She should still be in the hospital, the girl thinks, watching her grandmother huddled on the far corner of the floor, mouth slobbering bloody red, chewing the mildly narcotic beetlenut. But then it would just be Weet and me, and he'll be there soon enough. Just like mother.
   The bottom floor of the house stands on posts above the dusty ground, open and shaped like a fat, sideways "L." The smaller branch of the floor is a recent addition, to make washing easier, and is covered only by a thin tin roof; a second story housing a living area and two bedrooms rises above the longer section. There is no furniture except a hammock strung between two support posts. From a straw mat at the top end of the "L," at the corner of the wall and the open air, the grandmother spits red saliva onto the dusty ground outside.
   The girl squats at a wash basin on the addition, scrubbing clothes by hand with cloudy water she's fetched from the village reservoir in plastic tanks that look like portable gas cans. Every day she washes her school uniform and on odd days washes all of the clothes. She used to wash Weet's uniform every day, too, until everyone found out about his condition, and he had to quit school. That was only for one term of nursery school though, less than a year ago. He's already five, and still not sick.
   For the most part, the family lives downstairs - they cook and eat, sit, nap, talk with friends, do homework, and do the laundry. It's cooler down there, and Yai, the grandmother, can't walk up the stairs.
   Some afternoons, the girl helps Yai into the two-wheeled wagon that she uses for fetching buckets of wash water, and she rolls her around the village to talk with her remaining friends. Yai likes to check up on things in the village every now and then; even though she can hardly see through her cataracts, she likes the change of scenery.
   In the open living space upstairs, an ironing board leans against the wall, and a small ancient color TV perches on top of a dresser next to a framed picture of the kids' mother, who died of AIDS three years ago.
   The girl and Weet, her brother, share one small room where a white mosquito net resembling cheesecloth covers their two folding mattresses. Against the wall, close to the entrance, stands a large wardrobe, and under the nearer of the two windows sits a small table and chair that they use for a desk. Small framed photographs of each child with their mother adorn the far corners of the table, next to the wall. Pictures of Thai pop singers and movie stars, cut carefully from newspapers and from the cardboard backing of snack boxes, smudged a little and most slightly out of focus, dapple the walls. There are no tapes, for the house lacks a tape player.
   Though he has a new family and never visits or writes, the girl's father does send checks made out to her on a fairly regular basis. The envelopes contain only the check and have no return address, usually mailed from different areas in Bangkok. The girl collects them, about four a year, and is trying to establish a pattern, one single postmark that repeats consistently. But they come from all over - Dusit, Ban Kapi, Banglampu, Silom. Still she collects.
   She never knew her father well. When he and her mother were together, he lived and worked in Udorn Thani, a five-hour train ride away. By the time the girl's clear memory began, he only came home about once every month or two, less frequently in later years. In his absence, her mother took up with a string of local men who would stop by to eat, drink rice whiskey, and ignore the children. Ubon didn't know who made her feel more uncomfortable, her father or the boyfriends, but at least she'd never had to run into her father at the market.
   In the year or two before Weet was born, her father always arrived in a black Volvo. The girl's most vivid memories are of the few visits that he took her out driving when she was eight and nine, the only car other than a pick-up truck she's ever been in.
   Her father never met her gaze. Always sharply dressed and business-like, when he drove he didn't look at her at all, eyes fixed on the road or mirrors. He drove fast - so fast she didn't like to watch the road. She'd crouch sideways in the seat instead, staring at the frozen mask of his face. Sharp, rigid, and tense, a short thick mustache under his wide nose; his only smiles after the lubrication of whiskey.
   Those times that she remembers clearly - the last few times she saw her father - included a quick drive through the rice country while her mother cooked, his dark iron face welded to the road and his vehicle as he demolished a pint of Scotch. They would eat in silence, then he'd fight with her mother about money or accuse her of adultery before storming out to Sida Doy, the local brothel. Most times the girl would find him asleep in the hammock the next morning, the early sun beating on his comatose face, but the last time, about eight months before Weet was born, he had just driven away into the night.

