He climbed into our tent and left me alone by the edge of the ocean. The bay water was full of moon. I felt the night all over my cold arms. The days of my life stretched out like a series of wrapped presents, who knew what they’d hold? Strange nights like this one.

When I came into the tent Abe murmured in his sleep and turned toward the second bag like he was planning to embrace another body. “It’s just me, baby boy,” I said, and he turned away. The dirt was hard and cold under my body before I slept.

I woke up to the groan of a zipper. Waking up without hangovers felt very raw. I was alert to everything. The morning air was close and salty. The ocean made hushing sounds like it was trying to catch its breath: Heshh, heshh, heshh, wet sand stuck in its throat. Abe unzipped the flap to show a doorway full of sky, and then he peered inside. “So can you see it?” he said. “The ocean?”

“I see your face.”

“Oh,” he said. “Sorry.”

Then he was gone, and the water was right there: a rustling blue strip under the bleached sky. The surface was busy with waves and little boats.

“Holy shit!” said Abe. “Goddamn holy shit.”

“What?”

He said: “It’s a dolphin.”

I got up and stuck my neck out the flap. I peered at the water.

“No,” he said. “On the shore.”

He pointed at a gray shape on the sand. It looked like a stain.

“I think it’s dead,” he said. “I think it’s a baby.”

We walked down to see it. The body was curled like a comma on the cold beach, rubbery gray skin with its fin crusted in blood. Something had been at it in the night. There was a chunk of face eaten clean around one eye. “Jesus Christ,” said Abe. “Let’s go.”

But I didn’t want to go back. That felt like leaving it alone to die, even though it was already dead. Abe pulled out a plastic bottle of orange juice and a crinkly package of powdered doughnuts, six puffy rings in a row. “Vending-machine breakfast,” he said. “But now my appetite’s shot.”

My stomach closed like a fist. I took a doughnut anyway. It had been a nice idea.

We sat beside our tent and finished the juice at least. He reached into the backpack and pulled out a notebook. It was like the ones he’d had when he was young. I’d sent him special school supplies covered with motorcycles and cartoon characters, the brightest ones I could find, but in the summer he always brought simple notebooks in marbled black-and-white. He was all business right from the start.

Now he wanted to get me started with a five-year plan. It was a way, he said, of thinking small and big at once. You had goals for the next day, the next week, the next year, and so on. “Let’s start large,” he said. “Let’s daydream.”