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the bar and was wiping down the counter with a
very bright white cloth. When we didn t answer, the
man said, I have two daughters older than you.
Really? Michelle asked. She looked up from her
Sky Juice at him quickly when he said this. Her eyes,
looking at his, were equal in their blueness, and I
realized for the first time (drunkenly, perhaps) that
Michelle s eyes were sometimes the color of a robin s
egg and sometimes a pale stone-green. The
stranger s were, at the moment, robin s egg blue, too.
Twenty and twenty-two, the stranger said. He
smiled a little wistfully into his own Sky Juice then,
as if just saying their ages had brought them fondly
to mind. And you girls where are your fathers,
that they send you off on a trip to Mexico for your
spring break? They have not heard what can happen
to girls in such places?
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fifteen
Michelle
WITHOUT HAVING BEEN asked, the bartender brings
Michelle another Sky Juice and places it in front of
her, removing the straw from her old one and put
ting it in the new before taking her empty glass
away.
From the crowd on the beach there s a burst of
wild laughter and screaming again. The screaming
startles a flock of seagulls and they rise up flying,
also screaming, away down the shore, pumping
their white wings hard against the sea breeze. The
water looks full of blue feathers, shining and
churning under the sun as if layers of feathers are
tucked there between the sky and whatever it is
below that blue.
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It s easy enough to imagine anything under the
surface of that.
Serpents. Castles. Cathedrals. Whole civilizations.
It s hard to imagine that it could ever be dark
under there, to believe that, although the sun doesn t
reach the depths, there isn t some other, some better,
source of light beneath that brilliant surface.
Michelle hasn t really looked at the stranger across
from them at the bar until he mentions that he has
two daughters, because she hasn t wanted him to
think she was flirting with him. She s made that
mistake before. At the State Fair the summer before,
she asked a man who was taking tickets at the Ferris
wheel if people ever got so scared on the ride that it
had to be stopped. She d been feeling lighthearted,
having just stepped off the Tilt-A-Whirl, and she
was waiting for Anne and Terri to finish eating their
snow cones so they could go on the ride together.
She d also just been curious, and wanted to make
conversation with the man as they stood together in
the dark watching the slowly turning wheel, its
lights and buckets swaying in the deep indigo of an
August night.
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But the ticket taker had turned all the way around
to look at her, to take in her breasts and legs. She d
been wearing skimpy summer clothes cutoffs, a
tank top with a sailboat on it, sandals. Yeah, he
said. Sometimes. Why?
Just curious, Michelle had said, and started to
walk away, to go back to Terri and Anne and their
snow cones near the concession stand, but he called
after her, Hey, baby, don t go. We were just getting
to know each other.
Michelle started to walk faster then. She could
still hear him calling loudly to her, but not what he
was saying. Her heart was pounding in her throat.
We can t go on the Ferris wheel, she told Anne
and Terri. After she told them why, they agreed to go
on the Blizzard with her instead a screaming
propulsion, throbbing to disco music. But when
they d stumbled off of it, the Ferris wheel ticket
taker was waiting for them for her.
Hi again, sweetheart, he d said to Michelle.
He was smoking a cigarette. He looked old, and
mean. Sneering, blowing smoke out his nose. His
teeth were brown, and there were deep lines etched
down the center of his face. He was like something
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hideous out of a fairy tale. When Michelle tried to
hurry past him, he grabbed her arm hard, and she
twisted away, saying, Don t, in a voice that sur
prised her with its meekness. She wasn t even sure
she d said it loudly enough for him to hear.
But he had. Don t, he said, in a mocking, mousy
voice.
Right after that, the three girls left the fair
together, rushing out of the gate despite the fifteen
dollars they d each paid for the paper bracelets that
would let them go on as many rides as they wanted.
Since then, Michelle had been more careful.
She didn t make eye contact with the guy behind
the counter at the video store because she could tell
how much he wanted her to. She didn t let her eyes
meet those of the old man who worked behind the
reference desk at the library. She didn t even look
into the face of Mr. Brecht, the choir director and
her voice teacher, because one day when she was
singing Ave Maria she looked over to find him gaz
ing up at her from the piano bench with such joy
and admiration it had scared her. It was just the
music, she supposed, but she had no way of know
ing for sure, and she didn t want to take a chance.
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Her beauty, she knew, was nothing like Terri s
that bleached blonde, with the big breasts and big
smile that caused males and females equally, and of
all ages, to stare at her when she crossed a room.
And she had none of Anne s freckled cuteness. But
men seemed attracted to Michelle. They seemed to
think she was older than she was, and would ask her
where she went to college or where she worked as
if she might already be done with college. She d
never wanted such attention. It had always come as
a terrible surprise.
So, it s a relief that the stranger at the tiki bar tells
them he has two daughters older than she and
Anne. A man with two daughters in their teens or
twenties would not misunderstand the intentions of
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