   Though she'd rather not think of her father, the girl has just received his quarterly reminder, and she's fretting about the money as she washes, her brow furrowed and intent, sweat beading on her nose, lip and forehead. She doesn't notice the boy approaching until the flower is almost in her face.
   "Aaaiiiee!!" She flails back, clothes and lather splashing onto her knees and the wooden floor.
   "Ja - aye!" The boy's smiling face comes into focus. "Sorry to scare you."
   "You didn't scare me!"
   "Okay," he concedes. He's about medium height for their age, 15, slender, and clear skinned. Eyes wide and eager despite their relatively steep slant; a lot of girls in their class have a crush on him. He's holding a just-bloomed white rose in his hand, the third present he's brought her this week.
   "Ubon," he starts, stammering now that he remembers he has something crucial to say, which then cascades forth, "This is the prettiest flower in the market so I bought it for you. But you're way prettier than any flower, or anything anyone could buy. But that's not why I want to be your boyfriend. I want to be your boyfriend because I like to be with you and talk to you. And if you don't want to be my girlfriend, I can wait 'til you do."
   Ubon accepts the flower with a bow of her head, touches a thorn with her finger. She raises it to her nose and inhales its sweet, clean scent that for a moment overpowers the smells of detergent and dust.
   At the other end of the floor, Yai shuffles her body around to face the two teenagers.
   "Who's there?" she garbles through her beetlenut mouth.
   "Just Suchart Tataisong," the girl replies, motioning to the boy to be silent. "He's looking for Weet."
   "Weet? Weet's not here. He's just a little boy you know. Should be careful with the big boys. How old you now Chart?"
   "I'm fifteen, Yai," he answers.
   "Well you be careful, you boy."
   "Yes, ma'am."
   She turns and spits, stares vacantly into the dirt yard.
   "Suchart," the girl whispers. "Thank you for the rose. It's beautiful. And thanks for the candy and the comic book. But please don't give me anymore things. I like you, but I can't have a boyfriend. You are my friend, okay?"
   "Think about it," he says. "Don't decide now."
   Before she can respond, he vanishes.
   "Is that boy gone?" Yai asks.
   "Yes, he is."
   "You be careful 'Bone, about those boys. Don't wanna end up like your mother." Spouts forth red juice. "Always boys with her. Your father's rich, but she lost him that way. And then you know what happened to her."
   "Yes, Yai, I know."
   "Well, I hope you do. Wasn't pretty."

   Her brother sleeps quietly on his mattress beside her. Ubon thinks of her mother and the disease that Weet inherited; questions how much time he has to live; wonders who his father actually is, who gave it to them.
   She asks herself if all boys, even the nice ones like Suchart, grow up to be like her father. Or is ruthlessness specific to her mother's type of men? How can she ever be sure?
   A picture of Suchart's upturned face and sloping eyes, his crooked, shy smile, forms in her mind, and she wipes a tear from her cheek.
   Under the soft-focused light of the moon, she gazes at Weet's placid face. Her baby brother who will never have the opportunity to give a girl a rose. To prevent herself from sobbing outright, Ubon clutches the white rose tightly in her fists, and the thorns' painful stabbing numbs her sorrow. When she raises her hands in the pale light, drops of black blood drip onto her white t-shirt, but her silent weeping refuses to cease.
   In the morning, the sun's glow wakes her, illuminates the brown stains on her white bedclothes. The mangled white rose clenched in her wounded hand.

   Suchart wipes fetid crust and dirt from his face and hair with grimy hands, vaguely wonders at the time, knows only that it is dark, a pale crescent moon sinking into distant palms. Few motorcycles and cars pass; it must be late, very early morning. A dog - a patchwork of scabbed flesh and tufted hair - licks viscous liquid from the floor. Which smells worse, he can't decide - the dog or its feast. He hopes and concentrates on two things - that his parents won't notice how late he is, and that he can physically maneuver his way home.

