The boat sways as Taylor moves around the cabin, packing her clothes and gathering up her bedding. Willa sits on the deck as the breeze stirs the rigging of the sailboats in the basin, creating a soothing metallic symphony at odds with the boiling rage inside her. Finally, Taylor emerges as her mom comes down the dock with an empty cart. “You can have all my food and, um—I left Finley’s ashes.”

Willa nods, but she doesn’t speak.

“So,” Taylor says, scooping up her cat. “Be careful. Have fun.”

Again she doesn’t respond, and as she watches her former friend walk away, Willa hopes she’ll never have to see Taylor Nicholson again.

At nightfall Willa curls up in the cockpit with her flashlight and an actual chart book, plotting a route to Niagara Falls. Tomorrow she’ll sail as far as Ashtabula. The following day she’ll cross into Pennsylvania and spend the night in Erie. And on the day after that, she’ll make the crossing to Port Colborne in Canada. The days will be long, but Willa is already planning ahead. She’ll keep a bucket in the cockpit to use as a toilet. She can prepare all her meals in the morning to eat throughout the day. Same with water. If she rigs up a beach umbrella over the cockpit, she’ll have a little bit of shade. As long as the weather cooperates, she should be okay.

When she finishes, Willa turns her face skyward. The clouds are gone and the night sky is sprinkled with stars, and her memories roll back to the time she, Taylor, and Finley spent the night on the beach to watch a meteor shower. They treated it like an indoor slumber party, spreading a patchwork of blankets on the sand. Taylor made a playlist filled with songs about stars. They danced, toasted marshmallows over a little fire that Willa built, and watch the lights of freighters twinkle in the night like distant cities.

Around midnight, they lay back on the blankets to look up at the sky.

“Let’s play Constellation,” Finley suggested. When they were little, they’d try to identify as many constellations as they could and would race to locate the Big Dipper since that one was the easiest to find. Over time, the game morphed into making up constellations and an accompanying lore. “Willa, you start.”

“Okay, so that one there”—she pointed to a cluster of stars not far from Polaris—“is Louise. It was named in honor of a 1950s housewife who clubbed her husband to death with a croquet mallet after he left his socks on the floor and criticized her tuna casserole.”

Taylor laughed and Finley clapped with delight. “Now you, Taylor.”