My sister was sunburned from our trip to the Gulf. In different ways, we all were - my father on his arms and neck, my mother on her arms and face, me on my back, mostly - but my sister, Lucy, had rented an air mattress on the last day of our trip, and floated away the whole afternoon out past the

breakers, her skin taking on the color of that last sunset. I swam out with her a little way and told her that she shouldn't go out that far, that with the riptides and the undertows and the Gulf Stream she could end up in someplace like China. And just before I got washed back shoreward by a wave, what I heard Lucy say was, "Fine."

Now, back at home, she said she couldn't even eat, that even her insides were sunburned.

"And music," Lucy said. "Music is impossible."

My mother dipped a finger into the mixing bowl and gave the barbecue sauce a taste. You could see from her face that something was missing. "Mr. Leets will be here at six o'clock," she said. Then she said, "Onions -"

There was a flash of light out in the backyard. The curtains on the kitchen window blew gently inward, as if our house had taken a breath. My mother and Lucy and I turned to look. There was smoke, a dark mass of smoke roiling up, and under it, smiling, was my father. He was holding a can of charcoal starter, and he pointed it at the barbecue and leaned back. The flames jumped.

"Besides," Lucy said, "I've been thinking that what I really want to play is violin."

Our mother cut the ends off an onion, peeled away the dry skin to get to the good part. She cut the onion into slices and then into squares, her knife making tapping sounds on the cutting board. "Violin," she said, as if it was that, and not the onion, making the tears on her face. "To play the violin you have to hold your neck funny. Why would you want to do that? You have such a pretty neck." The pieces of the onion got cut smaller and smaller.

Lucy lowered her chin to touch her collarbone and said, "Mr. Leets is -"

Our mother lifted the cutting board over the mixing bowl and scraped the onion pieces into it with the knife. "Mr. Leets is what?" she said, looking around the kitchen for something. She picked up a dish towel and wiped at the tears on her sunburned face and was in sudden pain. "Mr. Leets is a very good teacher," she said, pointing the hand with the dish towel at Lucy. "You know, we can hear you getting better every lesson."

Out in the backyard our father said, "Hello, Jack!"

Our mother set the dish towel on the counter, straightened her dress, touched her hair, then opened the back door and said, "Why, hello, Mr. Leets."

The family room used to be the garage. Everything inside the garage had gotten put outside in a permanent temporary pile and covered with a huge tarp. In the family room my father had put paneling, a carpet, a piano. He had installed a picture window. He had plans to do something with the big fluorescent light. He had plans for an acoustic ceiling, plans for an actual door. With the garage door pulled up, it looked like a room cut open.

Lucy stood there looking in, holding her sheet music to her chest. My mother was talking to Mr. Leets, and my father was working the coals with a broken yardstick. Then Mr. Leets said, "Well -" and put his hand on Lucy's back. There was a kind of ripple down the cloth of her sundress: her back went stiff but her face stayed the same.

"Can we keep the door open?" Lucy said. "For air?"

Our parents smiled and nodded, as if agreeing on every little thing was something they did all the time, and not just in front of guests.

Mr. Leets smiled and nodded the same way. He said, "Good idea, Luce." Then he looked at the barbecue and said, "Of course, there is the smoke."

Our parents smiled and nodded the same way all over again. Then Lucy went into the family room, and Mr. Leets went into the family room and pulled the big wooden garage door shut.

My mother went back into the kitchen humming one of the songs that Lucy usually played during her lessons, and my father went back to working the coals with his stick. The end of his stick kept catching on fire. He picked up the can of charcoal starter again, even though the coals were already white hot, and pointed it at the barbecue. Then he looked at me looking at him.

"Say, you know what I could use?" he said.

I could hear Lucy in the family room playing the piano, or trying to. She was practicing a song she had played about a million times, but now she seemed to keep forgetting it.

"So, how about it?" my father said, tapping his stick against the barbecue in time to the music.

"What?" I said.

