Book by book, a month goes by, and on the first day of August, I turn sixteen. I wake up to another empty day. Nobody will remember it’s my birthday. Nobody’s even here to remember. Allegra isn’t here, having found a bunch of very successful and attractive friends in town. Aaron is away at a soccer camp. My grandmother is out. The phone won’t ring for me, and nothing will come in the mail. I go down to the beach and sit in the Signal. I can’t face opening a book today. No matter what the book was, every page would say the same thing: This is your fault. You have pushed everyone so far away that you don’t even know where to find them again. You are so alone on your sixteenth birthday that nobody says anything at all, far less happy birthday. I look out at the horizon and think that if I just went for it, just hopped in the Signal and got lost at sea, how long would it take for anyone to even notice I was gone? I imagine my own funeral and how sad and sorry everyone would be that they never realized I was really a nice person the whole time, and soon real tears are leaking down my face. But I don’t have the courage to get lost at sea. Although I wouldn’t mind being dead, I have no desire to be cold or wet or hungry, so there will be no funeral and no sorrow at my passing so young from this earth. So I just sit there in the boat on the beach with no book and feel more deserving of my own pity than anyone has ever felt.