He looked like something that belonged to the beach, like moonstones, or fan shells. Riding my bike past his house every weekend in the late spring on my way to the beach—a shiver wrapped its legs around my hips

At the ocean, I sniffed the air for coconut SPF. Sometimes I just imagined the smell, the waves inside my blood. Like when he first told me his name. Peter. I watched him with his long board, by himself. So much tamer than those boys who whooped and tackled each other like village idiots.

At school I was queen of marbles. I'd amassed a coveted collection. I imagined his face while shooting for puries, making everyone sorry they tried. Once, a girl spit at me, called me ugly. She gave me her puries. I held them next to my skin to warm them.

The curvy cool girls (who already wore bras and shaved their hairless legs) sat together eating lunch in a flock. The skinny sports girls played four-square and performed cartwheels and flips, showing off.

I'd started praying near the library:

"Dear God, how are you? I'm fine. Trying to get through this day. Sorry for everything. Love, Eileen."

When my best friend Maria slept over I told her I was in love for real. "With Peter Doyle?" she asked, in a tone that made me feel I had splattered oil on my own good dress.

"You don't know him," I said, brushing my hair out and tying it into a water fountain shape on top of my head. Wishing I'd never said it.

"He's going with a girl that has big tits. I know from church. Pick someone else." She laughed, slapping her knee at the thought that I liked cute boys, and expected them to like me back. As if it were absurd.

I'd befriended Maria last summer because she was different, dark skinned and real and smart. She didn't play with me at school, because she had tough friends like her. Her parents only spoke Spanish. Maria translated everything they said when I was over, except "hi" and "okay," and "cool." They would say all these words to me with special emphasis. Smiling.

I couldn't fall asleep next to her, wrapped in her sleeping bag like a chrysalis. I reached into the side pocket of her pack, fingered her new turquoise earrings—the ones she got when we went downtown by ourselves. She had a twenty-dollar bill from her grandmother. The man in jewelry store gave her a quarter back, smiling and polite. He'd wrapped the earrings in three thin layers of cotton, put them in a tiny box with a blue satin ribbon.

I held them in my hand, listening to her doggie snore, thinking about what to do next. Maria wore them every day. I imagined tossing them in with my enormous sack of variety marbles from the dime store. Swinging them around. Letting them ride the waves.