But Annabelle couldn’t have a normal day. Not when everyone knew she’d thought Connor liked her but he didn’t. Not when everyone would pity her even more than they did at school when a teacher made her answer a question in front of the whole class and she got it wrong, again.

She needed to get away from Mia.

She needed to get away from the feeling that she was doing every single thing wrong and everybody knew it.

But how could she get away from that feeling when she couldn’t get away from herself?

“I—I have to go,” she said, bolting down the sidewalk, right past the physical therapist’s office where she was supposed to go inside.

She kept on going past Beach Buzz, and when she peeked in, she saw Elisa at the counter. Did Elisa already know what had happened, too? How Annabelle had lied and ditched her and Kayla for the party, where Connor had only proven them right?

At the next corner, a taxi pulled up to the curb and a family of summer people tumbled out.

Annabelle had her wallet in her bag with $60 from Mom to pay Janine, plus $10 from Mitch to get a snack after physical therapy and $14 left over from the last time she babysat the Bennett girls. Eighty-four dollars had to be plenty.

“Taxi!” she called. “Wait, please!”

She couldn’t believe the cabdriver actually stopped.

She slid into the back seat of the cab, and the driver said, “Where to, miss?”

He probably figured she was a summer person. Only summer people took taxis. She wished she were a summer person. Or anybody other than herself.

“Miss?” the driver said, turning his head around. “Where are you heading?”

He was wearing a Red Sox cap, and she decided to take that as a sign.

She couldn’t escape herself, but she could escape this tiny island where she couldn’t even walk down one block on Main Street without running into people she didn’t want to see. At least for the day, anyway, and that was something.

“The ferry, please,” she said.

And off they went, bumping over cobblestones as the cab headed down the hill toward the harbor.

Chapter 28

The first time Annabelle had taken the ferry back to the mainland, she, Mom, and Mitch had gone straight up to the open-air top deck. There, they’d watched the island get smaller and smaller until it disappeared, and then they’d looked out at the steel-blue open ocean as the ferry glided along.

These days, whether she was with Mom and Mitch or Mia’s family, they usually found an open table on the enclosed second deck, since the view was nothing new. But today she followed the summer people to the top, where the salty wind whipped the front pieces of her hair loose from her ponytail and made the corners of her eyes water.

When the ferry looped out from the harbor toward the open ocean, a mom led her two sunburned kids up to the railing.