There was a little girl in the class named Aaliyah, who idolized her. If Willa wore her hair in a bun, Aaliyah would show up the next day with her hair in a bun. She was delighted that her light-brown skin was the same shade as Willa’s skin. She listened with a fierce intensity when Willa talked, and when the class finally hit the water, Aaliyah was determined to be first in all things. At the end of the week, she sobbed as she gifted Willa with a red and purple friendship bracelet that she’d made herself.

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Aaliyah said, her face buried in Willa’s neck. “But I’ll come back next year and all the years after that until I can be a teacher like you.”

Willa touches the woven bracelets circling her wrist, Aaliyah’s among them—the colors faded from water and sun—and wonders what happened to that little girl. She didn’t return the following summer, and the director of the Boys and Girls Club said only that Aaliyah had gone to live with her grandma in Cleveland.

“She might not remember your name forever,” Finley said. “But you left an impression on her that will never go away.”

Willa didn’t believe it at that time, but now she knows that someone can leave you with an indelible mark that will change you forever. Finley’s mark burns hot enough to make her want to scream sometimes, to rage at a God who would take one of the sweetest human beings on the earth, while leaving murderers and rapists to do business as usual.

All the lights are turned off when Willa returns to the boat, and Taylor is asleep with Pumpkin curled in the hollow behind her knees. Willa bunks down on her side of the boat, and through the open hatch she can see a handful of stars. She doesn’t know if she believes in heaven anymore, but all the same she whispers to Finley, “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

Taylor