A hooded Concorde shot over their heads. One o’clock, he said, without looking up. Here comes the boom. The reeds vibrated. He’d taken her behind the ballfield to show her where horseshoe crabs spawn. Instead of watching the plane climb, she followed its shadow, grazing the bay like a prehistoric bird. Spawn, he said the word like some sort of naturalist though he’d dropped out of school and was joining the military.

Even with a war on? she asked the night they met. Because there’s a war on, he said.

She followed him, hopping from mound to mound of slickened seagrass. It was low tide so whatever they stepped on would be covered by night. She kept trying not to slip in four-inch buffalo sandals. She’d “borrowed” one sister’s platform sandals and the other’s leather jacket.

He pointed across the bay to the Manhattan skyline. The sun got in his eyes, and they were dark, dark blue. All week, she’d been picturing them as brown. He said, I can drive the boat so it looks like it’s flying straight into the Twin Towers. On the bay, a double light lane led to the skyscrapers. They looked so close.

They stumbled upon the spawning: a hundred or so horseshoe crabs in the sand, carapaces turned upside down or half-buried, like a trove of barbarian helmets, armored spikes marching down either side. Look, he said, steering her to the shallows. Horseshoe crabs encrusted with parasitic shells went gliding beneath clear water, grazing over subtle indentations in the sand. Their metal-looking tails ticked up an exhaust of particles that took moments to settle. A few hosted sea plants, red as rooster combs, proudly parting water in their appropriated finery. With a pang, she wondered how she would return her sisters’ clothes undetected.

Watch what happens, he said of a big horseshoe wedged against the edge, water washing over its helmet back. Smaller horseshoes began swarming the stuck one. As if summoned, more showed up to mount the first arrivals. Stuck together, they made a conga line that the tide lifted as a unit. She was going to say something about townspeople stuck on the golden goose, but he said, They’re having an orgy. You know what an orgy is?

The helmet-things blurred. Her facial skin tugged icy hot. A freefall thrill down there shot through her. They’re having sex, he grinned. Birds were swooping through the reeds, calling, chittering, the water so spangled it took away her vision. Male or female, they just pile on and screw, he said.

He snatched up a horseshoe crab. Holding it by the sides, he transferred it to her, belly facing outward, frantic legs jointed and squirming like a spider’s. Older than dinosaurs, he said. On the other side of the crab’s carapace, she could feel the oscillation of the legs, so unsettling, like something moving wildly inside her own body. It dripped on her sister’s sandals so she backed up.

Relax, he said. She couldn’t read his expression. He was not someone to gaze at directly. Most crabs get flipped over trying to mate, he said. If they don’t get flipped back, they die. A lot of things die when they mate.

She nodded, My father told me about the black widow spider.

He paused as if he’d been interrupted. Then he showed her the crab’s outsized thumb, a pincer used to grab the female. The males needed it since they were smaller than the huge females. For a few seconds, in the bright air, she got to study his face. High cheekbones, a short space between turned-up nose and upper lip; he looked carved, a tanned puppet. But even her friend Frannie, who didn’t like him, kept saying he was cute.

She volunteered that her father said swinging a horseshoe crab by the tail would kill it.

He squinted, Wow, you talk a lot about your father.

She felt so foolish.

He took the crab from her, as if her comment made her unworthy to hold it. He knelt on one knee like a knight, slipping it into the shallows without a splash. His fair hair was cut like a cap, except for the back, which was long and shone on his neck.

They moved on. When he was a kid, he said, he and his mother used to collect horseshoe crabs for extra money. A guy sold them to labs for vaccines. Horseshoe crabs were so ancient, their blood could kill any bacteria. He said their blood was sky blue. He paused. Like your eyes.

Then he hopped away, progressing from slimy mat to slimy mat towards the white concrete bridge. She didn’t know if he was joking or not. Planes flew low, a continuous stream taking off for Europe or coming in for landing at JFK. She suppressed the urge to wave at the passenger windows. He was far ahead, almost under the bridge stanchions. Men on the bridge cast into the crinkled bay, as if tasked with drawing back the ruffling waves. What else could they be doing? You couldn’t eat the fish. The bay was polluted. He seemed to have forgotten about her, busy righting the tide-flipped horseshoes. She’d never be able to bring him home. But he wasn’t really dumb.

