Examine the Bathing Suit

It's a glitter neon green bathing suit, with one shoulder strap and a low scooped back.

You examine it for awhile, and find yourself remembering - that you're on the beach, tanning, your bathing suit rolled down so you can get the tan lines off your breasts.You're sixteen, on spring break, away from the trials and tribulations of Rutherford, with its rules, and regulations, and the wandering (but usually very welcome) hands of the Dean.

The sun is hot, baking your skin, baking the sand around you, giving the salt air a warm, muggy feeling. The roar of the ocean comes and goes.

You sit up, reach for your sand-encrusted TAB soda, take a sip.Brad, the Dean's son, looks up from his book - he's reading de Sade again - sees you up, and smiles. It's not a nice smile; but then you're not sleeping with him because he's nice.

"Those marks are healing nicely," he says, eyeing your breasts. You look down at the three fading pink welts on the upper surface of your breasts. He did that three nights ago. You like the way they look on you, they way they advertise your femininity and submission to the world -

and the memory fades.