Rae had to set the box aside and think of other things. This was all too much. It was too much to be vacationing with Ryan, who bore a striking resemblance to Andrew Keegan, now that she thought about it; too much that her bedroom shared a wall with his, that she’d had to spend the past forty-eight hours watching him go from tanned to more tanned, watching him sweat and laugh and roll a toothpick over his lips, which were so juicy they looked like they wanted to be popped. And now she was supposed to sit next to Ryan on the couch and watch the actual Andrew Keegan make out with a girl onscreen . . . Rae’s body ached like she had been Tasered with currents of desire and injustice.

Before Rae knew it, the movie was on, the light was off. Lisa and Poppy were sharing the loveseat, and Alex and Kimmy were laid out on the carpet before them, with chins cupped in hands, bare feet in the air. John was at the far end of the sectional couch, looking like he was about to enjoy a good nap, and Scott was at the kitchen table, typing on his laptop. This left Rae and Ryan in the middle of the couch with two feet of space between them, but gravity seemed to pull them both toward the crack between cushions at the center. The fierce need inside Rae was so powerful that her throat felt like it was pure blood. She felt like life was impossible, and she was certain that nothing would ever be enough.

The rain had passed by the time the movie ended, and almost unbelievably to Rae, she and Ryan had not drawn closer to each other on the couch; they maintained their distance for the entire movie.

They all stepped out onto the patio together, and the early-evening sun seemed to amplify the humidity. The clouds had disintegrated into feathery crescents scattered unevenly across the sky, as though they had been tossed there recklessly by someone in a rush. Lisa fanned her face with a takeout menu from inside. Beads of sweat lined her upper lip and glittered in the sun.

Poppy fanned her face with her shirttail. She directed everyone’s attention toward the beach, where the sand was saturated, stained dark with rainwater. She told them the story of the Gray Man, how he stalked the beach for heartbroken women, longing to protect them from impending doom.

Kimmy said, “Ghosts can be good like that?”

Rae said, “Ghosts aren’t real, dummy.”

“I know.” Kimmy didn’t say more, but she thought on this for a while. She knew Ryan was really smart, but she wasn’t sure she agreed with what he’d said the other day about ghosts and God, how believing or not believing was all totally in your head. Kimmy thought that surely there had to be proof one way or the other; there was no way that not one person on this whole huge earth could either prove or disprove something, even if that something was as slippery as a ghost. Kimmy realized suddenly how desperately she wanted someone to just tell her how the world was, so she could be sure. She wanted answers. Proof. It seemed so unreasonable to exist without it.