Although it could be nothing but a fantasy, Julie held a vision in her head of where her father was now. He lived in a place that was parallel to the world she knew. It was right next door, yet invisible until she crossed the threshold, leaving the here and now behind and stepping into the new place.

There, Julie would be perfect. She would have friends rather than mean kids making fun of her. She would have boobs, not fat rolls. She would be everyone’s favorite, not some chubby loser.

It worked like this in her mind, anyway. She was probably wrong, but a girl could dream. Sometimes she felt like talking to her mom about it, but she never did. Mom worried about every little thing and she’d find a way to worry about Julie’s dream of paradise.

Plus she would start digging around and she might find out the real reason Julie kept getting in fights with other kids. Above all else, Julie could not allow her mother to find out what had provoked the fights. Because the only thing worse than having kids say her mother had caused her father’s death was having to tell her mother what the kids were saying.

She heaved a lonely sigh, and then watched the colors of the water change as the sun went down behind the east-facing lighthouse. The colors were so rich, they made her heart ache. Maybe that was where her father lived, in a world so beautiful that mere mortals couldn’t bear it.

She stooped and picked up a stray bird feather and held it out in front of her. It looked like the feather of an eastern shorebird, maybe a piping plover. When you grew up at the shore, you learned these things. She opened her fingers and let the feather drift downward, watching it dance on an updraft of wind, then swirl as it made its way to earth. Down, down, down.

She used to be light as a feather. When she looked at old pictures of herself—and there were hundreds, because her mom was a photographer—she was amazed at how cute she had been, like a little fairy. Not anymore. These days she was a fat blob. A fat blob nobody wanted to talk to, except to talk shit about her and tell lies about her mom.

She stooped and picked up a loose brick from the rim of the structure and sent it hurtling to earth. Then she picked up another and did the same, waiting for it to smash on the rocks below.

“Hey!”

The loud voice startled Julie so much she nearly let go of the railing. Her heart pounding, she jumped over the rail to safety.

“What the hell?” yelled the voice in a funny accent. “You almost hit me.”

Oh, good God. She had nearly hit someone with a brick. Then everybody would be calling her a killer, too.

Horrified, she yanked open the door and clattered down the dark, dank-smelling stairs. Maybe she could run away before the someone saw her. Maybe if she ran really fast, the victim of her falling bricks wouldn’t see her.