Finley’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie. “Willa! We have to keep going or else we won’t know how it feels to do this!”

Willa wanted to suggest they wait until they were twelve or seventeen or twenty-five, but she also wanted Finley to see her as brave enough, as worthy enough to be her best friend. Willa kept going, and now she knows how fun it is to sail to Kelleys in an Optimist dinghy. She also knows her mom is wrong. Finley would absolutely hold her to this.

Once the trunk is empty, Mom folds a one-hundred-dollar bill into Willa’s palm and says, “I’ve been saving this for a special occasion.”

From here, Willa’s mom will drive up to the FriendShip gas station, where she’ll spend the next eight hours selling gas, snacks, and coffee to tourists on their way to Cedar Point. She’s already wearing her blue smock, which is both endearing and dorky. Before this job, Willa’s mom served drinks at the strip club out by the tracks. Groomed dogs. Detailed boats. Waited tables. Developed film in an hour. Delivered pizzas. But she has trouble making jobs stick, which leaves their budget endlessly stretched. One hundred dollars could buy groceries, a few tanks of gas, or extra minutes for their pay-as-you-go phones.

“You should keep this.” Willa tries to give the money back, but her mom jams her hands into her smock pockets, reminding Willa of a stubborn child. “The muffler is about to fall off the car.”

“It’ll be fine.”

She wishes she had her mother’s knack of letting responsibility float away like a helium balloon. Instead, it sits like a weight in her chest. “What if it’s not?”

Willa knows—especially now that Finley is gone—that she shouldn’t be so hard on her mother. Colleen Ryan was barely older than Willa when the love of her life was killed by a bomb in Iraq. She got pregnant with Willa a short time later and has been a single mom for eighteen years. She’s a survivor. But Willa is wired differently. She wants to understand how someone can flake out on their own life, but her brain just can’t make that connection.

“With you gone all summer, the bills will go down,” her mom insists, the honeysuckle scent of her body spray tickling Willa’s nose as they embrace. “A hundred bucks to get rid of you seems fair.”

She doesn’t want to smile because she still fears the rent will go unpaid and her mom will wind up homeless, but Willa can’t help herself. She shakes her head. “So cold.”

Her mom’s laugh splits the stillness. “I’m going to miss you, honey girl.”