it’s in the math room when the boys fantasize first about the black girl called Frankie who shot herself with her toes around the trigger. the boys slump at their desks in wrinkled khaki and muddy boots, they flick their thick unwashed hair back and rub their tongues over fever blisters. after death Frankie wore ribbons on her skull and tied them around other things like nightmares. Frankie she was called and she was a black girl with a white mom and she was buried at The Lawn at Idlewild. she used to fuck a girl called Emy who had some unknown disability and wore tweed coats to school even on a hot day. the boys they never knew Frankie till she died though they talked about her then and all the time and later on. they stomped their lanky legs, they served detention, they drank in barns. and they dreamed about Frankie’s knobby shoulders and the hairs on her neck. we say: she found the way out. and we blame her for nothing. the summer after Frankie curled her big toes around that shot gun, I bring all those nasty southern boys into my bedroom and run my tongue over them, closing my eyes so I can’t see Frankie’s floating head outside the windows.