When she’d first gotten off the bus at the stop before the bridge to Rockaway, it was only his rust suede jacket she recognized. She called, Jamie? A shorter, skinnier guy was leaning against the pink marble foundation of a bank, almost but not exactly the one she’d met the previous weekend at an amusement park teetering on the Atlantic. There, floodlights had pitted everyone’s eyes with shadows and thrown voids between stalls and rides, funhouse and Ferris wheel. At the top of the rickety wooden rollercoaster, in the instant before descent, she could’ve sworn the suck of the sea was saying, Wash away, wash away. But by then she was in a partial dream. By then, Jamie had taken her and Frannie down to the beach to smoke, the rolling paper wet from his tongue.

Caroline? He flicked away his cigarette, unpeeling himself from the bank. Caroline, he agreed. Without warning, he kissed her, using his tongue. She pulled back. He said, Who taught you to kiss, your mother? Tears rose in her eyes. She held his tobacco saliva in her mouth. She wanted to spit it out, but he would hate her if she did that. He might hate her already. But, then, miraculously, he was smiling, Relax, it’s a joke. You okay?

She swallowed.

Where’s your friend with the weird hair?

She couldn’t come, and her hair’s not weird.

To meet Jamie, she’d waited next to the el train, across from the OTB. Men kept coming out of the storefront to say dirty things to her, but the people waiting for the bus looked at her as if she’d done something wrong. Frannie had backed out at the last minute, lying about having bad period cramps because the week before, at the exit of every ride, Jamie hung over the temporary fences, asking Caroline her name while his friend Doug kept strolling away, making it clear he wasn’t interested in Frannie.

No boy was ever interested in Frannie, but Caroline couldn’t lose her big chance.

On the beach that night, she’d breathed in Jamie’s sour-sweet skin as the colander sky restrained each peeping star to sufficient brilliance. The ocean slapped quicker, heavier. Faraway, careless people were making the boardwalk rumble and there was a pit in her stomach, and a place below that pulled with each drag of the sea. By then, Doug had disappeared. Jamie passed the joint, saying Doug was rich but he was poor. He made a little sweeping bow, just like an English rock star. He said some girls hear Howard Beach and think money, but he was from the old town, from the original inhabitants. He said they should all go out on Doug’s boat next Saturday.

At the same moment, Caroline said yes, Frannie said no.

Each day of your life is stored in memory, Caroline once read. Most days remain locked. You don’t get to choose the ones you keep prodding like a dead animal to see if there is still life.

Jamie rushed ahead, through sand piled on the sidewalk, to a fenced-off ballfield, saying he was going to Doug’s to get the motorboat keys. He ducked under the metal bleachers, where more sand had accumulated, and was gone. He probably didn’t want to be seen with her because the sandals made her taller than him, she thought. Once on the boat, she’d kick off the sandals, and then he’d like her. Through the chain-link, she beheld the bay, brimming with diamonds of light, pirouetting atop the flat water she’d only viewed from a train window, experiencing its breadth as a hop and a skip to Rockaway. But the bay was surprisingly wide, dotted with matted green islands. If Doug’s boat sank, could she swim to one of those islands? Buoyed by the mechanics of her adventure: what to wear, how to get money, where to board the bus, she hadn’t given a thought to consequences. She wasn’t a strong swimmer.

A lot of time was passing. Her cold fingers stuck to the chain-link. She decided to climb the bleachers, astonished when terns stayed put, unafraid of her. A motorboat cut a curl through the fluttering bay. She glimpsed two skinny young men on deck. Maybe it was Jamie with Doug. Maybe Jamie had left her. Right now, he was laughing, telling Doug how she talked about her father too much. Down on the field, a woman walking a dog off leash kept looking at her.