   Alongside the road to Bua Yai, where the shoulder widens for vehicles to pull over before the deadman's curve on the edge of Noan Sahng Village, a sala stands above the rice field. Salas are no-frills rest stops - square floor on stilts with benches for walls, roofed with tin. Trucks stop to water down from their spare tanks to prevent overheating on their twelve-hour runs; villagers wait for the buses that pass twice in both the morning and afternoon to the neighboring villages and into the town; farmers nap in the hottest hours of the day, break for lunch out of the magnified tropical sun.
   More than anything, though, the sala is used by boys. Boys on motorcycles meeting to hit the discos, drink Thai whiskey, smoke, talk about girls and sex, buy and sell drugs. Like any place boys will hang out anywhere. It's Friday evening, in March, after dinner. Six boys lounge on the benches, some smoking behind cupped hands, eyes alert for teachers or relatives who might hassle them. In the corner a bottle of Maekhong stands, glowing dark amber in the evening light next to a cotton shoulder bag which serves as both its transport and cover in the event that an intruder should appear.
   "Tonight's the night for you two," the largest boy says to Suchart and a pudgy kid. "Drink. Get maow."
   "It's gonna feel good, boys. I almost wish it was my first time again. See-ow, see-ow," the smallest boy sings, smacking his lips loudly. "I like it more each time."
   "Ha. Little, you've only done it three times," another chimes in, lighting a cigarette. "You've never done a virgin, you don't know anything."
   "Got two virgins right here," says the last boy, a tall gangly kid leaning against the corner post, "just like girls by the way they drink. What are they, transvestites? Drink whiskey. Get maow."
   "Singh, I just drank," says Pudgy.
   "Give it to Chart, then," Singh snaps, "then give it to me. I got whiskey thirst."
   Pudgy passes the bottle, and Suchart takes a sip, gives it to Singh. They watch the traffic for awhile, and the kid who lit the smoke tings the butt into the dusty earth below. He wears a faded denim shirt and black Levi's, very "Tay."
   "I'm sleepy. Need some ya ma," Tay says, turning to Big. "We can get some, right?"
   "Got it already," Big answers, leaping up and flexing his entire upper body. "Be maow all night long."
   "How many?"
   "Three pills."
   "Paw dee. For us three, no?" says Singh.
   "You wanna give it to the boy virgins and Little?"
   "Ha."
   "I done it a bunch of times you know."
   "Yeah. You've already done everything."
   The tropical sunset is little more than a blink, and never much past 7:30, but in the heart of the Khorat plateau, in the seething air of barren parched rice country, the sun's brief farewell - refracted through dust and hazy smog - often dazzles, mesmerizes in rich purples, pinks, and oranges. So the boys are affected, and in a silent ritual of drink and smoke hardly notice as Suchart stands to go, stammering a hurried exit.
   "Where you going?" asks Tay, intercepting him, taking him aside by the bikes. "This is your night, Chart. We're doing this for you, okay? You'll love it. Chip-hi! I'm your friend, okay? How long we been friends?"
   "Five, six years."
   "Right. Listen, I understand you. This is about Bone, right? You like her; afraid you'll ruin your luck, no?"
   Chart nods, and Tay puts an arm around his shoulders, continues speaking.
   "No problem. Listen, okay? It doesn't matter if they know. Every man does it, so if they want one, they gotta accept it ."
   "I guess. But I don't think it's right. If you love someone . . ."
   "But does she love you?" Tay leans against a bike, lights a smoke. "You aren't even goin' out, right?"
   "No, but I want to . . ."
   "This won't make any difference. Plus when you do get together with her, you'll know what to do right? If you were a virgin, you'd look stupid, no? She'd just laugh."
   "She doesn't do it, Tay."
   "Listen, Chart," he says, clasping his upper arm, "do you know how her mom died?"
