“Hey, no problem,” said the giant, lifting his hands up, palms forward. The hands were huge. “Go right ahead. You don’t mind if we listen in, do you?”

In a faint voice Greg said, “Well…” Then he stopped. Something was happening to his lips. They were scrunching together into a little pink wad, as if gathered by a drawstring. Even more faintly he managed to say, “Well, no…” The muscles around his lips seemed to have an epileptic life of their own. He barely managed to croak out, “Wouldn’t you rather”—his voice broke—“go play with your sticks?”

The lout broke into a wild, leering grin and just looked Greg in the eye until Greg broke. The giveaway was a big swallow and a frightened compression of the lips.

The giant turned toward his boys. “Says we oughta fuck off and go play with our sticks.”

The boys went, “Woooooooooo!” The one with the grizzled head said, “Play with our what? Did he say dicks or pricks?”

Greg said, “I didn’t say—”

But the giant, leering at him once more, broke in. “We’re not letting ourselves get”—he raised his right hand and let the wrist go limp in a hambone fashion—“rilly pissy here, are we?”

Greg opened his mouth, but the little muscles were playing such spastic tricks with his lips that he couldn’t utter a word.

Inexplicably, the big lacrosse player turned toward Charlotte. He looked her up and down, smiled, winked, and said, “Hey, babe.”

Then he turned back to Greg and began to leer in the most humiliating way, and the leer was the eternal leer of the playground, the one that says, “Come on, fag, think you can fuck with me?”

Greg had begun hyperventilating.

Suddenly Camille Deng sprang up, eyes snapping, lips pursed grimly. She looked about a third the size of their tormentor. She spoke in a low, rasping snarl:

“Let me put it another way. Take your lacrosse stick—bitch—and stick it up your ass net-first—bitch—and keep shoving until you shovel all the shit out of your mouth—bitch.”

The giant’s face turned bloodred. He took a step toward Camille.

Adam knew he should do something, but he remained rooted to the step he was sitting on.

Camille didn’t retreat an inch. She thrust her chin forward and said, “Go ahead. Just touch me once. You’ll be brought up on assault and sexual harassment charges so fast you’ll be out of Dupont like a shot. You can go home and play with your all-American dick—bitch. And eat your buddies’ ice cream”—she motioned with her head toward his comrades—“and drool their spooch from your filthy mouth, bitch.”

The big athlete stopped in his tracks. The radioactive words assault and sexual harassment had jolted him. He knew them for what they were—career killers. He despised this woman—she was too grim and mean to be called a girl—as much as he had ever despised anyone, male or female, in his life.

“Oh, you little slit-eyed skank—”

“Slit-eyed!” cried Camille. “Slit-eyed!” It was a cry of triumph. “You heard that!” She was all but hopping up and down as her eyes panned over Edgar, Greg, Roger, Adam, and Charlotte. “Slit-eyed! You heard him!” Then she looked the bewildered giant right in the face. “You just had to go and do it, didn’t you! You couldn’t hold back! You just had to—” Whereupon she drew the edge of her hand across her throat like a knife and flashed him a vicious smile.

The guy looked as if he had been poleaxed at the base of his skull. He got the picture right away: racial insult. The poisonous skank had him. At Dupont that was worse than homicide. With homicide on your record, you had a fighting chance of staying in school.

“Let’s go,” he said in a barely audible voice, and they all got up and headed along the walkway toward the Great Yard. They looked back malevolently, but they kept walking.

Adam knew he should get up and congratulate Camille and whoop in triumph or something. And maybe say something to Greg. At least Greg had tried. But Adam still didn’t move. He was paralyzed with shame and lingering fear. I didn’t do a thing…nothing…I just sat here. (And what if they come back?)

At first none of them said a word. Then Camille, looking down as if at the steps, said, “Student…athletes…” As in herpes pustules. Then she looked up and said with great animation, “Hey, we gotta find out what that guy’s name is! You can find out, can’t you, Adam?”

Dispiritedly, “I think so.”

Camille gave a humorless chuckle. “That moron is fucking outta here! He’s history! He’s a dried-up piece a shit! He’s lucky if he’s a student at Dupont—student”—another mordant chuckle—“forty-eight hours from now.”

“Dja see the way they went skulking off with their tails between their legs?” said Greg. He had a grin of victory stretched across his face. “We crrr ushed those motherfuckers! They won’t fuck with the Millennial Mutants again!”

We, thought Adam. You’d have caved completely if Camille hadn’t stepped in. Yeah, well, Greg had put up some resistance, hadn’t he. Couldn’t very well deny him that.

“He won’t fuck with anybody anymore!” crowed Camille. “Not at Dupont! That cretin is roadkill! And you’re all my witnesses, right?”

She looked at each of them, including Charlotte, until all nodded yes. In fact, testifying in some kind of procedure against that lacrosse player was the last thing in the world Charlotte wanted to do. He had been sarcastic and mildly insulting, but Camille was a total…bitch. She was ready to bring the whole world up on “charges.” Why? For what? The guy wasn’t all that bad. He was virile. He was good-looking in a rugged way, acne scars and all…Beverly, on all fours: Where are the lacrosse players? Should he be expelled from Dupont, maybe have his life ruined, for calling a bitch like Camille a slit-eyed skank after what she said to him? Shoving a lacrosse stick net-first—

Camille’s vulgarity made Charlotte queasy. No, it was more than that. It had shocked her in some fundamental way. In order to attack, Camille had abandoned all pretense of being feminine. Charlotte could still see the guy’s stunned expression…It had shocked him, too…How anguished he looked as compared to a few moments before—

She glanced at Adam. He was looking straight at her, and she found herself in an eye lock. Adam was still sitting there on the step. He hadn’t budged.

What was it he saw in her face? Adam wondered. It wasn’t an accusation, in any case. Such a tender beauty she had…the purity of it…the innocence…the lithe legs, the sweet, delicate, lubricious curve of her lips…all in one. And she was as inexperienced as himself…forgiving yet intensely desirable…This was no mere observation. It was a feeling as real as any of his five senses. It suffused his body even unto the most remote nerve endings, suffused his body, his mind, everything within him—

Charlotte wanted to put an arm around him. He looked so forlorn and hopeless, sitting on that same spot where he had been sitting all along. He hadn’t moved a muscle.

Reduce the world to a cocoon in which there were just the two of them. Just that, thought Adam, and he wouldn’t ask for anything else.

I’m only eighteen, Charlotte thought, but I guess he needs someone to tell him everything is going to be okay. She broke the eye lock and departed that sad moment.

She thought the guy hadn’t even noticed her, but all at once he had turned toward her, smiled, winked, and said, “Hey, babe.”