From the top of the bleachers, a sparkling panorama presented itself through the medium of cold spring air. One way, the ruffled blue bay stretched, an outlet for motor boats. Behind her, great thickets of giant reeds swayed, interrupted by clearings of sand. Boats tethered to docks rocked next to modern houses, their elaborate decks leading to Windex blue swimming pools. To the left, the busy boulevard hardly perceived that the land had ended and must segue onto the bridge. A sky-blue Impala stopped at the light, her father’s car. He’d been known to follow her older sisters, catching them in lies. When he was in one of his moods, he’d make her sisters write a list of their friends’ names on loose-leaf before leaving the house. Hard breathing, someone climbing the metal tiers — her father must’ve left the car running and come after her. She turned, ready to lie, but it was Jamie. She was almost disappointed. Punishment held the prospect of reprieve. Jamie was upset, winded. Doug wasn’t home. But he found another friend who had a boat. She could hardly listen. The light changed and someone else’s sky-blue Impala went sailing over the bridge to Rockaway. By then, Jamie was holding her elbow, pointing to a gravel-strewn road, a shortcut through the reeds to his friend’s dock. It was called a fire road, because in summer, the giant reeds could dry and catch fire, spreading to houses nearby.

To show she wasn’t afraid, she slammed down the metal tiers, making them clatter.

The reeds on either side swayed at least two feet over their heads. He made her stand still for a second and listen to the birdsong. He pointed to a small black bird with red marks on its pleated wings, but she missed it. A ball of gnats descended. He swatted the static and she laughed. Underfoot, gravel was diminishing, as if a giant hand had agreed to scatter the rocks only so far and no more. She felt sorry that he felt so compelled to get a boat. She also felt a little disdain for him, so impressed by his rich friends and so obviously low in their pecking order. She said she didn’t care about a boat. Wasn’t the bay polluted?

We aren’t going to swim in it, he said, kicking the scant gravel like it was its fault. He said, My mother got hepatitis when she was a kid from swimming in the bay. It was the toilet of the city.

Then why was she swimming in it?

He gave her a sidelong look, like she’d said something terrible against his mother.

The fire road evaporated. Giant grasses put a stop to their advancement. There was sweat and blondish-red stubble on his upper lip. He pointed to something flashing behind the reeds. The chrome on his friend’s boat. If we walk through, we’ll come out on the bay, he said.

Somewhere, she could hear water lapping.

He knocked away the reeds. Do the breaststroke, he said, laughing. The spikes he pushed off himself groped her before flapping back. Underfoot, a mesh of ancient leaves. You have to get the hang of it, he said. They emerged in a clearing, a completely bald spot of sand, sloped high on one side. He threw himself down, against the grade. I think I screwed up, he said.

She stood, nervous. She spotted a slim trail through the reeds. They could walk single file, she said. Once on the shore, they’d see the ballfield.

Give me a minute, he said. Sand shifted as he burrowed in. I thought Doug was my friend. I just wanted to impress you.

She felt flattered. He patted the mound next to him. Let’s look at the sky together.

She lay down awkwardly. A fat person could’ve fit between them. Her heart was beating crazily. She was on her back, next to a boy, the sky, a cloudless circle, saturated blue. He yelled, hey, at a plane overhead and she stole a glance at his profile, preserving two incongruous but somehow related images: sun-irradiated pores in his cheek, dark particles in the sand. Unseen water lapped. Birdsong and the hypnotic hum of planes made a joyful stasis. This was how Adam and Eve must have felt, two people who didn’t know each other at all. He rolled onto his side, pressing his face against his arm, his eyes cobalt chips. He said Doug’s father killed people. That Doug was spoiled rotten. His other friend, too. All these mobsters and their punk sons, he said. And their boats.

She said that maybe it’s not worth asking people like that for anything. She was thrilled that he was confiding in her, that she might influence him for good.

Jamie sighed. He said Doug would’ve come if only Frannie wasn’t so ugly. She couldn’t look away from his short front teeth. She’s not ugly, she objected without conviction.

He flipped onto his back, remote for a while.

Then he regained his cheerfulness, lifting his arm high to sketch the old town against the blank sky, a place of speakeasies and fish camps, populated by rumrunners and Indians and runaway indentured servants. He said he didn’t tell many people but his father was an American Indian, thus his high cheekbones and slanted eyes. She blurted that she loved American Indians. She used to cry over them in school.

He lifted his head, one eye shut. You used to cry?

They were almost exterminated! Ridiculously, she felt tearful again.

