We left for Swan that same week, and she let my parents come with us, even though she was pushing her luck bringing two more youngsters to Swan along with me. I’ll never forget that. Help you get settled in, she said. No one talked much in the cab to the ferry in Portsmouth. At the water my legs felt like Popsicles, crunching and threatening to crumble as I forced myself on board. Orange plastic seats with their silly bowl shape making me shift and slide as the boat rocked, too fucking cruel and stupid; I just needed so badly to feel steady. So I held my mother while we crossed. I held her bones. My dad mostly stood out on deck and smoked. Menthols, always menthols.

The weird thing was, there was this big stack of mattresses on the deck. I figured out later that they were for the hotel on Star. The Star Island hippie kids kept trying to climb on top of the stack, and they laughed at each other as each one clawed their way up and rolled off as soon as the boat went over a swell or turned sharply. None of them managed to stay on. And I wanted to try. It was dumb, of course, but I wanted to play too, and I felt like I could have done better, like I could have stayed up there. But I wasn’t them—I wasn’t one of the Star Island kids. I wasn’t anybody. I just held my mom and watched my dad smoke and swallowed the feeling that those kids had fucking everything just because none of them looked like their life was ending. I wonder what Lolly did. I can’t see her at all now, as hard as I try.

My parents stayed longer than I’d expected, almost two weeks. I could see Lolly losing patience with them, coming home every day and finding them still there, eating her food and doing nothing much with their time. I don’t remember them saying goodbye to me either. They must have, though. Right? I remember telling Lolly that I didn’t want to go with them to the dock, where Ted was waiting to row them over to Appledore. I walked up to the top of the hill, where the path meets the road, and watched them walk north with this raw ache behind my eyes and nose and in my chest, like when you realize you’re coming down with the flu. Mom stuck her hand out and waved. She wore the brave smile of someone being shipped out in the draft.

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