Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You

themselves, if there was anybody to hear or see. They felt as if they were going to jump off a cliff and fly. They felt that something was happening to them different from anything that had happened before, and it had to do with the boat, the water, the sunlight, the dark ruined station, and each other. They thought of each other now hardly as names or people, but as echoing shrieks, reflections, all bold and white and loud and scandalous, and as fast as arrows. They went running without a break into the cold water and when it came almost to the tops of their legs they fell on it and swam. It stopped their noise. Silence, amazement, came over them in a rush. They dipped and floated and separated, sleek as mink.
    Eva stood up in the water her hair dripping, water running down her face. She was waist deep. She stood on smooth stones, her feet fairly wide apart, water flowing between her legs. About a yard away from her Clayton also stood up, and they were blinking the water out of their eyes, looking at each other. Eva did not turn or try to hide; she was quivering from the cold of the water, but also with pride, shame, boldness, and exhilaration.
    Clayton shook his head violently, as if he wanted to bang something out of it, then bent over and took a mouthful of river water. He stood up with his cheeks full and made a tight hole of his mouth and shot the water at her as if it was coming out of a hose, hitting her exactly, first one breast and then the other. Water from his mouth ran down her body. He hooted to see it, a loud self-conscious sound that nobody would have expected, from him. The others looked up from wherever they were in the water and closed in to see.
    Eva crouched down and slid into the water, letting her head go right under. She swam, and when she let her head out, downstream, Carol was coming after her and the boys were already on the bank, already running into the grass, showing their skinny backs, their white, flat buttocks. They were laughing and saying things to each other but she couldn’t hear, for the water in her ears.
    “What did he do?” said Carol.
    “Nothing.”
    They crept in to shore. “Let’s stay in the bushes till they go,” said Eva. “I hate them anyway. I really do. Don’t you hate them?”
    “Sure,” said Carol, and they waited, not very long, until they heard the boys still noisy and excited coming down to the place a bit upriver where they had left the boat. They heard them jump in and start rowing.
    “They’ve got all the hard part, going back,” said Eva, hugging herself and shivering violently. “Who cares? Anyway. It never was our boat.”
    “What if they tell?” said Carol.
    “We’ll say it’s all a lie.”
    Eva hadn’t thought of this solution until she said it, but as soon as she did she felt almost light-hearted again. The ease and scornfulness of it did make them both giggle, and slapping themselves and splashing out of the water they set about developing one of those fits of laughter in which, as soon as one showed signs of exhaustion, the other would snort and start up again, and they would make helpless—soon genuinely helpless—faces at each other and bend over and grab themselves as if they had the worst pain.

Executioners
Helena the skunk ,
Her father must be drunk .
    What was that to cry about? I don’t know if I cried, I don’t remember. I became familiar with sidewalks, and the ground under trees, neutral things that I could look down at, meaning no offense. I did marvel at the way some people managed, not being pulled down by anything—not by having crossed eyes, or a little brother who was an idiot, or living in a dirty house beside the tracks. I was the opposite, thin-skinned as Robina said. I expected blame.
    Good-bye Helena
    Good-bye Helena
    Good-bye Helena
    Good-bye Helena
    They used to bunch behind me walking down the school hill. Sweet voices they had, just on the edge of sincerity, deadly innocence. If I had known what to do, if I had known how to turn around. That can’t be taught. It’s a gift, like being able to carry a tune.
    My clothes were strange, that was one thing. A navy blue tunic, resembling the uniforms worn at private schools. (Where my mother would have sent me, certainly, if she had had the money.) Long white stockings, winter and summer, never mind the mud on our road. In the winter they showed the lumpy folds of the long underwear I was compelled to wear underneath. On top of my head a large bow, sticking