   "Yeah. But that was her mom. She's different."
   Little's tinny voice interrupts from the sala. "Hey, you guys gonna fuck each other or what?"
   "Shut up, you lizard! Just talkin'."
   "How 'bout I come out too. Gettin' hard already," he says with vulgar slurping noises like a tiny ogre sucking marrow from a bone.
   "Cool your heart, okay? Just a minute."
   "Got some drinkin' to do, boy virgin," Singh calls, sneering.
   Big lumbers across the sala floor, down the steps to the motorcycles.
   "I'm goin' into market. Need another bottle," he says and turns to Chart, punching his shoulder, faking a kick-boxing knee to the stomach. "Big night ahead, boy."
   He straddles his 125 cc crotch rocket, lurches off in a cloud of dust. The boys watch as he buzzes down the straight road, shrinking until he disappears from sight.
   "Listen, Chart. How long have I been going out with Yong?" Tay asks, picking up the beat.
   "I don't know. A long time already."
   "Yeah. She might've had a problem at first, but now I make her feel too good. See-ow, see-ow," he says, laughing, leading the younger boy by the arm back to the sala. "Try it this one time, okay?"

   Head feels like a smashed jack-o-lantern. As eyes adjust to moonlight and begin to focus, motor skills - though shaky and awkward - return. From everything around him - the air, the floor - the reek of vomit and decaying canine skin assaults his nostrils. First thought formed is the wondering if he's fallen from a motorcycle, the dog drinking his blood and eating his entrails.
   Second thought slaps him, a flash, a picture snapped in total darkness, illuminating and freezing its subject into the retina of memory. A photo of himself, standing in the center of the sala, fresh bottle of Maekhong up-bottomed into his mouth. Memory begins, a slow-motion grainy video; the others' expressions - gleeful and cheering his zealous drinking - transform into faces of outrage, their voices screeching that now he's drinking too much as they realize too late his intent. Big reaches for him, cursing at him to stop slugging the whiskey, grabs the bottle - three-quarters empty - from his mouth, it's neck smacking against his teeth; Big's other hand swings up from the waist, collides with his ear, knocking him to the wood floor.
   Waves of whiskey and rice, spicy papaya salad with fermented fish gush from the pit of his raw stomach and throat, eternal retching, fade to black.

   Eight in the morning and already hot. No rain has fallen for four months now, the air dusty, a halo around the low sun.
   The bell rings, and thirteen hundred students file onto the cracked dirt soccer field, divided by sex and in rows by class. Kau-tail, morning line-up.
   Teachers parade through the rows swinging bamboo rods as thick as a teen-aged girl's pinkie. They check white uniform shirts for stains, the girls' blue skirts for ankle-length. One teacher brandishes a pair of scissors and hacks swatches of hair from boys who have let their crew-cuts grow out and girls whose locks hang below ear-length.
   In front of the student body, a cement platform rises to the only grassy spot in the entire school grounds, a green mound from which the silver-painted flag pole rises. Two seniors, one boy and one girl, the student leaders, stand at attention before the pole, a microphone between them. Teachers dressed in pressed silk shirts and polyester pants or dresses stand clustered to the side, gossiping and chuckling.
   The senior boy takes the mike and barks like a sergeant, "Tong mote! Drong!"
   Thirteen hundred children snap to attention, and the senior girl slowly raises the flag while the boy sings the national anthem. Finished, the seniors step back and bow to the director of discipline, who clears his throat and begins speaking.
   "Good morning, students who we love," he begins. "The school is like your family, we are like your parents. When we hear of students endangering themselves, we are saddened, concerned. Punishment will correct poor behavior, and will make you all model Thai citizens."
   He coughs and glares out into the mass of uniforms, all rigid, unwavering, like a becalmed sea. He continues.