My father said something about getting him a wire brush, or a small shovel, or something. I knew it didn't matter what I came back with, as long as I went away to get it. My father liked to be reckless in private.

As I went around the corner of the garage, I could hear the hollow rush of flames roaring up.

It was another world under the tarp, not even just the old things of the garage, but the old things of our life: ancient fishing rods, boxes of clothes that no longer fit, a broken TV set, a standing lamp, a crib that had been mine and, before that, Lucy's, and, over there, most of a broken croquet set. Also there were coffee cans with rusty nails and bolts and nuts; there were used tires, fused metal tools, a lawn mower, a hoe, a broken rake.

The pile hugged the entire side of the garage, covering even the picture window, as if it was something trying to get back inside.

The picture window in the garage was mostly useless now, but then so was the family room, so it didn't matter much - looking in at an almost empty room, or looking out at what used to be in it. As I worked my way closer to the picture window, I could hear Lucy's music getting louder.

Under the tarp, I knew by touch where everything was. This had been my old fort, but the inroads seemed smaller now. I had to duck the jutting pieces of scrap iron. I could feel my old plastic soldiers underfoot in the dirt.

As I got to the picture window, Lucy was on to a new song, and she was having some trouble with it. You couldn't even tell what the song was. Mr. Leets sat beside her on the piano bench, putting his hands on top of hers, as if showing her the notes. But even when his hands weren't on top of hers, his hands kept moving - in the air, on his knees, on the top of the piano, on his face and through his hair, and then on Lucy's back.

Lucy was sitting up very straight, as if Mr. Leets had corrected her posture. His hands were still moving, though - they didn't stop - and sometimes he would touch her back again, even though her posture looked perfect.

There was nothing much to do. I had already looked through all of the old rotting stack of National Geographics, I had gone through every box. I thought about putting together one last battle, but the plastic soldiers were buried in the din, and games from that many months ago seemed so juvenile, as Lucy used to point out.

Mr. Leets got up from the piano bench and started pacing the room, his hands loosening his collar, loosening his tie, and moving in time to the music, which was out of time.

Lucy was playing faster.

Our old crib was near the picture window, and I pulled it a little closer, and lowered the rail on one side, and sat down. In the dark beneath the damp canvas, the mattress smelled of rat piss. The plastic cover was cracked and the cotton batting was pushing out. I thought about doing something funny - maybe tapping on the window and making a face, or maybe holding up one of my mother's old Styrofoam wig holders on the end of a stick. But then I remembered that Mr. Leets taught at the junior high, and that next week I would be there. I imagined how much taller I would be next week.

When I looked into the family room again, Mr. Leets was standing behind Lucy. He was touching her back again. He was rubbing her sunburned neck.

I must have sat up fast, and even just that much moving made my sunburn hurt. Lucy's sunburn was a hundred times worse than mine, but she didn't move when he touched her, didn't even flinch. She kept herself set on the music.

Mr. Leets seemed a little shocked - his face was sort of pinched - as if he was shocked that she had forgotten something he had taught her. He was smiling, though, and touching the fine hairs on the back of her neck.

Lucy kept playing the music. She wasn't making any mistakes now, but the song still didn't sound right. The notes were too fast, as if the music had become something that was going somewhere and Lucy was trying to go there with it.

Mr. Leets moved his hands down Lucy's back. He wasn't looking at Lucy, though, or even at the piano; he was looking up at the big fluorescent light, as if waiting for some kind of answer. And then, when his answer came to him, he leaned down and kissed the back of her neck.

Lucy kept playing the music. When the song ended, she reached out for a different piece of sheet music. But Mr. Leets reached out too, and held her hand back, and slid his hand slowly up her arm, past the vaccination mark, and then inside of her sundress.

There was a space now where the music had been. In it, I could hear the hissing of the steaks on the grill, my father tapping at the barbecue with his stick. I could hear my mother humming out on the lawn, setting the silverware and the plates on the picnic table. I made myself a part of the pile - a box, a tool, a thing that didn't even breathe, that didn't live.

