She caught him at lunch. He was sitting in a corner of the schoolyard, eating from a paper sack of mushrooms and dried rabbit and keeping an eye on Edward-Frederick-George as he played tag with the other kindergartners. She snuck up behind him and dropped a handful of gravel down the gap of his pants and into his underpants. He sprang to his feet, sending gravel rattling out the cuffs of his jeans.

"Hey!" he said, and she popped something into his mouth. It was wet and warm from her hand and it squirmed. He spat it out and it landed on the schoolyard with a soft splat.

It was an earthworm, thick with loamy soil.

"You!" he said, casting about for a curse of sufficient vehemence. "You!"

She hopped from foot to foot in front of him, clearly delighted with this reaction. He reached out for her and she danced back. He took off after her and they were chasing around the yard, around hopscotches and tag games and sand castles and out to the marshy woods. She skidded through the puddles and he leapt over them. She ducked under a branch and he caught her by the hood of her windbreaker.

Without hesitating, she flung her arms in the air and slithered out of the windbreaker, down to a yellow T-shirt that rode up her back, exposing her pale freckles and the k.n.o.bs of her spine, the fingers of her ribs. She took off again and he balled the windbreaker up in his fist and took off after her.

She stepped behind a bushy pine, and when he rounded the corner she was waiting for him, her hands clawed, digging at his tummy, leaving him giggling. He pitched back into the pine needles and she followed, straddling his waist and tickling him until he coughed and choked and gasped for air.

"Tell me!" she said. "Tell me your secrets!"

"Stop!" Alan said. "Please! I'm going to p.i.s.s myself!"

"What's that to me?" she said, tickling more vigorously.

He tried to buck her off, but she was too fast. He caught one wrist, but she pinned his other arm with her knee. He heaved and she collapsed on top of him.

Her face was inches from his, her breath moist on his face. They both panted, and he smelled her hair, which was over his face and neck. She leaned forward and closed her eyes expectantly.

He tentatively brushed his lips across hers, and she moved closer, and they kissed. It was wet and a little gross, but not altogether unpleasant.

She leaned back and opened her eyes, then grinned at him. "That's enough torture for one day," she said. "You're free to go."

She "tortured" him at morning and afternoon recess for the next two weeks, and when he left school on Friday afternoon after the last bell, she was waiting for him in the schoolyard.

"h.e.l.lo," she said, socking him in the arm.

"Hi," he said.

"Why don't you invite me over for supper this weekend?" she said.

"Supper?"

"Yes. I'm your girlfriend, yeah? So you should have me around to your place to meet your parents. Next weekend you can come around my place and meet my dad."

"I can't," he said.

"You can't."

"No."

"Why not?"

"It's a secret," he said.

"Oooh, a secret," she said. "What kind of secret?"

"A family secret. We don't have people over for dinner. That's the way it is."

"A secret! They're all child molesters?"

He shook his head.

"Horribly deformed?"

He shook his head.

"What, then? Give us a hint?"

"It's a secret."

She grabbed his ear and twisted it. Gently at first, then harder. "A secret?" she said.

"Yes," he gasped. "It's a secret, and I can't tell you. You're hurting me."

"I should hope so," she said. "And it will go very hard for you indeed if you don't tell me what I want to know."

He grabbed her wrist and dug his strong fingers into the thin tendons on their insides, twisting his fingertips for maximal effect. Abruptly, she released his ear and clenched her wrist hard, sticking it between her thighs.

"Owwww! That b.l.o.o.d.y hurt, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. What did you do that for?"

"My secrets," Alan said, "are secret."

She held her wrist up and examined it. "Heaven help you if you've left a bruise, Alvin," she said. "I'll kill you." She turned her wrist from side to side. "All right," she said. "All right. Kiss it better, and you can come to my place for supper on Sat.u.r.day at six p.m.." She shoved her arm into his face and he kissed the soft skin on the inside of her wrist, putting a little tongue in it.

She giggled and punched him in the arm. "Sat.u.r.day, then!" she called as she ran off.

Edward-Felix-Gerald were too young to give him s.h.i.t about his schoolyard romance, and Brian was too sensitive, but Dave had taken to lurking about the schoolyard, spying on the children, and he'd seen Marci break off from a clench with Alan, take his hand, and plant it firmly on her tiny breast, an act that had shocked Danny to the core.

"Hi, pervert," David said, as he stepped into the cool of the cave. "Pervert" was Davey's new nickname for him, and he had a finely honed way of delivering it so that it dripped with contempt. "Did you have s.e.x with your *girlfriend* today, *pervert*?"

Allan turned away from him and helped E-F-G take off his shoes and roll up the cuffs of his pants so that he could go down to the lake in the middle of their father and wade in the shallows, listening to Father's winds soughing through the great cavern.

"Did you touch her b.o.o.bies? Did she suck your pee-pee? Did you put your finger in her?" The litany would continue until Davey went to bed, and even then he wasn't safe. One night, Allen had woken up to see Darren standing over him, hands planted on his hips, face twisted into an elaborate sneer. "Did you put your p.e.n.i.s inside of her?" he'd hissed, then gone back to bed.

Alby went out again, climbing the rockface faster than Doug could keep up with him, so that by the time he'd found his perch high over the woodlands, where he could see the pines dance in the wind and the ant-sized cars zooming along the highways, Doug was far behind, likely sat atop their mother, sucking his thumb and sulking and thinking up new perversions to accuse Alan of.

Sat.u.r.day night arrived faster than Alan could have imagined. He spent Sat.u.r.day morning in the woods, picking mushrooms and checking his snares, then headed down to town on Sat.u.r.day afternoon to get a haircut and to haunt the library.