You’re incredible, he said. Plane drone, bird racket, reed sway, him whispering about his iron-worker father who fell off a skyscraper beam and died. He’d get settlement money at twenty-one. Then his breath was inside her ear, and he said something about her outstretched body. Her leg twitched. He smiled and put a hand on her thigh to still it. He kissed her. A load of sand rolled inside her sister’s leather jacket. She thought of the passionate way people kissed in movies. All along, they’d been using tongues. A few years before, she’d practiced kissing with Frannie, but they’d only pressed lips, winding their heads to mimic passion. She couldn’t close her eyes, needing to look at the red-gold lashes of this boy she might love. These thoughts were so occupying she didn’t realize the source of thrills shooting up her spine. No, she peeled his hands off her breasts, but he’d already pulled down her bra. Her nipples wizened in the chill air. No. His eyes were unfocused. Why did she come, then? He pulled down her jeans, her cotton underpants riding inside. She kept grabbing his wrists, flat as stones and surprisingly strong. She was afraid to hit him in the face. She couldn’t switch gears fast enough from love thrills to harm. It was surprisingly veined, angry red, being jamming into her, finding no entry. She kept closing her legs, he kept prying them open. He pressed hard on her throat, just above the bony cup the clavicle made. Her body jerked and jerked. This is how I die, she thought. By the time he got inside her body, she was rising out of it. She thought of the newspaper, what it would say, listing other dead girls who’d gone into the reeds. The shame, the shame, her parents knowing she’d snuck out for this. All her school friends knowing the manner in which she’d caused her own death. Her brothers, too. Above her, his eyes rolled in his head. He was high. The rushed talking. Why hadn’t she noticed? Finished, he stood, his voice rising, Do you have your period? His hip bones were blades, and that bloodied thing pointed down in defeat. Behind his head, a contrail dispersed into a long poignant cloud. Don’t cry! Stop it! Shit! He slipped through the reeds on the path she’d pointed out, looking back at her, as if he were the one disgusted, as if only he had the right to exit the liminal space between sex and violence.

She had trouble lifting herself out of the crusty sand, two small scoops, the imprint of her butt cheeks. She fell on the gravel road, ripping her pants at the knee. The hole flapped as she ran-walked, ran-walked. The knee hurt more than the wound he made. From that secret place he invaded, a thin line of blood seeped down the inseam of her right pant leg. At the bus stop, she felt for the money in her back pocket. It was gone.

It would take three hours to walk-run home. Past the catering hall, past the discotheque, the motorcycle emporium, past strip malls and spas and nail salons and two supermarkets, a gym, a storefront library, numerous pizzerias and clam bars and diners where people seated in window booths stopped eating to stare at her. And the firehouse. Then it was the highway, so many ramps turning to the airport. She thought of what one of her school friends had said about another girl’s sister who was a stewardess, that she slept around. Caroline couldn’t imagine anyone casually doing what had just been done to her. She imagined the older sister and the captain of the plane doing it in the sand circle in their uniforms. Everything had turned evil. That’s why, limp-running through a neighborhood of garden apartments, when a woman in a car slowed down, calling, Girlie, are you all right? Do you need a ride? Caroline was certain the woman had been sent by Jamie. Leave me alone, she shouted to the woman, who had a child in the car.

Later, when she was married and lived in a different state and had children of her own and had long-since told her husband about the rape, she’d still wake in the middle of the night and want to apologize to that woman. Her husband had taken the revelation in stride, but it gave him ammunition. He often said that she wasn’t a very good judge of character.

That summer, her mother never asked why she didn’t go out. Her mother said fourteen was a tough age but summer was a good time to read. Her mother said she shouldn’t hate Mr. Darcy, he was the hero. She said not to cry over Tess of the D’Urbervilles. It was only a book. That summer Caroline found a Valium on the floor of the bedroom she shared with her sisters. She knew it belonged to the second oldest, the one who kept searching for her buffalo sandals, causing such a commotion about their disappearance that the closets had to be cleaned and reorganized according to their father’s exacting standards. Caroline had ditched those reminders. Of desecration. Of vanity. That summer, her heart hardened against her sister, whose drug-taking somehow made her complicit in Caroline’s defilement.

But these were things she thought later. Then she didn’t think. She stayed out of her father’s way even when he tried to joke with her. Her mother came in at night, patting Caroline’s back as she cried, saying that she’d meet new friends in September, thinking that Caroline’s falling out with Frannie was the cause of her misery. Guilt prevented her from ever feeling close to her father again in life. He died unexpectedly, Caroline still too young to realize he would’ve defended her.