Lucy reached again for the sheet music, as if Mr. Leets didn't have his hand inside of her sundress, on her chest, and another hand pulling down the zipper on the back.

Mr. Leets pulled at the straps on the sundress, but Lucy had started playing the music again and her arms were keeping the straps up, or at least not completely off. Mr. Leets's tongue crossed a thin stripe of white on Lucy's back as he worked his way up her spine, to her neck, to the side of her face. Lucy kept playing the music.

You could see that Lucy was struggling with something, but it looked as if what she was struggling with was the music.

The way Mr. Leets touched Lucy, the way his hands pushed at her chest and then down between her legs - he was touching her all over and very fast, not even as if he liked touching Lucy, but as if each part he touched, if he touched enough of them, would help him make a Lucy in his mind.

His hands were still moving as he leaned himself over Lucy and tried to kiss her on the lips.

Lucy seemed to come up for air, and she stopped - just stopped playing the music - and turned her face to one side and breathed deep.

Lucy was staring straight at me. I could see her face full-on, for that moment, as she turned: the dark hair roughed up and the light blue eyes focused hard on something but you couldn't tell what, she was looking at me and beyond me. From the muscles of her face it looked as if she was about to say something - maybe even scream it - but whatever it. was got pushed back by his hands, and his tongue, and his lips.

As Mr. Leets pushed Lucy down on the piano bench I could feel the sunburn again on my back: I had a sudden sense of being inside my skin, and I didn't like it. I could feel myself getting hard, and I wasn't supposed to feel like that. Still, I didn't move. The smoke from the barbecue was coming this way, under the tarp, and even though it was burning at my eyes, I couldn't not watch.

Mr. Leets shoved Lucy's sundress up around her waist. He stood between her legs. He unbuckled, unzipped. He looked quickly at the closed garage door. Then he looked up again at the big fluorescent light as he let his pants drop.

When it was over I must have run, or not so much run but pushed myself out from under there. I remember being swollen inside my pants as I stood up from the crib, and then I turned, I took a deep breath and pushed off, my head brushing the canvas tarp, my mouth filling with spider webs. I needed air, I needed out. My legs were working fast but they seemed a long ways away, and it must have only been a few steps before the world turned to scrap iron - I could feel my face pushed against it - and my body went out from under me. I remember falling....

For a few seconds I couldn't see anything; I didn't have eyes yet. I had no arms, no legs, no muscles. My head was a huge empty room. But there was something spreading over me, something warm, I could feel it, and it felt like a hand on my head.

Far away, my mother broke open a tray of ice cubes. My father scraped steaks off a grill. It got a little quieter as each steak got scraped off.

I found an arm underneath me. I rolled to one side, worked the arm out, touched at my face. It was warm and wet. My face was wet but my mouth tasted of iron and dirt. One eye opened a little, and I lifted myself up.

The sky now was a deep blue, through the trees was a sunset the color of blood.

My mother and father and Lucy were already sitting at the picnic table, eating their steaks by the light of tiki torches. Lucy was looking at a fashion magazine.

Mr. Leets was gone.

My mother looked up at me and said, "Oh my God! He's been in a fight!" and my father looked as if he'd just been accused of something.

Lucy set down the fashion magazine and said, "How disgusting. You look like a monster movie."

I looked down at my shirt, at my hands, and it felt as if every wrong thing I had ever done in my life - every small lie and stolen coin, every weakness of heart - all of it was printed on my body, inked in my blood. And Lucy, I knew, could read this best.

My mother and my father, I could tell, were getting ready to attack - not me, but each other: how three or five years ago he or she should have done that, and now look at this, I told you so, don't talk to me like that, and so on.

Lucy must have seen it coming too. She stood up, took me by the hand, and led me into the house.

In the bathroom she ran the hot water, unrolled the gauze, opened the peroxide and mercurochrome. I watched her with my one eye for some kind of sign, some hint of something different. When she picked up the scissors to cut the gauze, I was ready to let her stab me in the heart.

