Ms. Hempel held their towels in her outstretched arms and rubbed their backs when they scrambled, dripping, up from the water. The girls clustered about her, reaching out their trembling hands and pressing them against her cheek: “See?” they asked. “See how cold I am!”
“Brrrrrr!” Ms. Hempel said, and rubbed them harder.
The girls then arranged their towels into a beautiful mosaic on the sand. Dropping down upon their knees, they dug into their beach bags, emerging with plastic containers and painted tins and shoeboxes lined with waxed paper. These they gravely placed in the middle of the mosaic. Julianne circled about them, distributing paper plates, while Keisha handed out Dixie cups half filled with soda. One by one the lids were removed, revealing jerked chicken, fruit salad, crumbling banana bread, couscous, fried plantains, sesame noodles, sticky little rice balls. The girls fell upon the food. “We organized a pot-luck,” Sasha explained, forking a pineapple wedge and making room for Ms. Hempel. “Please help yourself.”
Meanwhile, the boys had straggled up onto the beach and were now huddled around the school cooler, peering down into sodden paper bags. They consoled themselves by clapping their sacks of school-issued potato chips and making them explode.
“They thought a potluck was stupid,” Alice said, with profound satisfaction.
A family of seagulls and the three other homeroom teachers patrolled the area. Ms. Hempel shouted out, “Everything’s okay over here!” and accepted a lemon square, reminding herself that her presence was required. She would make sure that no paper plates were left in the sand. She would apply sunscreen to the girls’ shoulders, and provide an adult perspective on their discussions. Drowsily, she gazed out at the ocean. “I can’t believe you went in,” she murmured.
The morning passed slowly. Swimming and lunch had already taken place, and it wasn’t even eleven yet. No one dared return to the water; common sense had set in. And the volleyball net kept collapsing. The girls wrapped themselves in their towels and asked Ms. Hempel personal questions. Was she wearing, underneath her sweater, a one-piece or a two-piece? Did she propose or did he? But everything she said seemed only to remind them of something more urgent that they needed to say. Each one of her answers was interrupted, and then abandoned, as the girls hurried from one new topic to the next: discriminatory gym teachers; open-minded parents; plus-sized models. The animated nature of the discussion kept them warm. When they wanted to make a point, they threw off their towels, baring themselves like superheroes.
Ms. Hempel found herself noticing a group of boys off in the distance, bending themselves to a task with a suspicious degree of concentration. “What do you think they’re doing?” she asked.
“Who knows?” Gloria sighed.
“Maybe I should go check on them,” Ms. Hempel said.
“They’re fine,” Julianne said, a bit sternly.
But they didn’t look fine. They were crouching over something. Maybe they had found a stash of hypodermic needles, washed up by the tide.
“I had better go see,” Ms. Hempel said.
“Ms. Hempel…,” the girls called, but she was already on her feet and walking away from them.
Upon closer inspection, she saw that the boys were absorbed in a fairly harmless activity. It involved one boy lying down on his back, the other boys heaping sand on top of him and patting it down, and then the boy heaving himself up and lumbering to his feet. The boys took great care to smooth out the sand so that when the body began to stir, the grave would crack and fissure in a dramatic fashion. She wasn’t sure where the pleasure lay: in burying a classmate, or in freeing oneself from the sand. They attacked both roles with equal gusto. She stood to one side and watched them.
When it was Jonathan Hamish’s turn, the boys began to add, at his behest, anatomy to his burial mound. As they shaped two sandy breasts, they glanced over at Ms. Hempel, to see what she would do. Their glance both defied and invited reproach, a look with which she was very familiar. She smiled at them permissively, then rolled her eyes to show how unflappable she was. An argument arose as to the size of the outcroppings: some boys, among them Elias and Theo, felt they should be round and realistic, while others, like Roderick, wanted to keep building the breasts until they sat high and pointy on Jonathan’s chest. “That’s not what they do,” Elias muttered, but sand was an imprecise medium to begin with. Jonathan grinned down at his protrusions.
The breasts turned out so well the boys decided to add a penis. They glanced over, again, in Ms. Hempel’s direction. They even cleared a little space for her so she could stump over to the penis and object. But didn’t they know? She was the young teacher. It was her job to indulge them, to be impervious to shock, to watch all the same television shows that they did. She laughed when they made off-color jokes. She allowed them to use curse words in their creative writing. She taught sex education with unheard-of candor. Of course, they were constantly testing her. When she asked her homeroom to anonymously submit any question, any question at all, regarding puberty or sex or contraception, she received some very graphic queries. She stood at the front of the class and read each question aloud. Competently, intrepidly, she described the consistency of semen, what purpose lubricant served, why a woman might enjoy receiving oral sex.
Jonathan Hamish, who didn’t even try to disguise his handwriting, had submitted a question of a more challenging sort. He grinned at her when he saw that she had pulled his crumpled paper from the pile. Whose the best lover you’ve ever had? Jonathan watched her closely, as if waiting for her to discard it, frown at him, send him downstairs to Mr. Peele’s office. But she found herself mysteriously touched, felt herself blushing in a pleasurable way. Another word, surely, would have been the more obvious choice: What’s the best sex you’ve ever had? Who’s the best fuck? But even in his efforts to provoke her, he had selected a word that was exceedingly charming. Full of solicitous, gentlemanly concern. And he grinned at her — not devilishly, not leeringly — but sweetly almost, sweetly and frankly. As if he really wanted to know. As if he were asking only because all aspects of her life were of interest to him. As if the thought of her embroiled in sweaty sex were unimaginable. In Jonathan Hamish’s view of the world, Ms. Hempel would make love.
When she read the question aloud, the homeroom swiveled in their seats and glared at Jonathan. They knew that only he would ask such a question.
“Well,” Ms. Hempel said, displaying her ring finger. “Shouldn’t the answer be obvious?”
THE PENIS, HAVING A MORE slender base, proved more difficult than the breasts. It kept on toppling over. After a few frustrated attempts, the boys settled on a suggestive hillock (a pup tent, Ms. Hempel realized). They stepped back and admired their handiwork.
“Keep going,” Jonathan commanded, waggling his hands and feet. “I’m not completely covered.”
They heaped more sand upon him, making it necessary that he remain absolutely still, for even the smallest twitch of his fingers could disrupt their progress. Jonathan, as Ms. Hempel well knew, was a child unable to stop moving. And perhaps it was a relief to him, this stillness, this weight pressing down on him.
But he still was not satisfied with the effect. “Try putting more sand on my neck, and up around my ears,” he instructed.
The other boys squatted down beside his head and carefully shaped the sand. “More,” Jonathan said. “It doesn’t feel right.”
He could no longer move his head, but his eyes darted back and forth, monitoring their efforts. “You can put more on my forehead, and my chin,” he said. “Get as much on my face as you can.”