The air burned with the smell of autumn, the spicy tang of cinnamon and cloves swirling around us like my favorite Yankee Candle. Flames leapt feverishly like flamenco skirts, whipping and snapping around us in dizzying billows. Levi and I both watched, enraptured, as flames lapped over the wooden boat, devouring planks and nails. Within moments, they had spread to the bow, tendrils twirling in a fiery, dancing blaze.

If August had a color, it would be gold. Brighter than a lion. Twenty-four-karat beauty. Levi’s presence in Oar’s Rest had stretched from summer into the beginnings of brittle fall. Spiderwebbed leaves turned from green to gold, the edges a rich burnt amber and persimmon orange.

“I’m glad you got to see this,” I whispered to Levi. Witnesses to the much-beloved boat festival were few and far between. Secrets didn’t stay secrets for long in a small town, but this was one we all universally kept from strangers, hidden up our sleeves and close to our chests. The last thing any of us wanted was for Oar’s Rest to become another Bar Harbor.

“Me too.” Levi’s smile was luminous. A light show of primal, twisting orange flames flickered across his pupils.

The Burning Boat Festival was basically destruction dressed up as a party, and as the flames rose higher and higher, the party well and truly got underway. Someone was blasting a mix of folk tunes from their iPod, and bodies swayed around the engulfed boat, tan legs kicking up golden sand, and bronzed arms wrapping around friends and lovers.

A few feet away, Lorcan and Penny tipped back bottles of beer before Lucy pulled Lorcan into the firelight to join in the jigs of the revelers. “Come on, Babe!” she screamed, hair bouncing up and down as she bounded around the bonfire with the rest of the young people. Laughing, Lorcan let himself get pulled along, stumbling a little as he tried to keep up with Lucy’s jittery dance steps.

“There’s the guys,” said Chad, stubbing his toes into the sand. “I’m gonna catch up with them for a minute.” He turned to leave, then paused. “Um, do you wanna come, Penny?”

Her eyes widened. “Sure.” She turned to me. “I’ll see you two later?” At my nod, they both drifted away like shadow, the black plumes of Penny’s dress fading, fading, fading. Just the two of them this time. As it should be.

“She looks a lot happier,” said Levi. “Do you think they’ll get back together?”

I agreed with him in wholehearted relief. It had hurt to see her painfully thin body, the skin bruised like day-old supermarket fruit, the hazy uncertainty in her eyes the day after her last party. “I don’t know. Maybe. But maybe not.”