WHEN JAMES FOUND US ON THE BEACH I FELL BACK INTO MY own body. The rock in my mouth brought me back to myself. I discovered that my body was not made of clay, but rather covered in it, a thin layer all over. The three of us walked back to the house, our feet crunching over stray twigs and pine cones. James told us it was nearly one A.M., that most of the guests were gone, that Lonnie’s father had fallen asleep. There was no longer anything to fear. Upstairs, he drew a bath in the big tub next to their bedroom. Inside the water I bloomed out of the clay, the skin underneath warm and soft and clean.

James bathed me, the water sparkling like it was full of glitter in the candlelight of the bathroom. I felt warm and safe as he scooped up water with his palms and released it over my shoulders so it trickled down my back, down my front, over my breasts, in gentle trails. I felt the pressure of his hands against my back, along my ribs—soft and reassuring.

When I closed my eyes, I saw indistinct designs on the backside of my eyelids, light and shadow, movement. The light had neon colors, but they changed too quickly for me to identify them. I remembered, as a child, rubbing my eyes one afternoon until I saw spots, closing my eyes and pressing down, watching the vague, neon-lined spots my fingers created. It had seemed then, as it seemed now, like some kind of paranormal occurrence. The experience I was having now felt more like a return than a divergence. Maybe, I thought, all divergences, all distractions, are just returns. In light of this, I had misinterpreted my experience with James in a basic way. My longing for him, for Carlow, for Lonnie even, felt new, stronger, more necessary—but maybe I was only searching for something unrecoverable from the past—the ache of youth itself, which is dispensed to everything and nothing. Hadn’t I read that somewhere? We experience everything by the time we’re nineteen or twenty—the rest of our lives are just long processes of remembering.

I suspected, opening my eyes again to the sparkling water, that the MDMA had been laced with something else hallucinogenic, or that I’d been given far too large a dose for my small body. I briefly wondered if I should worry about this, but instead I moved my hands around in the water, feeling the rippled texture of it. The more I could concentrate on observing sensory details, the less inclined I felt to panic about the way the drug was affecting me. A lack of awareness would signify danger, I decided, and settled back into my contentment.