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'Thank you,' she said, intent on getting every last bit of the lime off me; she pulled her skirt up higher, spit in it, and kept wiping. My face stung.

'Why do we like each other more than we like Frank?' I asked her.

'We just do,' she said, 'and we always will. Frank is weird,' she said.

'But he's our brother,' I said.

'So? You're my brother, too,' she said. 'That's not why I like you.'

'Why do you?' I asked.

'I just do,' she said. We wrestled for a while in the woods, until she got something in her eye; I helped her get it out. She was sweaty and smelled like clean dirt. She had very high breasts, which seemed separated by too wide an expanse of chest, but Franny was strong. She could usually beat me up, unless I got completely on top of her; then she could still tickle me hard enough to make me pee if I didn't get off her. When she was on top of me, there was no moving her.

'One day I'll be able to beat you up,' I told her.

'So what?' she said. 'By then you won't want to.'

A fat football player, named Poindexter, came into the woods to move his bowels. We saw him coming and hid in the ferns we'd known about for years. For years the football players crapped in these woods, just off the practice field -- especially, it seemed, the fat ones. It was a long run back to the gymnasium, and Coach Bob harangued them for not emptying their bowels before they came to practice. For some reason the fat ones could never get them entirely empty, we imagined.

'It's Poindexter,' I whispered.

'Of course it is,' Franny said.

Poindexter was very awkward; he always had trouble getting his thigh pads down. Once he had to take off his cleats and remove the entire bottom half of his uniform, except his socks. This time he just struggled with the pads and pants that bound his knees precariously close together. He kept his balance by squatting slightly forward with his hands on his helmet (on the ground in front of him). This time he crapped messily on the insides of his football shoes and had to wipe the shoes as well as his ass. For a moment, Franny and I feared he would use the ferns for this purpose, but Poindexter was always hurried and panting, and he did as good a job as he could with the handful of maple leaves he'd gathered on the path and brought into the woods with him. We heard Coach Bob's whistle blowing, and Poindexter heard it, too.

When he ran back toward the practice field, Franny and I started clapping. When Poindexter stopped and listened, we stopped clapping; the poor fat boy stood in the woods, wondering what applause he had imagined -- this time -- and then rushed back to the game he played so badly and, usually, with such humiliation.

Then Franny and I snuck down to the path that the football players always took back to the gym. It was a narrow path, pockmarked from their cleats. We were slightly worried where De Meo might be, but I went up to the edge of the practice field and 'spotted' for Franny while she dropped her pants and squatted on the path; then she spotted for me. We both covered our rather disappointing messes with a light sprinkling of leaves. Then we retreated to the usual ferns to wait for the football players to finish practice, but Lilly was already in the ferns.

'Go home,' Franny told her; Lilly was seven. Most of the time she was too young for Franny and me, but we were nice to her around the house; she had no friends, and she seemed entranced by Frank, who enjoyed babying her.

'I don't have to go home,' Lilly said.

'Better go,' Franny said.

'Why's your face so red?' Lilly asked me.

'De Meo put poison on it,' Franny said, 'and he's looking around for more people to rub it on.'

'If I go home, he'll see me,' Lilly said seriously.

'Not if you go right away,' I said.

'We'll watch out for you,' Franny said. She stood up out of the ferns. 'It's all clear,' she whispered. Lilly ran home.

'Am I really all red in the face?' I asked Franny.

Franny pulled my face up close to hers and licked me once on my cheek, once on my forehead, once on my nose, once on my lips. 'I can't taste it anymore,' she said. 'I got it all off you.'

We lay together in the ferns; it wasn't boring, but it took a while for the practice to be over and for the first football players to come down the path. The third one stepped in it -- a running back from Boston who was doing a postgraduate year at Dairy, basically to get a little older before he played football in college. He slid a short ways in it, but caught his balance; then he regarded the horror in his cleats.

'Poindexter!' he screamed. Poindexter, a slow runner, was well to the rear of the line of players heading for the showers. 'Poindexter!' screamed the running back from Boston. 'You turd, Poindexter!'

'What'd I do?' Poindexter asked, out of breath, forever fat -- 'fat in his genes,' Franny would say, later, when she knew what genes were.

'Did you have to do it on the path, you asshole?' the running back asked Poindexter.

'It wasn't me!' Poindexter protested.