When she got home, she lay down in bed again and her weight felt insufficient, an entire side of the queen-size mattress empty where she was used to the heat of another person. She went to the beach, alone, let the water sting her open eyes as she looked at the bottom, at the granules of rock and sea debris. When she came up for air, she was startled to find no one else around, no one yanking her by the hair back into the water, no one dangling hermit crabs dug out from their shells, their little claws dancing, naked and helpless, in the air.

Back in bed, her comforter smelling like the sea, she thought of the people she used to spend time with. Kitty. Other people from high school, childhood, that she thought she’d been friends with, whom she thought she liked. But no, she was merely existing alongside them, thrust with them because of their proximity. What were they all doing now? Drinking pilfered Four Loko beverages on a beach somewhere, fucking men with slimy hands, indifferent to each other, conversing about nothing? Overplucking their eyebrows, seething at the tourists, the summer people and their bikini waxes, healthy nails, flawless skin?

Something strange had happened earlier that day. Kitty, who hadn’t spoken to Odilie in months at that point, cornered her in their parking lot with Calypso Rogers, a girl they both knew from high school, who had been prettier than them, hair blond and silky, tummy flat and pierced. “Calypso says your new BFF is bad news,” Kitty stated haughtily, as Odilie tried to get to the front entrance of the low, brick-faced building. “Tell her, Callie.”

Calypso looked down to the asphalt, wrung her hands. “She was really horrible to me,” was the mumble that slipped out.

Odilie had rolled her eyes. “Okay?” And she sauntered into the building, even as Calypso called out, “Wait.” But Odilie wasn’t waiting for anyone, especially not jealous townies.

Odilie turned to her side and she slept, slept longer and heavier than she had all summer since she’d met Peri. When she woke up some twelve hours later, her bedroom was still gray, her brain still a swampland of inexplicable grief, Peri still away, hiding in the shadows of Odilie’s mind.

She closed her eyes again, willed it to be Tuesday when Peri would return.

14

VERA

Present day

Sam comes over to the apartment for dinner this week and quickly withdraws into our tiny kitchen, cooking an entire roast duck a l’orange, the greasy scent and smoke so pungent that we have to open all the windows and take the battery out of the smoke detector because it keeps on beeping. While the duck is cooking, they come into my bedroom to see my collection of clippings, a total fire hazard. But when they start actually looking at the collages, their face softens.