She had webbed toes. Robin and I peered at them surreptitiously while she was sunbathing on deck, stretched out provocatively on a striped towel—for the benefit of Dirk, as it turned out, the best looking of the tanned, handsome boys who worked at the marina where our boats were docked. I was with my friend Robin's family, traveling in their cabin cruiser "Mamselle" from Point Pleasant up the Hudson River and Champlain Canal to Lake Champlain.

The girl's family was on another boat passing through. I don't know from where. She was older than us, seventeen or so, pouty and sultry, with golden brown skin and thick dark hair. Italian, or maybe Jewish.

We could see the boys looking at her body, glistening with suntan oil in the bright sun, as they went about their work, shirtless and glorious. We yearned for all of them, wanted to be her, to be older at least. Not fifteen waiting for sixteen, wearing shiny metal braces and never been kissed.

Two days later the girl was locked in a changing cabana above the docks on the hill, shrieking and wailing, refusing to come out. There were whisperings all over the marina. We strained to overhear two stout older women talking by one of the boats.

"You missed quite a scene. Her father caught them and now she won't speak to him."

The woman shielded her eyes from the sun and squinted. "It was a drama all right."

"Caught them?" The other woman's voice was avid.

"Her and that good-looking boy. The blond one."

"You mean Dirk?"

"Yeah, that's the one. Dirk."

"Oh Lordy. Were they really …?"

"That's what I hear. I mean I didn't see it, but Marge in the front office says the girl started caterwauling to beat the band and ran up the hill naked as a jaybird. Marge sent Dirk home. He'll be making himself scarce if he knows what's good for him."

Robin and I mooned over the star-crossed lovers in our cabin, dark and cool after the dazzling sun outside. The boat rocked gently, bumping against the sides of the slip. We both were of the opinion that Dirk would come back and stand up for her. Maybe rescue her from her father. It would be romantic, and we hoped we'd be there to see it.

Days passed and Dirk didn't show up. The women from the other boats looked sideways at the girl as she stalked to the soda machine in front of the office and back. She looked proud, defiant, and ashamed all at once, staring straight ahead, and then vanishing wordless into the nether regions of her family's boat. The family got ready to move on, hauling bags of ice and provisions, the girl sullen, her father tight-lipped. Her mother put her hand on his arm and he shook it off as he started up the engines, backing the boat out and then pushing hard on the throttle as it turned.

After they left, Dirk was back on the docks again, hosing down the floating decks, tinkering with a small engine with one of the other boys, fueling boats that stopped by the marina. He kept to himself, no friendly smiles for the customers. Robin and I wondered if he missed the girl but it didn't really look that way. We were surprised that he seemed unchanged.

On the trip home we met two boys at the Plattsburgh Boat Basin and spent an afternoon standing in the shallow water of a secluded cove making out. Their names were Franz and Bob.

Even then I knew that I liked Bob more than he liked me, and Franz liked Robin more than she liked him, yet it didn't diminish the magic of the long afternoon. The light slanted on the water and gradually faded, a pink glow on the horizon. Wind began to ruffle the reeds that lined the shore, raising goose bumps on my arms. We must have talked, but I don't remember anything we said. I remember that Bob's chest was broad, and that his skin was warm and smelled faintly of Noxema and sweat. His hands were firm on my bare back, his lips soft and gentle. I forgot about the girl.

Back in New Jersey, Robin and I lounged in her bedroom talking about Bob and Franz and boys in our school, setting our long hair on pink plastic rollers the size of orange juice cans to make it straight, testing smoky eye shadows and pale lipsticks. Franz came to visit her once. I wrote Bob a letter, a laboriously light-hearted account of a football game that went through many drafts. He didn't write back. Robin and I forgot about the girl.

I dreamt of her years later, swimming underwater with webbed feet, her hair streaming and swirling behind her. She sunned herself on the warm rocks of a tiny ocean island teeming with young mermaids. Her golden skin glittered like fish scales as the seawater evaporated and left tiny crystals of salt behind. She sang as she combed her wet hair, the words to her seductive song almost too faint to hear over the sound of the wind and gentle swell of the waves. Never thinking to bind ourselves to the mast, we jumped off the boat and began to swim.

It was a long time ago and I can't remember what she said, only that she spoke very fast, and that I was desperately sad. The fortuneteller's name was Lillian.

Someone made a tape that I immediately misplaced, or maybe there was no tape, but I think there was. It floats in the Sargasso Sea of my unconscious, jostled by the flotsam and jetsam of my past, slowly rising and falling amidst swaying underwater plants, darting neon fish, pink and orange banks of coral, and stately black turtles stirring up clouds of sand from the ocean floor: a tiny rectangle of clear plastic, small enough to fit in my pocket. That summer I lost my husband. I lost my bearings. I lost the fortuneteller's words. Some time later I lost my memory of them as well.

I've almost forgotten how very sad I was.