It was hot, and the wool scraping my chin made it even worse. Today, summer was strong and fearless. I shifted around in my layers, tugging the collar of my flannel shirt up to protect my chin from the vicious sweater that was torturing me.

"Hello, turtle." Lila said.

She stood there grinning at me. She had just catapulted from a playground swing and landed by my feet.

"You didn't watch."

"Lila, I'm trying to sleep."

"I told you to watch me! You heard me!"

"Okay, I'm sorry."

"Will you take me down to the beach?"

"Oh, Lila, I don't know ..."

I leaned back and put my head on the grass. The sky was steaming, and the weak, tattered pieces of cloud seemed to be attempting to wipe its bright blue brow. I closed my eyes. Two little hands grabbed the edge of my coat and pulled me awake. Lila had decided that I would take her down to the beach.

She ran ahead of me in her pink-and-green flowered bathing suit and sneakers. It seemed like Lila was celebrating the discipline of simplicity: merely two garments covering her earthly temple. My feet were heavy and safe in their boots. The brown leather reached almost to my knees.

We crossed the parking lot; the asphalt was full of vehicles, some of them double-parked while impatient parents slapped sunscreen on the backs of squirming children and reminded them, "You better be back here at 5:00, you hear me? I don't want to have to wait for you!"

"Let's go where I found all those shells the other day." Lila hated the congestion of bodies and beach umbrellas as much as I did. Since we lived so close to the ocean, it wasn't a summer treat like ice cream; it was a very normal part of our diet -- namely, water.

I kept to the dry sand so that my boots wouldn't be soaked. I walked through the half-nude population, trying to avoid tripping over flesh. Lila was down at the water's edge, running parallel to me on firmer sand.

"Be careful," she yelled. "You almost stepped on somebody."

"Be careful you don't step on a jellyfish," I shouted back, just missing a girl's outstretched leg.

By the time we got to the more desolate stretch of beach, I had to sit down. The knitted hat was itching my head, so I took it off for a moment and buried my nose in the wool. Lila had kicked off her shoes, hurried into the water, and emerged with a handful of shells.

"I knew I'd find them here. Most of these are thick. They haven't broken!"

She dropped her pile next to my booted feet and went in search of more. Her bare feet skipped blithely on the sand. I put my hat back on.

My body was slowly baking; but of course, it wouldn't burn. I was safe enough to avoid that. I had closed my eyes, my hands had curled instinctively inside my gloves and I pushed my nose down into my collar. I felt like I was glowing: a piece of the sun.

"Is that your sister?" He was talking to Lila. I could almost, but not quite, tell who it was.

"Why is she wearing a coat?" Now I knew. It was Nathan, that little freckled boy from Lila's group of friends. Red hair, sharp teeth.

"She gets cold." Lila was preoccupied, splashing in the foam.

"But it's summertime." He was younger than Lila. He was also deeply sunburned.

"I don't know! She likes winter, okay?" Lila's splashing stopped.

"My mom thinks she's weird. She's always in that coat and boots and stuff. My mom thinks that's weird." He sneezed: a little strangled yelp. I rubbed my cheeks into the wool sweater.

"Yeah, well, I don't know; she doesn't like water. She scared of getting wet." Lila started splashing loudly. My throat was dry.

"Do you want to come play with us? Mom said we could stay here until it gets dark." He was talking about his bevy of freckled friends, of course. I opened my eyes.

"No, I'm getting shells," Lila said. She was coming back up the beach, toward me. Nathan followed at a distance. The shells were dropped and Lila sat down next to me, satisfied with the pile.

"Two oyster shells. These are broken. Here's some clam shells. Here's one of those weird spiral ones. Oh, look, here's one of those fan shells! That one's perfect. Here, you can have the clam shells." She put them down on the sand by my foot. I picked them up and put them in my pocket. I couldn't feel their dampness through my gloves. I felt soft cashmere lining; that was all.

Lila kept going through her selection and gave anything remotely clam-shaped to me, while Nathan squatted on one side. His bathing shorts were a few sizes too big, secured around his waist by a long green shoelace.

"Can I have one?" he asked.

Lila gave him a broken oyster. He looked at it solemnly, his bony knees splayed out at an angle.

"Aren't there supposed to be pearls in these things?"

"Yeah," Lila said, exasperated. "But that one's broken, see? It's broken. If it weren't broken, it would have a pearl in it, but it's broken.

"Oh," he said.

Lila spread out her shells on the sand, arranging them by size. She was examining the smaller ones when Nathan got bored and wanted to go.

"I want to go, Lila. Are you going to come or not?"

"I said, no. I'm getting shells."

He got up and walked off, but he didn't go. He loitered by the edge of the water for the next few hours, as Lila quarried for shells and I baked until I could detect my own fragrance. He stood by Lila or sat by me. He didn't go.

By the time the sun went down, Lila had been persuaded into the water, and in the darkness the two of them came running up the beach, shivering without towels.

"I'm cold. Let's go home," Lila said, jumping up and down.

I got up and helped Lila pack her shells into my coat pockets. Nathan had lost his oyster. He followed us, as Lila chatted to me.

"Tomorrow we'll come again and we're going to find more, maybe even a whole oyster or one of those big ones that when you listen into them you can hear the ocean."

Nathan was obviously freezing and annoyed. "Why does she get to wear that coat when she's not even wet?" he whispered to Lila. I heard.

Lila knew better than to look at me. "And if you're nice, Nathan, maybe you can help me. If you're nice."

"Hey, Sister," Nathan said, coming up to walk next to me. "Can I have your coat?" His sharp little teeth were chattering like an ice storm.

I stopped walking. Lila stopped walking behind me.

"Her name is Kristin," she said.

I looked at him, but he wouldn't look back at me. He just hopped from one foot to another, his hands stuck in the pockets of his shorts, and he kicked at the ground with his sandals, looking unconcerned.

I started on the first button. By the time I had gotten it opened, the coat felt as heavy as lead. I shook my arms out of the sleeves and it fell onto the ground.

"You can wear it," I said, though I knew I didn't really want him to.

I waited until they had gone ahead of me before I began to move. It was hard to walk at first, but it became easier. Finally I removed my eyes from the ground. Nathan was wearing the coat and trying to keep up with Lila. He looked like a little humiliated wizard in a magic cape. My sister was silent and walked fast.

"I just asked," I could hear Nathan saying. "I was cold. It's not like she was cold."

I tried to remember how it felt to be cold.

And I tried to remember the reasons for certain things that once had such important reasons.

I looked up at the sky, which was dark blue and spotted with stars. I thought of the stars, little pieces of fire whose heat is so many miles from any person on earth. I thought of little girls, who always jump from foot to foot, who will always try to explain what they can never understand. I must have been one, once.

Summer doesn't last, thank goodness; but these things do. It was completely dark now. I was warm.

Dillon Wright-FitzGerald, 17 and a home-schooled student from Stillwater, Pa., will be attending Smith College in the fall, where she will major in English. She started writing stories when she was 7 or 8, has played the violin for 10 years and performs with two professional regional orchestras. Her sponsor is her mother, Carol FitzGerald. Wright-FitzGerald's story is "Shells," about two sisters, the oldest of whom hides in heavy layers of clothes.