Lucy very tenderly wiped away the blood. "You know, you shouldn't get in fights," she said.

I nodded. I could feel my heartbeat in her hands.

And then I said, "A fight?"

Lucy turned my head to one side to clean some of the rust and dirt from my face, and there in the bathroom mirror I got my first look at myself: the battered eye, darkening already, and above it, on my forehead, a neat cut like a quarter moon, one that looked much too small for so much blood.

I was beginning to understand. A fight. A fight could mean that Lucy didn't know what I had seen. A fight could mean that what I saw never happened.

"The girls won't like you if you always get in fights," Lucy said. I nodded.

"You want the girls to like you, don't you?"

I nodded.

My mother and father stopped talking when Lucy and I got back out to the picnic table. They both kept watching me as I ate. The steak was burnt and cold and tasted of charcoal starter. It was hard to chew. Finally my father cleared his throat and said, "So, you're starting junior high, huh?"

I nodded.

"And Lucy's starting high school," my mother put in.

I kept eating, and waited for my father to say something else. Our father maybe once every hundred years would start a conversation just start it, but never finish it. Lucy was sitting beside me on the bench, and with my one eye I sneaked a look at her, but Lucy wouldn't look back at me; if we looked at each other, we would have to laugh.

"Well, you shouldn't get in fights," my father said, but there was in his voice something that sounded almost proud. Then he looked at ' my mother, which was another thing he did maybe once every hundred years, and said, "They'll be off and married before we know it." Then he smiled, and put his hand on top of hers, and they just looked at each other like that, smiling.

It was as if we suddenly weren't there, Lucy and I. Our mother and father cleared the picnic table, helping each other with the plates, helping each other with the screen door, saying thank you and excuse me, and calling each other by their first names, Willie and Donna, which was something unless they were angry that they almost never did.

Lucy and I stayed outside. We didn't talk. Lucy seemed lost deep inside of herself, and I was lost in there with her.

We heard music from inside the house. Then, through the window of the living room, we could see them - not our father and our mother, but Willie and Donna, moving slow to the music, moving together, holding each other close. As they turned, you could see that they were in pain from their sunburns. But they didn't let go, they kept dancing, and holding each other like that, as if even with the pain, it was worth it.

I watched Lucy watching them. It looked as if watching them like that was beginning to make her itch: She tried to reach behind her back, first with one hand, then with the other, but she couldn't seem to reach where she needed. "I think I'm starting to peel," she said, and turned her back toward me, and lowered a strap on her sundress.

Even by the light of the tiki torch I could see where she meant, where the skin had been roughed up from a corner of a piano bench, and from fingers dug in deep.

Willie and Donna moved in the window like something from a movie.

I told her that I couldn't see, that it was too dark, that it would be better to wait, that it wasn't ready to peel yet anyway, that it would just hurt worse, but Lucy didn't say anything, just stayed there, staring at the window, and I knew that I was going to have to do it.

Lucy's back rippled as I touched her skin. I peeled away a small strip.

"Just think," she said, "next week you'll be in junior high."

Lucy's skin was warm and smooth - I had never touched anything so smooth - and I peeled away another strip.

"And you'll be in high school," I said. "And have a boyfriend."

"A boyfriend?" Lucy said, and laughed. She pulled the strap of her sundress up, turned, and put her arms around me. "No," she said, and smiled. "You're the only boyfriend for me." Lucy turned me around, put her arms around me from behind, the way she used to do with her dolls, the way she used to do with me when I was little.

My head didn't hurt much, yet. The pain would come later. And with Lucy's arms around me, the stinging of my sunburn felt almost good. Because I was beginning to believe it myself - not that I had watched Mr. Leets do that to my sister, not that it shouldn't have happened and I could have stopped it, and not that the wound to my head was from nothing but running scared. No. I was beginning to believe that there had been a fight, a big fight, a heroic fight, and that I had been in it. I was beginning to believe that I had won.