Beach Girls by Luanne Rice

in her windows,” Billy said. Everyone else had been whispering, but he spoke in a normal voice. Rafe grabbed a handful of green acorns off a branch to pelt him with—his windup was fierce, and the nuts felt like gunfire. Billy dropped the doughnut box, the bird fell out, and as Billy lunged to catch him, he bumped into the ladder. It weaved slightly, and then fell with a crash to the ground.
     
    STEVIE DIDN'T KNOW
what had gotten into her. She sat at her easel, staring at her paper, unable to paint. She was wearing what an old lover had called her “Welcome to the Black Hole of the Universe” garment: an old cream satin dressing gown imprinted with dark blue Chinese characters reputed to have been worn backstage by Joan Morgana, a rising young Metropolitan Opera star, suffering through a disastrous affair with a famous tenor, who had committed suicide shortly after a performance of
Madame Butterfly
. Moved by the dark love story, shortly after her split from Linus, Stevie had bought the gown at the Opera Thrift Store on East Twenty-third Street.
    Sitting at her easel, she was trying to concentrate on her painting when she heard a thump. She ignored it. Several days had passed since Nell's visit. She had spent two of them drawing wrens, and now she was back to hummingbirds. The trumpet vine on the house's north side was a magnet for them. She had been watching a pair for weeks—the female a subdued green, the male blazing emerald with a ruby throat.
    But all she could think about was Emma—and Nell. She sipped from her teacup—chipped, with blue roses, one of her grandmother's mismatched bone-china collection—and remembered how she and the beach girls would have “tea parties” with them. They would make lemonade and drink it from the cups. This one had been Emma's favorite. The thought made her eyes brim with tears.
    Suddenly she heard a scraping noise that sent Tilly flying off the back of the sofa, running for cover. A voice: “Whooooooaaaaa,
stop!
” And then metal clattering against rock. Stevie had heard that sound before. She sighed and hoped that no one was badly hurt. Drying her eyes, she tugged her robe around her and ran to the window.
    The ladder lay on its side. The boys had scattered—she saw them peering out of bushes and from behind rocks. One was still shinnying down the oak tree. Yet another was chasing a young crow on the ground.
    Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a man running through her yard. He jumped over the low boxwood hedge, displaying truly impressive college-football form. Alarmed by the chaos, she ran barefoot downstairs, out the kitchen door, and toward the group.
    “Are you okay?” the man asked, leaning over a boy who was holding his wrist.
    “I'm fine,” the boy said. “I kind of jammed it.”
    “You'd better get it checked out,” the man said.
    “You shouldn't put ladders against people's houses,” she said darkly. “You never know what might happen.” Her tone was dark, and two of the boys ran away. One stayed where he was, on all fours, trying to lure something out from under a thatch of honeysuckle vines.
    “What have you got there?” she asked.
    “Back up, Billy,” one of his friends called. “She's going to turn you into a snake!”
    Stevie tried not to react. Sometimes the kids' teasing made her laugh, but today it made her feel apart, different, and spurned, and it forced tears back into her eyes. The freckled boy didn't move; he just concentrated on trying to reach the bird.
    “A baby crow. He fell out of the nest or something. He was squawking like crazy before, but now he's just so quiet . . . I tried to feed him, but he wouldn't eat. So I decided to take him to the
vet. . . .”
    “Come on, Billy—leave the bird,” his friends said.
    “I can't!”
    “Go, all of you,” Stevie said. “Go home now, and I won't turn you into reptiles. I'll take care of the bird.”
    The boy looked up at her, concern in his brown eyes. Then he nodded, taking