He’d been acting distant all morning: avoiding eye contact, mumbling one-word answers to her questions. Zadie could only assume it had something to do with that moment between them in the station wagon. Joel must have picked up on her lack of interest in pursuing the relationship further. If that was the case, then why tag along? Why not ask her to drop him at the nearest bus station?

Zadie hoped the ocean would lift their spirits, and as she caught a glimpse of her sleeping sister in the rearview mirror, she hoped that everything they had been through, everything Finn had been through, would be worth it.

Zadie had called ahead and booked an oceanside motel room for them to stay the night in, but as she was about to pull into the parking lot of the single-story building with the neon narwhal on the side, her gaze drifted down to the beach at the end of the road. At least two cars were parked on the sand, with tents erected next to them. One belonged to a man and his dog playing a game of Frisbee on the misty edge of the waves.

For some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, she didn’t turn into the motel parking lot. She continued straight, toward the ocean. I’ll get sand in my sleeping bag again, Zadie thought, remembering the way it crunched between her teeth when she woke in the morning. But it didn’t matter. Something about it just felt right.

The station wagon rolled onto the beach and Joel glanced behind them, confused. “I thought we were going to a motel?”

“You can take the room if you want. I’m camping.”

The black sand beach was littered with driftwood, some logs as big as whole trees. Zadie set up their tent next to one such trunk that was angled toward the sinking sun while Joel dug a hole for a fire. Finn sat on a picnic blanket, staring out at the monolithic sea stacks that rose from the waves. Many were boulder-like and crested with conifers, while one was shaped like an arch. Finn wondered if when the tide was low enough, you would be able to walk through it like a doorway into a fantasy world. The longer she stared, the more she felt drawn to them, and the more drawn she felt, the more her mind slipped. Soon she could look at nothing but the flock of gulls orbiting around the pinnacle of the nearest sea stack. Zadie was the first to notice the far-off look in her eyes and followed her gaze up to the looming rocks. “Creepy-looking, aren’t they?”

Finn knew someone was speaking to her, but she didn’t recognize the voice. She didn’t even recognize her own voice when it left her mouth. “Yeah, creepy.” Her mind was still circling the rocks.