The sun's still up, but in here it's as cool and dark and murky as night — the darkness hugging both of them like water, lapping at Danielle's skin from all sides. Down here in the summer-school basement, it's an unexplored territory — some place she has never been. The sweet-sick smell of smoke is still clinging to him, clinging to her—

Her hand ghosts down her body, down the hem of her tee shirt to the snagging plasticky edge of her underwear, and the snaking cord of Danielle's headphones grazes her bare arm like a caress. Her music is turned up loud enough not to hear mom and dad talking in raised voices downstairs, something she's gotten good at over the years; her half-empty school bag is heaped up in front of the door like a half-hearted blockade. The only way in or out is the telephone cord, the voice on the line, the window.

Would he come in her window? Would he come in if she called him? But they aren't in her second-floor bedroom with its tacked-up pictures and forgotten jewel cases and little girl bracelets twisted around the doorknobs, they're not in this big expensive house that her father wants to defend against violation or die trying. They're back there in the school basement.

His hard muscles against her soft corners, his hands on her body — a hard plywood edge is pressing into her back, and when Danielle cries out he lifts her up like it's effortless, and all the muscles of her legs shudder and clasp against him. The set is like a dollhouse, miniature windows and miniature doors, and the two of them could break it all down if they wanted to — splintering fairy-tale door frames, knocking hinges askew. His hands lift up her shirt, and this time she's not wearing some beige Sears bra but she's naked to the skin — his mouth bruises against hers, the tremendous phantom strength of his body is crushing her. His hands on her breasts, her back, not fumbling but sure. Danielle arches against him, defiant, and she can feel his erection burning through his clothes like hot metal, like hot lead.

No, he never touched her. Danny shuts her eyes tighter, presses the heel of her foot into her calf like an anchor — all this stuff is coming naturally to her, not hard but easy, her fingertips slipping into the rhythm she's known for a while now. Slippery fingers working at her clit, and the tension running up and down her like an electric wire.

He doesn't even peel her panties down, just hooks them aside with his fingers, something from an R-rated movie or one of those books mom keeps by the bathtub — there as now Danny is too-wet and too-hot, too ready. She doesn't even know what it's supposed to look like, really, but it's enough to hurt and enough that she really, really wants it. Some spell is being broken, some mystery is being shown to her with his voice in her ears and his rasping cheek pressed to her throat—

He only ever kissed her. Danny has to stop herself, has to pull back from the brink — it would be too easy to frighten herself, to tumble forward into something that just won't stop, somewhere she can't come back from. Her legs are quaking, and the ache in her dims a little, but not enough. If Danny lies very still, with the same song she already knows playing in her ears and her legs shaking and slack against the bedsheets, she can catch her breath.