David Tracy and Johnny Cobb, two of Calvin’s friends, were already there, and already looking. “If you find it,” Calvin told Jemma, “don’t touch it. Just come and get me.” He handed her a stick with which to poke in the bushes, and ran off to go greet his friends with punches to the stomach and shoulder. Jemma began to wander around, in and out of the clearing in little loops, beating the bushes with her stick, and calling out to the hand like to a kitty. She wasn’t dressed for bushwacking: she wore a pair of bright-yellow terry-cloth overalls over her bathing suit. It was getting to be the hottest part of the day. She undid the bib of her overalls to let it flop down over her belly, but felt no cooler.
She took longer and longer loops out of the clearing. Calvin and the other boys weren’t doing much looking. They were sitting on a mossy log that stuck out of the pond, passing a cigarette back and forth. Jemma called to the hand again, and this time thought she heard a stirring among the leaves and twigs on the ground. She walked in the direction of the noise, passing another split oak and some holly bushes, and coming in a few hundred feet to another clear space, littered with magazines and bottles. Someone had built a fire there, a long time ago. Jemma poked her foot in the ashes, uncovering a half-burnt latex glove, but no hand. She picked up some bottles and threw them against a tree. None of them broke.
A flash of yellow caught her eyes, a little bit beyond the little clearing. She thought it was a bird, and so went very quietly, thinking she could catch it in her hands, then run back to her brother, saying, I found a finger! When he peered over her closed hands she’d open them, releasing the bird right into his face.
But it was a twinkie. Someone had impaled it on a hawthorn bush, still wrapped up. Jemma wondered, just for a moment, if this could possibly be a twinkie tree just beginning to bloom, and considered running for her brother to tell him, but the other wrappers scattered on the ground, and an empty box she found half buried under the bush, spoke against that lovely possibility. She knew what had happened: someone had glutted themselves on soft golden cake, and played with their food when they could eat no more of it, instead of making the effort to bring it to somebody who needed it, or at least giving it a proper burial. It still looked quite fresh inside the wrapper, except where it was pierced by the thorn, where there was a little circle of green rot. She leaned close, and sniffed it, and saw how one edge of the plastic had been gnawed at unsuccessfully by some little animal. She pinched it and discovered how it was still very soft. It couldn’t have been there very long.
She went back to the big clearing, kicking an almost empty can of shortening in front of her. She kicked it toward the pond, and it would have gone in if Johnny, demonstrating an extra sense for kickable objects, jumped backward off the log, turned around, and sent it flying over Jemma’s head back toward the trees.
“What have you been eating?” her brother asked her.
“Nothing,” she said.
“There’s stuff on your face.”
“Oh. I had a cookie, from before.” He put his hand out at her. “I ate it all.” The boys searched her, patting all her pockets, David extracting and inspecting her little vinyl change purse, then returning it. “Told you,” she said. “I didn’t find the hand.”
“Us neither,” said Calvin. He lit up another cigarette and passed it around. Johnny could blow smoke rings. Jemma asked for a puff.
“Okay,” said Calvin, “but only pretend.” He held the filter an inch or so from her lips. Jemma pursed her lips and sucked in air, and held it in as long as she could, then stuck out her bottom lip and blew out straight up, hard enough to lift her bangs. It made her cough, and the boys laughed at her.
“Let’s go swim,” she said to her brother.
“My brother says they came down here to kiss,” said David, “and to dress up like girls to dance and have pillow fights, and talk about baking cookies.”
“And they put on makeup and played field hockey,” said Johnny.
“And they felt so bad about kissing that they laid down under the train. It was totally on purpose.”
“I wish we could find that hand,” said Calvin. “I’ve got some wishes.”
“I wish we could go swimming,” said Jemma.
“Go ahead,” said her brother. “You know the way.” Jemma looked over her shoulder into the warm shade beneath the trees.
“Come on,” she said.
“We’ve got more smoking to do. Go ahead. If you find the hand, don’t touch it and don’t make any wishes. Come right back here right away.” She stared at him a little while longer, but he just puffed on the cigarette and looked at the sky. She walked away, looking back a few times before they were out of sight. He was never looking at her. The path was clear all the way up, it had been trampled true by three generations of teenagers. Jemma found her tube and rolled it up the hill like a stone, going very slowly, hoping Calvin would catch up with her.
She had an imaginary brother that she could force to accompany her when the real one would not. He went with her now, leading or following, all he asked was that she not look directly at him. If he was following she could hear him stepping behind her, crushing leaves or sliding on loose dirt, and when he went ahead of her his shadow flashed across the shiny leaves of holly bushes along the path as they passed through breaks in the canopy of leaves. He called back to her that it was very hot, and she agreed.
The beach was crowded, full of adults and kids on the sand and everywhere in the water, some standing in it up to their necks, some just to their chests, and some just getting their feet wet. Tiffany Cropp almost ran into her as Jemma rolled her tube down toward the water, passing by with her sister, a very fancy float suspended between them — it was a little island with an inflatable palm tree growing out of one side. Jemma tested the water with her foot before walking in. It was warmer than she had hoped it would be.
Kids swarmed to the tube like tadpoles toward a lump of bread, all of them clinging with their hands and arms, so they all faced each other over the hole, and Jemma had no room to sit. Jemma didn’t mind, though she didn’t join in their chatter. Jemma drifted, and watched her imaginary brother playing in the water, just from the corner of her eye. He sported like a dolphin or a whale, leaping in somersaults, or in high arcs that landed him on his back, and she got a glimpse of his foot, or of his hand, as he fell back in the water.
She realized she was daydreaming, and remembered what Sister Gertrude had said to her. She let go of the tube and stood in the water, submerged to her neck, thinking of the punishment she would get after she died, and then realizing she was daydreaming about that. She tried not to think about it, but found that she could not, and tried not to picture it, to consider the lesson but not the entertainment, but couldn’t do that either. She tried to focus just on the water against her neck and the wind blowing gently against her face, but Purgatory was unfolding in her mind, a gray wasteland peopled with dreamy sinners and little monkeys on tricycles with sidecars full of bananas. She began to cry.