BRAD HAD HIS OWN CAR AND A TATTOO. He was everything Beatrice wanted in a boyfriend.
She invited him to her church picnic. He said he might make it.
Beatrice was surprised when he showed up. She was in the pool. Brad stood at the chain-link fence and watched her until she finally noticed him. Her hair was soaked from swimming. She smelled like chlorine and coconut butter.
The picnic was at one of the park pavilions. The charcoal was lit, but they wouldn’t put on the hot dogs and burgers until everyone was out of the pool.
Beatrice stood at the fence. It was too noisy at the pool to talk.
Brad asked her if she wanted to go for a ride somewhere. Beatrice couldn’t leave the picnic. But they could go for a walk.
The two of them walked through the part of the park that had swings and a slide. They walked around an open sloping area where some guys were throwing a Frisbee. Four kids were off to one side, near the woods, throwing yard darts high in the air.
Summer was when girls could snag a boyfriend for the rest of the year. Beatrice had come close last summer to going steady, but it fell apart just before school started. This summer would be different.
“Let’s go to the river,” Beatrice said. There was a path through the trees, she told him.
They held hands on the walk to the river, except when they passed through a spiderweb and had to brush it away.
It turned out there was nothing romantic about the river. It had been raining and the water was brown. It smelled like fish. Small swarms of gnats hovered nearby.
It was now or never, Beatrice decided. If they came out of the woods without kissing, they weren’t going to. Beatrice wanted to kiss Brad hard and long enough that he would have to ask her out.
She stopped walking. Brad turned to look at her. She took his other hand in hers and kissed him. It was an easy, simple kiss. To get things started. Then she pressed up against him and his hands went around her back. When they leaned back from each other, Beatrice realized that the left strap of her swimsuit had slipped over her shoulder.
Beatrice kissed him hard this time. When they broke for air, he kissed her neck.
“Wait,” she said. “My top is falling off.”
“It’s okay by me,” Brad said.
He hadn’t asked her out yet. He should any time now.
Beatrice brought her fingers to her fallen strap. Instead of pulling it back into place, she pulled the strap down to her elbow, until her breast was exposed. Then she pressed herself against him again and kissed him the best kiss she had.
His hand found her breast almost instantly. He pressed her pliant flesh with his palm and fingers. Beatrice had to stop. It was a church picnic, after all. She stepped away from Brad and pulled her swimsuit top into place. She blushed.
“If you want to keep doing this,” Beatrice said, “you have to ask me out.”
“Okay by me,” he said.
Beatrice was pleased. She took his hand in hers again and they continued along the path from the river back to the park.
“Friday?” she asked.
“Okay.”
Beatrice stopped walking. They were at the edge of the woods. “Wait,” she said. “Didn’t we already say that?”
“Say what?” Brad was puzzled by the question.
“What we just said,” Beatrice tried to explain. “Did we say that twice?” She had the feeling that the last half minute had happened twice in a row.
“I don’t know what I said,” Brad replied.
“Oh yes you do,” Beatrice said, smiling broadly. “You said you were taking me out Friday night.”
They were at the edge of the park, just coming out of the woods, when a large steel dart with three bright yellow fins fell from forty feet above them. Miraculously missing the trees, the dart gained speed as it raced through sky toward earth, seeking impact. Beatrice stood in the way. She wasn’t going to go steady with anyone this summer either.
• • •
Jana gulped down the last of her second bottle of water.
“It was just like in those slasher movies,” Beatrice said. “I let a boy see my breast and the next thing you know I’m dead. When a girl in one of those movies takes her top off, you know she’s going to be the next one killed.”
Beatrice showed Jana her upside-down smile.
“Does it get heavy?” Jana asked. “I mean, do you feel it there when you walk and sit down and stuff?”
“I’m used to it,” Beatrice said. “It’s the way things are. You just live with your body the way it is when you get here.”
“And you still have to take showers or you’ll stink.” Christie wrinkled her nose at Jana.
“I’ll bet that Brad guy thinks twice before going around and grabbing a boob at a church picnic,” Arva said in her harsh, throaty whisper.
She screwed a cap back on one of her bottles of water. A small black feather was in the corner of her mouth again. Wet from her drinking water, the feather looked like a fat spider leg reaching out of her mouth.
“Don’t look now, but someone is watching us,” Christie said.
Jana turned around to see who. That’s what you do when someone tells you not to look. But she didn’t see Mars Dreamcote’s blue eyes staring at their table from across the room. Instead, she saw a girl walking behind their table carrying her head on a cafeteria tray.
“Fart, fudge, and popcorn!” Jana gasped and turned abruptly back to the girls at her table.
Beatrice and Christie laughed.
“Freshman,” Arva said, shaking her head. “She should be wearing it when she’s in the cafeteria. She has to wear it in class.”
“Show-off,” Beatrice added.
“She can put it on anytime she wants to,” Arva explained. “If she couldn’t keep her head on, she’d be a Stretcher.”
“They’re all over the place,” Christie warned Jana. “Your first day or two, you have to be careful where you look. Then you get used to it.”
Arva noticed the wet feather on her own lip and plucked it from her mouth.
Christie involuntarily jerked her shoulders and said, “Ouch.” Her hair bounced. “Wait till you meet Pauline,” she added.
“Who’s Pauline?” Jana asked.
“One of our roommates,” Arva said. “She’s a senior. Her cafeteria break is on another rotation from ours. And there’s Darcee. There are four to a dorm room, and we have our own bathroom.”
Jana didn’t want to meet more dead people. But she figured she was going to.