Thalia stayed on the field after practice to work on her corner kicks. When she went in, hot and sweaty, but satisfied she was making progress, the locker room was empty, all the other girls having taken their showers and dressed and departed. Thalia stripped off her jersey, and was untying her shoes when he heard something. She thought at first a bird, perhaps a mourning dove, had gotten into the locker room. That had happened once before. But the sound, a kind of moaning, wasn’t coming from a bird. Maybe an injured animal. A dog or cat or squirrel or raccoon. Thalia, as quietly as she could, crept around her bank of lockers and peered around.

It was Serena, sitting on the bench, wearing only her socks. She had a water bottle between her legs. She was moving it slowly up and down, and making soft mewling noises. Thalia was unable to keep from watching. But after some seconds, she backed away, and then called out, “Serena, you okay? Is everything all right?” and she stepped around the lockers.

Clearly startled, Serena blushed. “Yeah, okay,” she blurted.

Their eyes met.

“You saw me, didn’t you?” Serena said. “Otherwise how would you know it was me?”

Thalia lowered her eyes. “Yeah, I saw you,” she confessed. “So you’re okay?”

Serena took a deep breath. “I guess. It’s just sometimes I get so hot. You know? Down there? I thought maybe if I...”

“With the water bottle?”

“Yeah, well, it was at hand.” Serena smiled bashfully. Guiltily. “I thought I was all alone. It’s wrong, huh? I mean to, you know, masturbate.”

“I don’t think it’s wrong,” Thalia said. “Maybe not in public, though. It’s a private thing.”

“So you’re not going to tell?”

“Tell? Who would I tell? No, of course not.”

“So you do it?” Serena looked into Thalia’s eyes. An almost yearning look. “Masturbate?”

“Sure, I do it all the time. I mean, not all the time, but sometimes.”

Serena nodded. “When you do it, do you, you know, come?”

“Sometimes,” Thalia said. “Do you?”

“I’m not sure,” Serena said. “I start thinking about the way Coach Chris looks at me, and I start feel so...”

“I know what you mean,” Thalia said.

“So you think of him when you...?”

“Sometimes,” Thalia admitted.

“This is going to sound weird,” Serena said. “But I’m not sure I’m doing it right. Could you show me how you, you know, how you touch yourself?”