Up. I walk into the guest room. One of Lolly’s watercolors is still hanging on the blue-gray walls. She was wrong. It really isn’t bad. The sky, the texture of the sea, the place where they touch, the air filled with iodine and foam. She used black for almost all of it, letting it dilute in places through all the grades of gray and into nearly nothing. I slip it out of its frame and into my bag. I take my phone and my laptop, and check I’ve got the envelope with last week’s pay. One hundred twenty dollars. Aside from that, there’s really nothing here for me. I could take some clothes from Lolly’s room, but it’s directly over the cliff’s edge now and tempting fate to that extent is the same as suicide.

I take out my phone and hit the button to call Jason. He answers after the first ring, which feels like a miracle.

“Hey . . . hey . . .” He doesn’t say my name. It sounds like he’s moving around. A door closes on his end.

“Jason, it’s me.” God, he knows that. Obviously, I’ve called his cell. “Listen, I need to get off Swan for a while and I was thinking maybe I could crash with you?”

“Uh, yeah. When were you thinking? Or maybe it would be better if I just plan to stay on Swan, like, next time I’m out. I could stay over.”

“No, it’s not that. I need to get out of here and I don’t . . . I was just wondering if you could put me up . . .”

He cuts me off. “Okay, but, like, when? Maybe some night next week?”

“I need to leave today.”

“Today . . . today’s no good . . .”

And he doesn’t have to finish. I understand well enough. I’ve known all along, if I’m honest. I click the red button on my phone. He calls back once. I don’t answer and he doesn’t call again.

I could have told him. He would have helped if he knew. I know he would, it’s not that. It’s his tone, the way he said what he said. I knew the real reason without having to ask for it. He has a girlfriend, a real one. They live together on dry, solid land. He loves her, and all this time I’ve been the one who was imaginary, a girl who doesn’t exist on an island no one knows about that’s getting smaller all the time.

This is the way the world ends. No, that’s not right. What I’m supposed to be telling myself is: this isn’t the end of the world. This is not the end of the world. thisisn’ttheendoftheworld. This is not the end of the world.

This isn’t the end of the world.

I have to go but I’m not ready.