The girls were manning a lemonade stand—a medium-size Dixie cup for fifty cents, or a cup with a Hydrox cookie for seventy-five. Sheila, who was twelve, her older sister, Trudy, and Maggie and Jeannie, ten-year-old twins who lived down the street, sat on folding chairs behind the small card table the twins’ mother had loaned them. The backs of Sheila’s thighs burned from the heat trapped in the metal of her chair. She wore culottes, a combination of miniskirt and shorts. Sometimes she thought of the outfit in the opposite way, as shorts mixed with a miniskirt. But today it was the first version because Maggie and Jeannie were both younger, and because, for once, Trudy was not pressing down on Sheila’s soul as if it were a thumbtack.

The man standing in front of the table bought a glass of lemonade. He said, “I have a problem. Maybe one of you girls can help me.” He’d driven up in his car and parked at a reckless angle to the curb, like the boys at school who refused to hang their coats on the hooks provided at the back of the classroom but let them fall to the floor in arrogant puddles. The man said his problem was that he needed to change his clothes. He gestured to Sheila with a wrinkled paper bag that she assumed was filled with his new outfit. He had a job interview, he said. A very important job interview.

“But I need someone to guard the door,” he said.

“Why don’t you change in your car?” Trudy said.

“That wouldn’t be very private,” the man said. “It might be embarrassing.”

Sheila’s body understood first, and then her brain followed, knowledge spreading out like a stain. She could tell by the penitent silence of the younger girls that they could tell something was wrong, too. Still, no one screamed “Stranger, Danger!” the way they had been taught.

“Just around the corner,” he said. “There’s a little garden shed, but the door doesn’t lock. Anyone could come in, and that would be embarrassing, wouldn’t it?” The way he repeated the word made Sheila believe that embarrassment was somehow tangled up in pleasure.

“We can’t help you,” Trudy said. She was fourteen.

“Really?” he said. “Not even you?” He looked directly at Sheila.

To read the rest of this article, please visit our online store to purchase a copy of the issue or order a subscription.