Regardless, I truly was excited to see Oliver, so I was perhaps too easily convinced.

His letters are as poetic and sweet as his soul, but a very poor substitution for a hand held in comfortable silence.

It’s been only three months since he’s been gone, but it feels longer. Maxine would laugh at me if I said it aloud, but it feels true.

We make it to the city in record time. I drum my fingers against the fabric of my skirt the whole way. Just six days now until I see him. Just a single ocean to cross.

It sets a jittery feeling under my skin whenever I think about it. It’s silly to be nervous to see someone I’ve known nearly all my life, but what will he see in me? Will he think I’m changed? What if he thinks I’m the same and he’s the one who is changed? That would be even worse.

I haven’t mentioned the strangeness of my magic in our letters. It would only worry him, and I’ve never known how to explain the ins and outs of my power to him. He’s spent a fair few weekends at Haxahaven, surrounded by floating food and showers of sparks coming off fingers and flowers that bloom out of nowhere. He takes it all in good humor, but there is so much he doesn’t understand.

The docks are bustling with people, the weather-beaten wood nearly blinding in the midmorning sun. I squint as I hop out the back of the ambulance and immediately have to duck as two porters haul a trunk right over my head. I can smell the sea and the strange scent of rot that never quite leaves the river.

Next to me, a woman weeps in the arms of a man who looks mostly bored by her show of emotion, and a mother tugs two boys wearing matching sailor suits by the hand to the awaiting ship.

I miss Manhattan less and less as time goes on. I’ve made a home in the peace of Forest Hills, but there is something about this bubble of noise, this gentle hum of chaos, that comforts me.

The skyline has already changed in my short absence, but I force my eyes away from the skeletons of buildings reaching up into the sky to instead look at the ship, my home for the next week.

The ship. I’ve never seen something so big in my life.

It’s a behemoth, like someone has taken one of the skyscrapers from the financial district and tipped it on its side.

I can’t imagine ever learning anything that would make sense of its ability to float.

“If this thing sinks, I’m going to haunt you for all eternity,” I hiss to Maxine.