“We’re still stuck in his snow globe?”

“For now, yes.”

“But I thought this town was supposed to disappear? Wasn’t that the whole point of him finding out what had happened—to break him out of here?”

“It was, and the town will disappear—actually, look, it’s already beginning.” Chloe scooped up some sand, held out her arm, and let the grains sprinkle out of her fist. While most fell to the beach, some grains flickered and evaporated into thin air, much like what had happened to Amy’s mother when she had stuck her arm outside the lighthouse.

“See?” Chloe said. “Bit by bit this place is fading away. There’s no one inside any of the buildings. All the people are gone. The town’s just an empty shell now, no one left in it but us.”

Amy gave a panicked look toward the lighthouse. “Wait, does that mean my mom’s not here anymore?”

“Don’t worry, she knows how to find you. But first we need to wait till Ryan’s spoken with Mom, and that could take a while, so we might as well get comfortable.”

Sitting on the sand, their legs crossed and the sun on their backs, Amy and Chloe kept a close eye on Ryan as he made his way down the beach. Neither said a word as his trail of footprints grew; instead, they collectively held their breaths as they waited to see how he would cope with the somber news about to be revealed to him. Part of Amy wished she could be with him, standing beside him, holding his hand, doing anything she could to soften the blow, and yet at the same time she knew this was something he needed to go through on his own.

“Look,” Chloe said. “Something’s happening.”

Ryan had come to a standstill. His mother wasn’t moving either. The two of them were standing some twenty or thirty yards apart—too far for Amy to know for sure if Ryan had recognized her or not.

“Do you think he knows who it is yet?” Amy asked.

Chloe dug her fingers into the sand and repeated her trick from before; this time, fewer grains fell to the ground and a larger proportion vanished. “Yep, he knows.”

“Wait, why is the sand disappearing so quickly?”

“Because Ryan’s starting to let go. And once they start talking and he begins to understand what’s happened, it’s only going to get faster.”

“But I am going to be able to see him before that happens, right?”

“You won’t have long. By the time Ryan’s done talking to Mom, you might only have a few minutes. That’s the one problem with helping him get out of here, Amy—there’s no longer any reason for this place to exist.”