The firelight flicker illuminates the trees and burns like a beacon in the dark yard. I imagine it must look, from the water, like a miniature lighthouse, the lonely peninsula of Seaport tacked to the eastern edge of Maine like a lonely outpost. Above, the sky lies, cloudy and heavy, over the crescent moon.

I think again about how stories are how Germ and I met. On the first day of kindergarten, Germ laid herself at the foot of our classroom door, screaming for her mom. All the other kids steered clear of her—I guess because of the banshee-like wailing. I knew what it was like to miss someone, even though for me it was someone right nearby. So I sat beside the wild-eyed, wild-haired stranger and awkwardly patted her back and told her a story I made up on the spot about a bat who ate ugly old mosquitoes and burped out stars instead. By the end of the story, Germ had stopped crying and I’d won a friend for life.

Now I snap back to attention as the fire sputters out. I close the lid and go inside to get ready for bed.

I ache over what I’ve done. But Germ is right: my stories are fairy tales I don’t really believe in anymore—that anyone can just save the day. I’m too old, I’ve realized, to hope for things like this.

And despite the ache, I swell a little with pride. Because I think I’ve figured out the three main things about life:

1. If the person you love most in the world does not love you back, you can’t keep hoping they will.
2. If you are not loved (and if nobody cares about polar bears on the news), there is no magic in the world to speak of.
3. If there’s no magic in the world to speak of, there’s no point to writing stories.

I am done imagining things differently than they are. I feel a distinct tingle behind my eyes and ears and in my heart—as if I have really changed—and I wonder if the tingle is a growing-up thing, and I hope it is.

Outside, the crescent moon glimmers for a moment through the clouds, then is swallowed up by them.

I get into bed and drift off to sleep.

I have changed my life forever. I just don’t know it yet.

I wake sometime deep in the night to the sound of someone talking. For a few moments I’m half in and half out of a dream, trying to make sense of what I’m hearing. Then my eyes flutter open and fear sets in.

There is a man whispering outside my door—his voice low and rumbly like sand being shaken in a glass jar.

“The nerve of her. I hate her. Hate her. It’s my place. MY PLACE!”