In the end she grabs her bike and heads up Spring Street. She thinks she might bike all the way around the island. That will show them. (Who it will show, and what, she isn’t one hundred percent sure of.) She leaves her phone at home because she knows her mother can track her location when she has her phone with her. She has considered turning off all location services, but leaving them on is part of the deal she struck with her mother when she got the phone and she’s not about to risk her phone for longer than the grounding period.

Maggie’s anger at the injustice of it all is a smoldering fire, ready to ignite. Riley is not grounded, which just goes to show you that Riley’s mother is nicer than Maggie’s. Riley was not pleased that Maggie threw her under the bus regarding the vaping equipment, and she did lose her phone, so she is currently not speaking to Maggie. If they don’t make up by the time school starts, it’s going to be one long year. Of the five girls in Maggie’s class at the Block Island school, Riley is the only one Maggie can stand. The rest she thinks of like siblings she hasn’t chosen but is more or less stuck with for the rest of her life.

Riley also has a crush on Hugo, but it is Maggie he has been giving leftover macarons to at the end of the day, and Maggie to whom he’s been offering his e-cigarette. (I declined every single time except once, Mom, she thought, and the injustice of her grounding boils anew.) It would be so like Riley to use Maggie’s incarceration as an opportunity to pursue Hugo.

Maggie knows that sunset will be at 8:11 and last light at 8:43, which is something that, as an island kid, she looks up most mornings if she hasn’t seen it posted around town. She’s not worried about darkness because her bike has lights on both the handlebar and the seat post and she knows enough to turn them on. She is worried about what will happen if her mother comes home from dinner with Holly to find her gone, but they are eating at the Spring House, which is not known for its fast service—it is where couples go when they want to gaze at the ocean over cocktails before they even order an appetizer.

It’s a tiny bit of a risk taking the route she’s chosen because she goes right by the Spring House, but she holds her breath and rides extra-fast as she takes the curve by the restaurant, which sits on a hill above the road, and nobody calls out to her. The reservation is for seven o’clock and so her mom and Holly have probably completed their ocean-gazing by now and are likely settled at one of the back tables in the dining room.

All thoughts of her mother are put on hold when she sees Hugo’s little red sports car passing her, moving considerately into the other lane to give her plenty of space. Her pulse starts to race. She follows it—why not? If he is in his car, and he is going this way, he is not anywhere near Riley.