She had lived her whole life on Martha’s Vineyard, apart from a few months with her mother in Paris, after her brother had died, then boarding school in Connecticut. She had come back to the house only a month earlier, for summer, and—she guessed—to finish high school on the island, because they had run out of money. But she wasn’t sure. A waiter with a tray of orange drinks stalled beside her. She took a glass, sipped. It was alcohol, she realized: bitter, sweet, strange. She hated it and liked it. She took another longer swallow and felt a kind of static buzzing behind her eyes. A man with white hair walked by, his gaze snagged by her presence. It was a look of recognition she had recently come to expect from men, as though she were famous, or they knew her somehow. His eyes lurched down her body and back to her face as he passed. The buzzing made her not embarrassed by this. She looked back at him, unblinking.

An unwashed-looking guy in round glasses appeared then. He held his body like a question mark, chest receding, hips jutting out. “I’m Mac,” he said. His mouth was large, his lips chapped. “The groom.”

“Congratulations,” said Lara.

“What about you?”

“I’m Lara. A neighbor. I’m here with my mom and my uncle.”

“Hello, Lara,” said Mac, taking a drink from a passing tray. “Have you been here often?”

“Yes,” said Lara. “We used to come to the Palacios’ pool parties. Before … before.”

“So you must know Alex.”

“Yes.”

“What was she like when she was younger?”

“Ah … I always thought she was really cool,” said Lara. “I only got to see her when they came in summer, but…” An image of a teenage Alex Palacio, in tight jeans and a floaty top, her fascinating upper lip that never closed, her minuscule hips, popped into Lara’s mind. She had worshipped Alex back then. Everyone had.

“You’re the first person I’ve spoken to this evening who seems real,” said Mac. Lara looked at him, wondering if he was talking about ghosts.

“I’m pretty sure everyone here is real,” she said earnestly. Mac laughed.

“I mean, you don’t seem fake,” he said. “The people I’ve met so far are polite but not genuine. Except for my girl, of course.”

“Oh,” said Lara. Mac was watching her with curiosity. Lara glanced to the ground, embarrassed. Often, she misunderstood what people were saying. She was a young fourteen, a little girl, really, hiding in the body of a woman, which created confusion for herself and everyone else.

“Good to meet you, Lara,” said Mac, and he walked away. Lara watched him as he lit a cigarette and stood at the edge of the great lawn, gazing out at the sea. Then he disappeared over the lip of land, descending, she knew, to the beach.