“Oh? Some kids from my church went there for a baseball game right at the beginning of the year and said there was a whole amusement park and restaurants and stuff. Anyway, me and my roommate keep trying to go, but our schedules are kind of opposite.”

“You’re friends with your roommate?”

Trevor nodded. “He’s different from me but he’s really cool.”

“You know my roommate, too, right? Whitney?”

“Yeah.”

Claudia was pretty sure they were hooking up, but if he wasn’t going to bring it up, she didn’t need to. Not really her business. She got the sense Whitney disliked her; maybe Trevor was being polite, not passing along any gossip she’d shared in their sweaty dorm-bed sessions.

The driver let them off at Fulton Street. Claudia looked up at the board in the ticket office on Pier 6 and saw that a ninety-minute tour circling the Statue of Liberty left in fifteen minutes. She bought two tickets.

“I used to come here a lot when I was a kid,” she told Trevor as they walked along the boardwalk. The scent of salt water and rotting seaweed, the squawking gulls, the wind. Did she feel a little bit better? Yes. She did. She breathed in through her nose and let her mind go backward. “Our nanny’s boyfriend sold souvenirs and she used to bring us to visit him. She never wanted to actually go out on a boat, but we’d beg her and sometimes she said okay.”

She and Trevor presented their tickets to the bored Circle Line employees standing at the entrance to a rope maze that led to the boat.

“You want a picture?” said one. He held a comically large camera. “It comes with.”

Almost in unison Trevor and Claudia said, “No, thank you.”

They walked up the clanging gangway and onto the boat. A fat tour guide was splayed in a folding chair, holding a microphone at the front of a mostly empty row of seats, talking about the currents.

A horn sounded when they got to the upper deck and the water began to churn beneath them. Claudia put her chin on the railing, its chipped green paint shiny from the grease of a million hands, and watched as the photographer on the pier lit a cigarette. He got smaller and smaller. The temperature dropped and the breeze picked up, tossing her hair across her face. She let it. Trevor said something, but she didn’t catch it.

“What?” she asked.

He smiled. “I’m not sure I’d call it quiet out here.”

It was true. The roar of the motor and the rush of the wind created a high-decibel ambient noise.

“You’re right.”

“I see what you mean, though,” he shouted. “It’s a different kind of loud.”

The boat slowed as they passed the Statue of Liberty. On the island, tourists milled around the pedestal like ants. Trevor snapped a few photos.