see me. He wasn't handsome-his nose had a crooked place where it might have been broken and his eyes were too small. He was thin and wiry but not muscular. I found myself wondering whether he was attractive anyway.

Suddenly something sharp dug into my heel and I yelped. Michael raised his head. His impenetrable sungla.s.ses stared out at me.

"What happened?" he called.

"I stepped on something," I called back. "It's okay."

My heel was throbbing. I picked up my wounded foot and held it in my hand, turning it so that I could see the sole. The skin of my heel was wrinkled, pale, and shiny with water. There was a small dark object, smaller than my smallest fingernail, buried under the skin. As I watched, blood welled up from the dark spot and ran down my ankle in thin streams.

Michael stood up and walked toward me.

"You're bleeding pretty good," he said. "You want me to carry you in?"

"Just let me hang onto you while I hop," I said.

He gave me his arm and I limped to the water's edge, where a knee-high ledge had eroded away from the sh.o.r.e, and sat down.

"Ouch." I gripped my heel tightly. "It really hurts."

"Move your hands so I can see it." He felt around the wound. "There's something in there. Hang on, I've got a knife in my truck."

"Knife?" I said, but he was already sauntering up the beach toward the road and the Jeep, and I remained at the edge of the water, bleeding into Lake Erie.

This is a place I never expected to be, I thought.

A moment later, Michael was back with a big bone-handled pocketknife. "Lie down on your stomach. Got to dig it out."

"I'm not squeamish."

"I'm a tattoo artist. I know about people and pain-and tattoos don't hurt half as much as this is going to. Lie down on your stomach. The last thing I need is you jerking your foot and me cutting it off."

I did as he said and he took my foot into his lap. My toes were pressed against his leg. The drying cotton of his pant leg was warm against my skin. He bent over my heel and I felt the knife cut like a bright flash into the throbbing.

"Easy," he said. "You know, you should have taken me up on the tattoo offer. It really isn't as bad as this and you'd have artwork under your skin forever. This way"-and the knife dug again into the meat of my heel-"all you'll get out of it is a scar. There."

Twisting my body around, I sat up and held out my palm. He dropped a small, b.l.o.o.d.y pebble into it. The pebble had only one sharp edge. "You hit it just right. Bad luck."

I threw the thing out into the water.

"You're bleeding on me," Michael said, and I realized that my legs were still across his. I was almost in his lap. One of his hands, the one that wasn't holding the b.l.o.o.d.y knife, was resting lightly on my ankle.

"I want to rinse this off." I moved so that I could swirl my wounded foot around in the water. "I hope you were kidding about the sharks."

He stood up, brought his shirt from the rock it was draped across, and handed it to me. It was a regular white sleeveless undershirt. "Wrap this around it."

"I'll bleed on it. It'll get ruined."

"They're three for six dollars at the SuperMart. I can spare it."

"Thanks." I held it pressed to my foot all the way back to Becka's house. By the time we got there, the bleeding had slowed. Michael covered the cut with a piece of gauze from the first-aid kit in his glove box, and I put on my sandals.

For a minute we sat in the car and stared silently at the small white house. Becka's car was still parked at the curb in front of it.

"Do you think it's safe to go inside?" I asked. He shrugged, inscrutable behind his sungla.s.ses, and smiled his little smile. "Guess I'll give it a shot anyway."

"I'll hang around for a second or two just in case. Nice meeting you."

"Likewise," I said. "Thanks for digging the rock out of my foot."

I hopped out of the Jeep, feeling unexpectedly lighthearted. But the closer I got to the house, the heavier my mood grew. Jack was there, but I didn't want to go back in.

As I walked into the front room, I heard the unmistakable sounds of loud, vigorous s.e.x coming from the bedroom. I stood for a moment, not knowing what to do.

Through the wall, Jack moaned.

The Jeep was still idling outside. "Not safe after all?" Michael said.

"Not by a long shot." My hands were shaking. "Can I have a cigarette?"

"In the glove box," he said. "So what do you want to do for the rest of the day?"

"I don't care. Do you have anything planned?"

"Free as a bird."

"Then take me somewhere."

We bought strombolis and wine coolers from a dingy little Italian takeout place, and then Michael took me to the park downtown. There was a university nearby, and although it was summer there were still a few young people lying around on blankets, reading books with glossy covers, oblivious to the world. We sprawled out on the soft, thick gra.s.s under a tree.

I sat cross-legged and tore idly at a fallen leaf. Michael stretched out next to me, with his head propped up on his hand. His long legs, with their dark tattoos, drew curious glances from the strollers, but he didn't seem to notice. He was watching a couple nearby, obviously college students; they were both reading, the boy lying on his back and holding a paperback book in the air over him and the girl on her stomach reading a heavy textbook. They both had highlighter pens. Sometimes, without a word, one of them would tap the other on the shoulder and they'd trade highlighters.

Michael said, "s.e.x, college-style."

"Like entropy."

"Disintegration into chaos?" He saw my expression. "Hey, I watch television, too, babe."

I don't, I thought. "Disintegration, yeah, but it's also-wasted energy, I guess. Energy that you can't actually use for anything, because it sort of-burns itself out by existing." I pointed at the college kids. "Like spending all of your time reading about things other people have done."

He shook his head. "Pa.s.s."

"Me too."

His eyebrows went up. "You? h.e.l.l, you're still a baby. Who knows where you'll end up."

I looked at the girl studying on the blanket. She was wearing a clean, pretty blouse and exactly the right amount of makeup. Then I looked at my hands. "Not like them."

Michael looked at me for a long moment. "No," he said. "Not you. Not either of us."

We sat in silence for a while, watching the college couple, and then I said, "Jack says you fence things."

Michael gazed lazily up at the tree branches moving in the breeze. "From time to time, I am capable of finding homes for objects that have lost their way."

"How does one get into that line of business?"

"You're asking a lot of questions."

"You bought me alcohol, and I'm underage. And you gave me a cigarette before."

"In for a dime, in for a dollar?"