Rilla dashed out of her house, laughing breathlessly. The hem of her bright Gypsy skirt swirled about her ankles. She opened the door, slid into the car, and flung her backpack into the backseat, barely missing my carefully packed picnic basket, all in one flowing motion. I tore my eyes from her bare brown shoulders when she spoke.

“Drive, Chris!” she ordered me. “Daddy said I couldn't go. He’ll be out any second.” She slapped my back playfully, but her voice was shaky. She was, I thought, a little scared. “What are you waiting for? Go!”

Her eyes were electric. When she said “go,” I went, slamming the pedal down and almost sideswiping another car. I looked belatedly in the rearview mirror. There were no more cars, but Rilla’s brawny, white-haired father came charging out of the house. He was yelling at us to come back; he looked like he was crying. I hesitated, my foot easing up on the pedal. Rilla's dad was a big guy, an ex-Navy man, and I didn't want him mad at me. Besides, it was unnerving -- we were just going on a little date. What could he be so upset about?

“Go,” Rilla urged. “Don’t mind him. He’s nuts.” There were tight little lines around her mouth. She saw the worry in my face and summoned a big grin.

I wasn’t sure. “What if he follows us?” I was concerned about Rilla's dad, but I wasn't eager to stop. I was taking Rilla to Seal Beach. She had grown up all over the place -- her dad moved her around constantly, always starting a new business or trying out some bizarre job -- but she had never seen the ocean. Rilla had never seen a waterfall, she said, or any body of water bigger than a pond, except the pool at the school gym. She’d always wanted to, but her father had a dread of water and wouldn’t let Rilla near it.

My plan was a good one. My favorite uncle owned a seaside summer house, and his property included a lovely, secluded beach. I had packed a romantic picnic, like something from an old book or movie —cheese, a round loaf of sourdough bread, fruit, and even a bottle of sparkling grape juice with two wine glasses. We would eat it by the ocean, watching the waves splintering against the rocks, and she would fall in love with me. It was perfectly simple.

“He won’t follow us.” Rilla reached into the pouch she wore tied around her waist and pulled out a ring of keys. She twirled the keys around her finger like a Wild West gunfighter, sitting back in her seat with a smug, victorious look until we drove out of town. Then she threw the keys out the window into a field of knee-high grass.

I started to protest, but she drowned me out with a wild howl. She just tossed back her head and let loose like a coyote, her gigantic gold earrings jingling against her shoulders. Rilla could pull off things like that, maybe because she never seemed self-conscious. I couldn’t help it; I laughed. We howled like two crazy wolves for almost an hour, all the way to my uncle’s house.

We were laughing helplessly when we got there. I could barely see to pull the car off the road. We sat for a minute before we got out, letting ourselves calm down.

I'd been waiting forever for a chance like this. Now, with my driver's license still hot from the laminator and my parents' crummy blue Aries for the day, I finally had one. Rilla and I had been friends for almost a year, since she'd shown up in homeroom mid-semester and the rest of the kids had avoided her, with her exotic clothes and wild, unpredictable behavior. I, on the other hand, had been drawn to her instantly.

Rilla was 15 years old — a year younger than I, almost exactly — and ready to fall in love with something; I could feel that. I hoped it would be me. Her strange paua-shell eyes, always intense, always changing, were full of unfocused desire. When I close my own eyes and remember looking into hers, I can still feel it, the way staring at her made the bottom fall out of my stomach. She made me — I might as well say it — she made me feel like I was drowning. I loved it. I loved her, everything about her.

“Well, here we are,” I said, and then wanted to slap myself. What a meaningless, moronic thing to say. But Rilla just nodded and said “yes,” softly. She was looking at the big, empty white house — it was too early in the season for my uncle and his family to be here. She sighed, then quickly smiled at me and got out of the car.

While I got the picnic basket out of the back seat, she pulled a camera from her backpack and handed it to me. I stuffed it in the basket with the food.

“Ready?” she asked. “I am.”

I looked dubiously at her sandals, with their flat soles and flimsy straps. “It’s a bit of a hike.”

“I’ll be fine.” She tucked her hair, so dark and glossy it almost looked wet, behind her ear and looked up at me. “What are we waiting for?”

Our hands touched, mostly accidentally, a few times as we walked up the narrow trail. Then, somehow, we were holding hands. I think it was Rilla’s doing. That’s mostly what I remember from that walk: the warm touch of Rilla’s hand on mine. It felt like every nerve in my body had congregated there. I marveled at the rough little callous on her finger where her pencil rubbed when she was writing. It was so different from the smoothness of her palm that it seemed like a tiny miracle. School, and homework, and everything that made up my daily life were on a different planet. I never wanted to go back there. I wanted to live here in my uncle’s private Eden, like Adam and Eve, forever.

We stopped a few times and took pictures of each other. Me trying to look cool, my hands deep in the pockets of my blue jeans. Rilla laughing, the sun shining off her tanned shoulders. Rilla took her time with the pictu! res — she seemed to be stalling, drawing out the time until we actually reached the sea.

Anyway, we did finally get there. The sky was clouding up by then, and I hoped the rain would hold off until we finished our picnic. If it stormed too badly to drive, I had keys to my uncle’s house, and we could wait there until it blew over. I pretended to myself that I didn’t want that to happen, chivalrously quashing my mental images of what Rilla and I might do, trapped alone in that big house with the seven bedrooms, with thunder rolling down the beach....

