Her hormones had played games with her. By the time she was thirteen she was a woman and when she was fifteen she was more than one.

How strange that must have been for her, to be interesting to persons well older than her peer group.

Every so often you come across a child like that and you just hope that they'll come out of it all unharmed -- their bodies put them in a dangerous space, one their minds and culture isn't quite ready to accept yet.

I remember the one girl who got what we called "bodacious tatas" when we were in seventh grade. She seemed so much older than us somehow. Angered a bit by our cattiness, but a small measure of pride at the same time.

Did she make the right decisions? Did my friend? I wonder.

Its been a long time since I last saw her. I was mostly friends with her brother and the days are long since we hang out anymore.

I saw her more or less by chance from a distance. She would be married in a few months, but she didn't seem like the same happy girl I once new. In her late teens she'd developed into a startlingly striking woman. Her baby fat had melted off and left her a fairly normally developed girl.

The illusions that poured out of that girl that night...

I can't help see her somewhere not too far off, maybe still unhappy, maybe a baby in her belly and sailing towards a future divorce.

Married too young.

All of it too young.