“I know—I know it’s… weird,” he continued. “I get that. After… well. After everything. But I think it’s time, you know? It’s been almost four years, and I… I don’t know. I think I need it. And this isn’t spur of the moment, okay? This is—I’ve thought about this. A lot. Maybe more than anything else. And I know things are a little bit better, but I’ve still got this fog in my head, and I don’t know what else to do to clear it. I feel like I’m still floundering, you know? Like I’m out in the middle of the ocean, and I can’t seem to find my way back.”

Oh, yes, it whispered. You’d know all about that, wouldn’t you, Bear? Drowning in the ocean. It’s a good thing to know your crazy is apparently genetic. Either that or it’s a learned behavior. And Otter wants to have kids with you? What could possibly go wrong with that?

“I don’t know what else to do,” Ty admitted. “Sometimes I think I’m getting better, and other times, I feel myself sinking right back to where I was before. I’ll be lucky at this point if Dartmouth lets me continue at all. And that’s… I know that’s on me, but everything I do to try and make it better only seems to make things worse. I can’t focus in my classes. I can’t do what’s asked of me, and if I keep on how I am now, it’s going to just make things worse. There has to be a change, and I don’t know if I can do that here.”

“But you think you can do that in Seafare?” Otter asked. “No offense, Kid, but there’s not a lot of happy memories there.”

He shrugged awkwardly, looking down at his hands on the table. “Maybe. But there are some, right? I mean, Anna and Creed and JJ are there. Mrs. P. She’s a good memory.”

“The best memory,” I said quietly.

He looked up at me, smiling just a little. “Yeah, Bear. The best.” He glanced at Otter. “And it wasn’t all bad. We got you there. And even with everything that happened after, we still have that.”

“Package deal,” Otter said, though I could see how much that had moved him. “Couldn’t get one without the other.”