   "We have learned that some of our boys drank whiskey and went to the brothel with some village trouble-makers over the weekend. Students, we all know that prostitutes carry AIDS, and that these boys could die for their actions. We all know that students are forbidden to drink alcohol. Yet these boys have risked their lives and broken school rules. They will come forward for punishment as I read their names."
   From his pocket, he produces a slip of paper, slowly unfolds it as his eyes sweep the tensed audience. He aligns the paper before him and reads.
   "Suchart Tataisong, ninth grade, section one."
   Suchart's hands tremble and sweat beads on his nose - he's never been hit before. He glances desperately back and forth, like a mouse cornered by a fox, searching for an escape. From all directions he sees walls of laughing faces, demonic hyenas converging upon freshly killed meat. There is only one place to go - the cement platform. His eyes drop to the ground, and he walks through the line as Tay's and Pudgy's names are also called out. Some of his classmates slap him on the back or butt as he passes, and he can feel his face color, heat rush to his cheeks.
   The three boys stand on the platform before their peers, stifled giggles and snickers of the crowd. Suchart imagines Ubon glaring at him as if she'd expected something like this, typical male behavior. He keeps his eyes downcast for fear of meeting hers.
   Over the microphone, the disciplinarian asks Tay if he understands his wrongdoing, if he will learn from this public humiliation and promise to never break school rules again. The boy answers yes, and the disciplinarian cocks his arm back, releasing so that his entire body drives the stick, making it whistle over the loudspeakers. The slapping of leg skin just below Tay's khaki shorts shatters the still morning. Five lashes later, Pudgy follows, then both boys stand, rehabilitated, off to the side, smiling stupidly to hold back tears.
   By this point Suchart's thin frame shakes, but when asked, he mumbles from his bowed head that he never slept with a prostitute.
   The disciplinarian laughs, addresses the student body.
   "Students! Your schoolmate is a buffalo!"
   A wave of laughter and "Ohs" of disbelief rolls across the soccer field. Buffalo is one of the worst things to call a person in Thai.
   "Boy Suchart thinks he can lie to avoid his just punishment. That he can tell the disciplinarian that he is falsely accused. A very black-hearted tactic. He will take twice the number of strikes!"
   By the fifth lash, the backs of Suchart's legs numb, and he clenches his teeth to hold back tears. His eyes are closed tightly, and his head starts swimming at the eighth stroke. At the tenth, his knees buckle and he collapses unconscious to the pavement.
   The school nurse rushes over and shoves a eucalyptus inhaler under his nostrils. She motions to the senior boy to help, and they carry Suchart to the infirmary, blood streaming down the backs of his legs.
   By this time, the only laughter from the students is nervous, and dust rises from the shifting of their feet. Twenty-six hundred eyes on the brown dirt beneath them.

   Ubon breaks quickly from her schoolmates, the dispersing masses ambling to class. Her stomach's queasy both from standing in the heat and from witnessing the violence. She heads for the bathroom, wondering if Suchart had told the truth. Why would he lie to avoid six lashes? Boys took that many all the time.
   Hands on the edge of the sink, she stands before the mirror, thinks he must've been involved somehow. Otherwise they wouldn't have called him up. And she had seen him around the village with Tay recently.
   Four days have passed since Suchart gave her the rose, and she's been thinking about his proposal. He's cute and polite around her, and she thinks that it might be fun to try being his girlfriend. Unlike her mother, Ubon knows how AIDS is spread, and she won't have sex before marriage anyway. Irrational urges draw her to the boy - curiosity, a longing for human affection, others she doesn't understand. Most of her friends have boyfriends already and talk about them incessantly. She often wonders what she's missing, but always just laughs when her friends press her to take Chart before he looks elsewhere.
   Suddenly, it looks like she's waited too long. Though if he's going to the brothel like her father, she doesn't want to see him anyway.
   Ubon splashes water on her face, rinsing clammy sweat, breaking her trance. Just as the bell rings for first period, she hurries off to class.