She saw the grey glint of the ocean and jumped up and down, clapping her hands and giggling like a little girl in a Japanese cartoon. She threw her arms around me, laughed breathlessly in my ear, and then ran down the beach to the water, her arms out at her sides as if she were playing airplane. I ran after her. She made short work of the wet rocks, sliding down them like an otter. By the time I picked my way down to her, my balance thrown off by the bulky basket, she had her sandals off and her feet in the water. She picked her trailing skirt out of the seafoam, then let her fingers trail in the eddies around the rocks.

“Oh, thank you,” she said, looking up at me through her dark lashes as I approached. She smiled and touched my hand with the tips of her fingers. They were cold and clammy from the water -- so different from the warmth of her hand just minutes before that I looked down and pulled away, startled.

When I loooked back at Rilla, she had turned away from me. I cursed myself for having broken that deep shared gaze, and I tried to engage her again, make her pay attention to me. Belatedly, I said “You’re welcome," but she was staring out over the water and didn't answer. I tried not to feel annoyed — we had, after all, come out here so she could see the ocean — as I set up the picnic. But she seemed to forget me completely.

"Luncheon is served," I said grandly, setting my carefully arranged platter on the rocks between us. Silent, Rilla picked up a chunk of bread and nibbled it meditatively. I reined in my impatience and turned my attention to beverage service. Rilla jumped a little when I popped the plastic cork from the grape juice, but didn't look over at me. I poured the kiddie wine and held a glass out to her. After a moment of frustrated silence, I pushed the glass into Rilla's fingers. She took it absently, but didn't thank me - not even a nod - and immediately set the glass down with a little clink. She didn’t touch the cheese, the grapes, the apples....

For lack of anything else to do, I ate both of our portions of bread and cheese, and most of the grapes. I stared at her for so long I actually got tired of doing so, which I would have sworn was impossible. I tried to engage her in conversation - clever repartee like, "It sure is gorgeous, huh?" and "Looks like it might storm" - but I wasn’t sure even her occasional “mm-hmm”s were actually meant for me.

That whole afternoon, Rilla didn’t say a word - except once. The wind picked up, blowing some salt spray against our faces. She wiped the wetness from her cheeks with both hands, lifted them to her face, and breathed in deeply. “It’s real,” she said quietly, her voice unsteady. I couldn’t tell if she was sad or still giddy. I was trying to decide on something clever to say to that when Rilla started licking the water from her palms. I just stared. She licked her hands thoroughly, getting every bit of salt. I looked away. Maybe it doesn't sound that strange, but I was really unnerved. I wanted to go home. Anyway, the clouds were looking threatening. I packed the remains of the food away and stood up.

“It’s going to storm,” I said — which it probably was, but not for a while yet. “We need to go.”

She didn’t answer, didn’t move, except to curl her legs up beside her on the rock and lean out over the waves.

“Rilla,” I said, “come on! We really have to go now.”

“Rilla!” This was too much. “What is wrong with you?” My voice broke as the question tumbled out. I wanted this quiet, weird stranger gone. I wanted my Rilla.

I reached out to touch her shoulder, to drag her back to me -- then I pulled away, confused. Her shoulder felt wet.

Rilla made a strange sound, something between a sob and a moan. She scrambled up clumsily, knocking a sandal into the water, and stumbled a few steps away from me. There was something strange about her feet. I stared at them, but couldn’t make myself really see what I was seeing. Something strange, was all I could get my mind around.

She glanced over her shoulder at me with huge, wet eyes, and made that strange sound again, more sharply this time. Then she hopped off the rocks into the water and started wading away from the shore.

“Rilla?” I called. “What are you doing?”

She pulled off her shirt, still walking. Her skin seemed grey in the moody light filtering through the clouds. No — no, it wasn’t the clouds. Why do I still say things like that, as if I don’t know what happened? Her skin was grey, dark grey. The water rolled off it in beads. She was shrinking, changing, before my eyes.

I didn’t call out again as she vanished beneath the waves. I just stared. I stared at the spot where she had disappeared until a gypsy skirt bobbed up to the top of the water. In the distance I heard the barking of seals.

I don’t remember driving back to town. It started raining on the way. I didn’t roll up the window. When I stopped the car in front of Rilla’s house I was soaked, shivering. I dragged myself up the walk. The door opened before I rang the bell, and there was her father, in dirty pants with suspenders and an undershirt. He smelled of booze.

His voice was flat. “She’s gone.” It wasn’t a question. It also wasn’t loud, but it hurt my ears.

“She...” my voice was strangled and painful, like it felt sometimes when I’d been crying. I don’t remember crying, not until later. “The water.”

Rilla’s dad nodded, his eyes dull as those of a long-dead fish. “Like her mother.”

He laughed, one short mirthless bark, and said it again. In the dim porchlight — the inside lights weren’t on — I could see a sinking ship tattooed on his arm, with the name “Rowan” written underneath. “Like her mother.” Then he closed the door in my face.

Ms. Satterlee--pen name for Ms. Kristin Knaus--has woven a strange and poignant tale. I liked it, but I didn't know whether to feel sorrierr for the young man or the father. How about you? Comments to the BBS, please.