One Track Mind by Bethany Campbell

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    He took the shirt from her. “I’ll just throw it away.”
    “Do you want another one? I could loan you one of my brother’s.”
    “No,” he said and swallowed again. “I might bleed on it. I’m comfortable.”
    But he wasn’t. He usually felt fine shirtless, but he usually wasn’t around a girl like this. He stole a glance at her body. Her bathing suit was damp, and on her chest he saw droplets of water, maybe from the pool or from perspiration.
    He looked away quickly and saw her fallen book. He reached for it and looked at it. Then he looked at her in surprise.
    “You’re reading a comic book?” he said in disbelief.
    Her expression grew defensive. “It’s not a comic book. It’s a graphic novel.”
    “It looks like a comic book to me,” he said dubiously. “It’s got a mouse on the cover.”
    “It’s actually a very serious story,” she said, defensively. “It’s about war. And prejudice. And man’s cruelty to man.”
    He looked at her in puzzlement. “And about mice?”
    “All right,” she said with a little shrug that made her bosom move first up, then down. “Mice, too.”
    “You’re going to have to explain that to me,” he said, studying how serious her expression had become.
    And so she started to explain. And he listened, and heunderstood what she was getting at, and she showed him some of the pictures, and he bent his head closer to hers.
    “I’d loan it to you,” she said. “But it’s not mine. It’s my aunt’s.”
    He allowed himself a small smile. “You must have some weird aunt.”
    “Don’t you know her? She teaches at school. Mrs. Attwater.”
    His heart gave another unexpected little buck. “Mrs. Attwater is your aunt? ”
    “Yes,” she said. “What’s wrong with that?”
    Somehow, it just seemed too perfect to him. If she was going to be anybody in the world’s niece, she should be Mrs. Attwater’s.
    “She’s my favorite teacher,” he said. That was true. He didn’t add that it was the first time he’d ever had a favorite teacher, and he generally didn’t have much use for teachers at all.
    “I…I could ask her to loan it to you,” Lori suggested.
    Why was she looking at him like that? He was having trouble breathing again. “Naw. That’s okay,” he said. “Listen, thanks and all, but I better get back to work.”
    He squinted at the sky and was surprised to see it had become cloudy. When had that happened? Probably all the trees could have turned upside down and waved their roots in the air and he wouldn’t have noticed.
    “And you—” he looked her up and down cautiously “—you should get back under your umbrella. You can get more sunburned when it’s cloudy, you know? Uh…” He felt it imperative to say something that sounded semi-intelligent. “Uh…the light’s UV rays can come through clouds.”
    “I’ve learned that to my sorrow,” she said with a rueful dimple playing in her cheek.
    She looked at him curiously. “Could I ask you something personal?”
    He felt even more self-conscious. “I guess. What?”
    “You’ve got those tattoos,” she said, nodding at his body. “What are those designs?”
    “Oh.” He cocked his head as if the answer had no importance. “They’re mostly from the South Seas. Polynesia.”
    “Why the South Seas?”
    “I want to go there someday. Doesn’t everybody?”
    “I never thought about it,” she said, looking interested. “But what about those two birds on either side of your chest? Are they Polynesian?”
    “No,” he said and swallowed again. “They’re some kind of seagulls, I guess.”
    “Do they mean something?”
    He gave a short laugh. “When I get old, my chest’ll get sunken. And they’ll get closer and closer together.”
    She looked into his eyes more closely. “And then?”
    “And then, when they get so close that it looks like they’re going to crash into each other…”
    “Yes?” she urged.
    He laughed again. “Then I’ll know that at last