the front of his trunks, just enough to expose his genitals.
“Touch my monkey,” he drawled.
The sight made her remember her father. Charlie splashed away from Jason, numb with shock and nausea, and got out of the pool to sit in the cold shade of the snack bar.
Jason was still in the pool, smirking at her. She watched as he called over two of his buddies and whispered something to them. Then all three of them started pointing at her and laughing.
Charlie felt herself blush a deep red. She wished the ground would open up and swallow her. She couldn’t tell the lifeguard what had happened, not now, because even if Jason got in trouble, he’d just tell all the other kids what a pussy she was.
She prayed that Jason would get bored and find someone else to bother, but he didn’t. The very next day, he rubbed up against her in the deep end.
“My big brother said you fat chicks are good fucks,” he giggled. “He said it’s ’cause you’re so ugly, you’re grateful to get any dickin’ you can.”
Charlie fled from the pool and went to the ladies’ locker room. She changed back into her shorts, sandals, and a dry T-shirt. There was no way she was going back into the pool. She’d just go watch her uncle give tennis lessons.
But when she stepped outside, she saw that Jason and his two friends were standing around on the sidewalk that led to the tennis courts. Charlie bit her lip. There was no way she could avoid the boys.
Then she noticed that the back gate was open. There wasn’t much to the land beyond, just patchy grass and a winding arroyo obscured by short mesquites and thick brush. The arroyo snaked around the whole west side of the city, a shallow, muddy gash in the arid landscape. Mr. Wilson said that the club owners wanted to turn the land into a golf course, but some local environmentalists had gotten it protected as a wetland. He’d told her not to go back there because people had seen coyotes skulking in the brush.
After St. Augustine, coyotes just didn’t seem all that scary. And there would be butterflies and rocks and plants and stuff, much more interesting than tennis.
Charlie went through the gate and padded across the dry grass toward the arroyo. The sun seemed hotter out here, and now that she was away from the pool and its smells of chlorine and suntan lotion, her head practically buzzed with the scent of a thousand weedy wildflowers. She waded into the brush and stopped beside a patch of sunflowers that towered over her. She stared up at the bumblebees fumbling in the heavy, nodding blooms. A beautiful black-and-yellow butterfly flitted past her face and lighted on a small thorny bush a few feet away. Charlie stepped over and bent down to get a better look at the butterfly. Her shadow crossed it, and it flittered away. The stench of rotten meat slid up her nostrils.
She looked down and saw the fresh carcass of a headless jackrabbit just a few inches from her toes. Shiny black ants covered the ragged stump of its neck and crawled through the blood-matted fur. She could do nothing but stare at it, morbidly mesmerized.
“Hey, fatso!”
Charlie jumped away from the dead rabbit. Jason and his two friends had put on their sneakers and come through the back gate. They were sauntering toward her, grinning. Her heart pounded hard in her ears as she realized the horrible mistake she’d made coming out here where none of the adults could see. The boys would be able to do whatever they wanted if they caught her.
She plunged into the brush, tripping over rocks and fallen branches. Thorns tore at the bare flesh on her arms as she pushed through the mesquites, trying to find a place to hide. Then she broke free of the branches and nearly fell as she stumbled down the muddy red bank into the arroyo. The winding, shallow creek was wide as a road, and the water came up to her knees. Her feet scared away a school of tiny, translucent minnows.
She tried to splash across to the other side, but the red mud sucked at her soles. Her left foot got stuck when she was halfway across. Her terror turned to frustrated anger as she tried to pull her foot free, only to lose her sandal in the mud.
The mesquites rattled, and the boys appeared on the