The town’s economy catered to tourists. Odilie’s dad worked at the one real estate company, Charter Sails. He’d worked there since he was in high school, a generational local. Her mother was a schoolteacher and ran the day camp the public school held during the summer months for the WASPy mothers who yearned to relinquish their children from 9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. every day, too used to school-day schedules.

The fabric of Wyneck depended on a particular kind of obscenity: palatial houses steps from the ocean with high insurance costs and property taxes, but no central AC, landscaped with hydrangeas in hues not typically found in nature, and lawns the color of Astroturf. One stretch of beach was subdivided into multiple private ones but few public ones, sand the same sun-bleached blond as the young children who built sandcastles on the shores and learned to swim in the gray waters, very occasionally drowning in their murky depths.

When fall came upon Wyneck, the town let out a communal breath, a sigh of relief commingled with anxiety about what the slowness could do to people, the fraught winter months that lay ahead that made the locals think too much, shoot deer or, accidentally, each other after several rounds of scotch, dare each other to jump into the ocean right when the first snow was about to hit.

Odilie wondered what bar Peri would choose as she idly followed her. They were driving toward the water, so she guessed The Crab Shack, the tourist haunt that turned into a dance party every weekend at midnight. Odilie knew that they doubled their prices after midnight, too, but that hardly anyone noticed, the lights too dim, the summer people too sweaty and soused to ever care to look at their tabs.

She was surprised when Peri pulled into The Fools, the townie joint that deliberately didn’t paint its facade, clean its windows, try to mask the odor of fish from the dock not five yards away. Usually, this intentional negligence worked to keep the summer dwellers out. Not Peri, it seemed.

Peri grabbed a table outside on the back deck, overlooking the dock where fishmongers’ boats floated idly beside small yachts. It was such a good representation of the town, this view, that it made Odilie smile.

Peri flagged down a waiter and immediately ordered both of them an Aperol spritz. “You’ll like it, I promise. Now, tell me all about yourself,” Peri said, leaning forward. She was wearing a T-shirt dress covered in sequined mouths, tongues lolling out of every glittering cherry-red lip.

Odilie cocked her head. She felt underdressed in her jeans that somehow felt style-less, her cotton H&M T-shirt, her Keds. She felt like a child playing grown-up. Even though Peri couldn’t be that much older than she was. That was another thing about her; Odilie couldn’t really guess her age at all.