Things Jenna likes.
  1. She loves swing dancing.
  2. She likes expensive perfume. The kind older women wear. Not like other girls.
  3. She likes sandals.
  4. She likes to let a boy open a door for her.
  5. She likes clothes from Manhattan.
  6. She likes to be complimented on how smart she is.
  7. She likes someone who listens to her.
  8. She likes holding hands.
  Things Jenna hates:
  1. She hates heavy metal rock.
  2. She hates boys who look at her breasts.
  3. She hates having to wait for anything. Ever.
  4. She hates Julia Roberts movies. She reminds me of movie stars though.
  5. She hates when animals get hurt.
  6. She hates being treated like a piece of meat.
  7. She hates boys who want to go all the way because she told me three years ago that 
she’s going to wait for the right one.
  8. She hates having to do things she hates.
  11
  He waited a week before going back up to the Montgomery place, and even then, it was 
after eleven, and the house was dark and silent except for the kitchen, where Mrs. M 
always kept a light on. At first, he intended to stand beneath Jenna’s bedroom window and 
maybe toss a pebble at it to get her attention. He noticed that the window — on the third 
story — was open, and he decided he’d call to her.
  Then, he noticed that one of the guest room windows was open, too.
  That would be Jimmy’s. The bastard.
  Owen glanced along the trellis and gutters, and decided he’d try that route first. He 
climbed the trellis with the agility of a monkey, although it threatened to pull away if 
he didn’t balance his weight just right. It wasn't much different from the rope climb in 
gym. When he worried that he wouldn’t make it to the third story roof, he remembered the 
breathing trick and began inhaling and exhaling carefully. That was where the balance 
was: in the breathing. Then, he grabbed the rain gutter, and scaled the slant of 
the roof. He crawled along it, slowly, cautiously, and went to look in on Jenna while she 
slept. He felt himself grow hard, imagining how he could hold her while she slept, 
imagining how he would smell her hair.
  When he looked through the open window, he saw the other boy there, Jimmy, in bed with 
her, holding her, moving against her.
  Owen caught his breath and held it for what felt like the longest time.
  He could hold his breath under water for a few minutes, and holding it now while he 
watched Jimmy press himself into her, like a hummingbird jabbing at a flower, but not as 
pretty, just dark and murky, Jimmy’s body rising and falling as he plunged into her, not 
gently the way she would want it, but like he was a jackal tearing apart some carcass.
  
  
  Chapter Three
  The morning swim 
  1
  “The Salty Dog,” Owen said, lifting himself from the swimming pool.
  “Waiting tables. Since Memorial Day weekend. Lifting weights, too.”
  “That must be delightful,” Mrs. M said. She stood near the changing rooms, swathed in a 
red bathrobe, dark glasses covering her eyes. She looked like a movie star. She had a 
cigarette in her hand, which she waved dramatically. “I imagine you meet lots of girls 
and boys your age at that dive.”
  “Some.”
  “You’re still very young for your age,” she said, and then caught her breath for a 
moment. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that in a negative way. I meant it as…as…you’re so 
innocent compared to the boys at that school she goes to.
  They’ve already begun those patterns they’ll have for life.” She exhaled a lungful of 
smoke. She was like a beautiful dragon, he thought. A jade dragon with sparkling eyes.
  Owen drew himself up the rest of the way over the pool’s edge. He exhaled deeply; 
coughing.
  “My smoking bother you?”
  “No,” he said, swiveling to sit down more comfortably, his legs still in the water. 
“Just holding my breath. Trying, anyway.”
  “Trying to reach some goal? Underwater?” She took her sunglasses off, and dropped them 
carelessly on the tile.
  He nodded. “To beat the Guinness Book of World Records. This guy, he held his breath. 
Thirteen minutes.”
  “That’s impossible.” She walked casually over to him. He could see her sapphire bathing 
suit top, and her sparrowish breasts cupped within it as her robe fell open. She stepped 
out of her sandals. For a moment, he thought of what she would look like with her suit 
ripped from chin to thigh, with him pressing into her — no, not him, Jimmy, the way he 
had torn into Jenna. Mrs.
  M, a smile on her face, could not read his thoughts, he hoped. “No one can hold his 
breath that long,” she said. “It must’ve been a cheat.”
  “If you believe in something, maybe you can do impossible stuff, Mrs.
  M.”
  “That’s magical thinking, sweetie. And Mrs. M, good lord.” She laughed, dropping her 
robe completely. She shimmered. “You’re a man now.
  You’ll have to start calling people by their first names, Owen. I feel like 
a schoolmarm when you call me that. Is that what you want me to feel like? A haggish old 
schoolmarm? I’m forty, not seventy. Catherine. Or Cathy.”
  “Oh, yeah, okay,” he said, grinning. “Cathy.”
  As she walked along the edge of the pool to the far end, she pulled her hair back and 
tucked it into her white bathing cap. She lifted her arm in a certain way to him, like a 
salute. Then, Jenna’s mother dove into the pool, graceful as a mermaid. He watched her do 
laps while he caught his breath.
  2
  When he went to shower off, Owen saw the other boy’s towel hanging from the bathroom 
stall. Steam began to fill the changing room. He pulled his wet trunks down, and tossed 
them on a chair. He grabbed one of the long white towels that the Montgomery’s’ maid kept 
neatly rolled in the cabinet over the toilet. Then, he walked the narrow hallway to the 
large shower. All three shower heads were running, and the boy stood there rubbing soap 
along his arms, his face frothy with white soap foam. Owen ignored him, stepping beneath 
the furthest shower head, and grabbed a bar of Ivory from the holder.
  “Mooncalf,” Jimmy said, as the foam rinsed from his face. His hair stuck up high on his 
head. The smell of Ivory soap was overpowering. “Haven’t seen you in awhile.”
  “I know,” Owen said, his voice husky. He didn’t feel the way he did in school with the 
other boys, not with this Jimmy, this eighteen-year-old who he had watched deflower