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by Miriam N. Kotzin}

Under the sand was something smooth and cool they said was clay. We liked to dig and hold it in our small fists, squish it through our fingers. I wondered how it could be molded into anything. I couldnąt believe it would hold a shape. Still it was something to do, finding it. The clay wasnąt everywhere, or if it was, we couldnąt always reach it. I've never figured that out.

We liked to watch the small schools of minnows and the tadpoles that swam in the shallows. Even though the tadpoles grew legs we never saw any frogs.

The beach was about fifty yards long, Jersey sand. Pines and oaks surrounded the beach and across the river it was all woods. The river disappeared into woods to the right and to the left. We would have been amazed to see a canoe on our stretch of the river, though it would have had as much right to be there as we did.

A wooden building had refreshments and a juke box where the big kids danced. My favorite thing to get was a pretzel stick with yellow mustard for two cents and a coke in a bottle that I had to return even though they didnąt charge a deposit.

If it rained suddenly we all ran into the shack and heard the rain on the tin roof, but we hardly ever got caught in the rain. If it wasn't a perfect day, we didn't go there. So almost all I remember were summers of perfect days.

The Maurice River ran neither fast nor deep, though it was deeper where it curved out of sight in the woods. We were supposed to stay within sight of the beach, and not head upstream over towards what everyone called Dobie, but I donąt know why. When we waded towards Dobie the cedar water came up to my chest and then my neck, and all but once I turned back.

Boys used to climb the trees across from the beach and jump into the water. They didn't dive, of course, just jump, and as far as I know none of them ever got hurt climbing and jumping. We would have heard because it was the sort of place where whatever happened, eventually, everyone knew about it even when it was supposed to be a big secret.

Birds. Of course. But most of the time I wasn't conscious of them. They were just part of the beach sound of people talking and the music floating out of the shack. Only once did I ever hear the birds. Marsha Cohen had talked me into going up towards Dobie. I'd turned twelve two weeks before and she was exactly six months younger, but we were in the same grade and were best friends. We walked single file. I went first.

It was July and hot. The cedar water was cool and the riverbed was smooth -- even the rocks on the bottom were worn round. When we walked towards the first bend I turned and looked back. The beach wasnąt that far away, but it looked like one world in the woods and another in the clearing where everyone was sitting. In the woods we could really hear the birds. I wouldnąt say they were singing, just making bird sounds. The only one I recognized was a crow and I couldn't see it, just heard it calling from a distance.

The river here was different in that the bank was about a foot above the river, and the water, as I said, came up over the top of my suit and then up to my neck. If the river had been faster it might have been hard to walk upstream. It would have been easier to go in the other direction, but anyway we knew that going back to the beach would be easier when we went with the current. After we got out of sight of the beach, Marsha said maybe we should go back, but I didn't want to. We argued about it for a while, and I told her it had been her idea so she shouldnąt be a baby now, and we kept walking upstream towards Dobie. Once or twice I asked her if she heard voices coming from ahead of us, but she said she didn't. It was my imagination. Marsha walked slower than I did, and she was getting farther behind me the longer we walked. I didnąt mind, and I didn't think she did either. Iąm sure she never told me to wait up for her or anything else like that.

The trees here reached all the way across the river. We could hardly see the sky, but what we could see was bright blue. The sunlight came through the leaves and made spotlights on the river. The cedar water was so clear we could see our feet. I wished I'd come here before. I liked walking upstream and not talking. It was like being alone but not as scary

I held my hands out to the side and picked my feet up and let the current carry me back downstream. It was like sitting on the most comfortable chair ever. I floated that way, backwards. I thought I'd bump into Marsha unless she was floating too. But when I turned around she wasnąt there. I hollered her name and I thought I heard her say something, but what I don't know. It didnąt sound like an echo. I donąt know if I was mad or scared or both. But I wasnąt going to go back just because she did. I stopped floating and walked upstream again until I got to a place where there was more sun, a sort of clearing and it was so pretty I forgot to be afraid. Even though Iąd been hot before, after walking in the river for a while the sun felt good. I ducked under the water and came up. My hair stuck to my neck and shoulders and I held my face up to the sun.

I let the water carry my weight and I jumped up and down, bobbing for a while in one place trying not to go back down stream yet. I thought Iąd walk just a little farther and then turn back before I got into trouble with my mother. I hoped Marsha wouldnąt say where I was. This was her idea.

Up ahead the trees shaded the river again, and I walked looking at my feet because Iąd seen a branch under water. I didnąt want to get hurt. I figured I go just around the next bend to see what was there (more trees probably) though Iąd heard of an old farmhouse along here, mostly fallen down. Thatąs what the kids said though really I didnąt know anyone whoąd actually been here. I decided Iąd give myself about ten minutes at most to get to the bend where Iąd turn around. Iąd have to guess about the ten minutes because I didnąt have a watch.

And then a splash behind me, and as I was turning to see what, shouts and four more jumped out of the trees into the river. They were laughing and calling to one another. At first I was just glad they hadn't landed on me, but then they surrounded me. I didn't recognize them from the beach or anywhere else. They were naked and standing too close to me. One of them said something about my bathing suit and they all laughed. They started grabbing at me and the straps of my suit. One of them held my hair from behind so I couldn't move my head. I kicked at them. My fingernails werenąt long and when I tried to slap them, the one whose arm I hit said I wanted to touch him. They tugged at my straps and held my wrists and pulled my bathing suit down to my waist, and they touched me and kept pulling at my suit until it was all the way down, and then they got it off me and tossed it up on the bank and did things to me that hurt, all of them hurting me until they got tired of it and left me standing naked in the river while they climbed up on the bank and put on their clothes, laughing, and ran off into the woods.

I could just reach my suit and got it on and went back down stream, running, pushed by the current right through the spot that had been sunny, but the sun had moved, and it wasnąt sunny any more, and I kept going though I hit my leg against the branch and scraped my shin, but I didnąt stop, and when I got near the beach a whole bunch of grownups were headed upstream with my mother and Marsha who was crying, too. I didnąt want to say what happened in front of everyone, but I told my mother. And she made me go to a doctor probably because I was bleeding for a couple of days, not a period, but bleeding there. And after that things were different.

We didnąt go to the beach for the rest of that summer or the next either. Marsha said she was sorry, but then after she apologized she didnąt want to see me any more, and I didnąt understand why. She hadnąt been the one, I had. If it had been the other way around, I would have talked to her. Iąm sure I would have. Besides, it would have happened sooner or later anyway. Or something would have. Youąre a woman, and you know what I mean. After all, even if you never told, you know what happened to you.