Ophelia lay on the bed in her overheated room. In summer this room was a nightmare, but everyone envied her in winter.

The room had been freshly painted white. Ophelia, helped by Hamlet and her brother, Laertes, had done the work herself. They were the world’s messiest painters. One bright afternoon Hamlet, with the daring smile she found so attractive, had flicked a string of white drops onto her white dress. Looking down and finding herself bespattered, she went to retaliate, but Laertes was there before her, defending his sister’s honor. He was older than Hamlet, and often dour, but a light kind of madness had seized Laertes that day, and the two boys, wielding their long paintbrushes as swords, fenced from one end of the room to the other, Ophelia laughing even as she begged them to stop. Hamlet had turned to her, smiled, and said, “I will, but only if you give me a —”

She never found out how the sentence was going to end. Laertes stabbed Hamlet from behind with his brush, and so the battle resumed. They did not give up until the floor was slippery with the wet paint they had spilled. At last they agreed to a draw. Ophelia was left wondering what kind of forfeit Hamlet had been about to propose. Her instincts told her. And she would have given it, yes, gladly, would have pressed her lips to his, had it not been for Laertes’ presence. She had been sulky with her brother afterward, and he in turn had been overfriendly. As if he knew exactly what he had done.

It took them days to get the paint off their bodies. A large rug now covered the spots on the floor.

Lying on the bed and remembering, Ophelia smiled. What did she feel for Hamlet? she asked herself, not for the first time. What was it that caught and twitched within her at the thought of his eyes? Flickering in her mind was the image of a fish spinning through water, hooked but not taken, a naked silver body streaming wet.

She ran her fingers up the inside of her right thigh and gave a little cry at the silver lines left on her skin. Her nightdress felt too hot, too heavy. She slipped it off and lay back, panting at the heat, the exertion, the thoughts. Her fingers touched there again. Why did being naked feel so good? What would Hamlet look like naked?

She had seen him and Horatio a month or so back, the two boys shirtless, chopping wood in the kitchen yard behind the castle. They had grabbed the axes and sent the servants packing. She watched avidly from her window. Horatio had more muscle, but Hamlet was the prettier. They were competing to chop the logs in the fewest number of strokes. How the silver blades had flashed in the sun! How the chips had scattered! And how the drops of sweat shone as they flew through the air.

As she gazed from behind her curtain, Ophelia had imagined them naked, tried to picture Hamlet naked and swinging that ax, had felt faint at the thought, had tried to stop her mind from dreaming such things, had finally been forced to drop the curtain back into place and rush from the room.

These were the thoughts she was unable to express to anyone, even to her confessor.

Lying there in the little room, Ophelia thought she would go mad. Sweat trickled from her armpits; she groaned and growled as she touched herself again, and again tried to push back the forbidden pictures that threatened to crowd all else from her mind.

The interruption, when it came, was brutal and rude. It was her father, outside the door. Polonius sounded like the dull, dry voice of death. “What are you doing in there, Ophelia?”

She struggled to find a voice. The sound that came from her throat was raspy. “Doing?”

The handle rattled. “What are you doing? Open this door. I know what you’re doing. Open up, I say.”

“Nothing. I’m doing nothing. I’m coming, I’m coming now.”