   After third period, the teacher asks Ubon to run to the market for her, to pick up some lunch. As a scholarship student, this is one of the girl's duties, and she takes money and motorcycle keys from her teacher, drives the half-kilometer to the market.
   At the junction of the Friendship Highway - built by the US Army Corps of Engineers during the Vietnam War - and Rt. 202, stands Sida Market, a collection of grocery stores, electronic shops, noodle stands and restaurants built side-by-side with walls that open to the street and lock with sliding gates at night. Ubon parks the bike in the dirt outside the grilled chicken restaurant, orders her teacher's request, and sits at a table next to the wall.
   Under the shade of a blue, nylon tarp a cooking area is set up - a counter with a glass cabinet for meat, bottles of fish, soy, and oyster sauces, and a broth cauldron for noodle soup. A gas burner and wok sit atop a propane tank, and a wooden table supports a large cutting board and cleaver, a giant mortar and pestle for somtam, papaya salad. A straw basket holds sticky rice, and a rice cooker is plugged into the wall in the corner. Farther outside, near the street, a halved oil drum contains a charcoal fire, and a middle-aged woman with tied-back hair and a dirty apron brushes garlic and tamarind sauce on bamboo-splinted chicken legs and breasts that cook on its grill.
   This time of day, the inside of the restaurant is dark, like a cement cave, and green, wobbly ceiling fans - caked with black soot and grease from the wok - circulate relatively cool air throughout the room. Four small folding tables line each wall, each with a plastic pitcher of water and racks of condiments - fish sauce with chilies, vinegar with chilies, dried ground chilies, and ground peanuts. Two young men sit drinking beer, eating grilled chicken and sticky rice, and pay no attention to Ubon. She recognizes one of them from the village - Big - a local tough guy. While she waits for the food, she listens to their gruff voices and hoarse laughter.
   "We brought two boy virgins out Saturday," says Big. "My cousin Pudgy and that boy Chart. Skinny kid. You know him?"
   "Yeah."
   Ubon's spine stiffens, and she cocks her head to the side so her ear is more directly in line with their table.
   "Must be gay or something. We were drinking at the sala, getting ready to go to Sida Doy for the girls, and he drank half my bottle. So maow he couldn't go. Lay there puking."
   "You didn't teach him how to drink?"
   "He's a girl-boy. Did it on purpose, didn't want to go."
   "What the hell?"
   "That's what I said."
   A smile grows on Ubon's face like a lotus opening at dawn, her heart races, and she looks out into the sunshine that bathes the market, the cars, people passing by, in cheery yellow light. He didn't do it, she thinks, resists a spontaneous urge to leap outside and dance in the street.
   Suddenly, she gets an idea, reaches into her pocket and counts her money - some for her own lunch and some for buying groceries after school. Though she won't be able to eat today, and the family will have to live on eggs and vegetables for the next few days, she calls to the cook, doubles the food order.

   In the sterile infirmary, a cinder block room painted light blue with posters showing the dangers of AIDS, drugs, and skin diseases, the nurse gives Suchart a tincture of opium for his pain, lays him belly down on a bed and dresses his wounds. She covers him with a red faux satin blanket and leaves him to sleep.
   The boy floats on cotton, on his belly in a purple-lit space that dissolves into darkness with no walls, ceiling or floor. A breeze swirls the gaseous air in shaded layers, cooling the blistering stripes on the back of his legs. From the blackness emerges a shimmering figure in white taffeta. Her scent of jasmine fills the space before she comes into focus - juicy maroon lips, milk chocolate skin and nearly almond, onyx eyes. "Ubon," the boy says, his body glowing like an ember. She puts a finger to her lips and leans over his upturned face, her ear-length black hair brushing his brow, and sniffs his cheek in a Thai kiss, her hands light on his shoulders. From a fold in her wrapped gown, she extracts a white rose, places it on the cotton cloud next to him. She hovers above him, smiling, then touches her heart and swirls off with the breeze through the purple air, a trail of tiny jasmine petals following her into the darkness.