After that, most nights we all slept together, in one bed or another. It didn’t matter whose. Our cabins were their own little country, the field an ocean separating us from the others. Sometimes, when it was windy and the goats had neglected it, the long grasses even rippled like waves.

Sometimes Billy and Liz slipped out in the cold mornings, the two of them together, for the shower. They spent a long time away, and I pretended not to mind, tried not to think of their naked bodies, the heat they generated without me. My jealousy was a small thing to suffer, though, compared with all they gave me. They made it so easy to pretend nothing had ever appeared on my doorstep, that memories had never swallowed me whole, that I had never feared Blake’s ghost, lurking among the others.

But every few nights I woke while the two of them were fast asleep. I’d wrap myself in Liz’s robe or Billy’s jacket, tiptoe out of the cabin and into the night. I’d sit outside the door, listening to the wind and ocean, the moon shining above me. I was waiting for something—offering myself up to whatever was out there—but it didn’t come. And after a time, I’d grow too cold, too tired, and I’d give up and go back in. Into the warm room, into the warm bed, pressed against the bodies of my friends.

Weekdays we spent as we always did, teaching in the schoolhouse, helping out with dinner. Saturdays we hiked together, up through the headlands, adorned with wildflowers and manzanita. Billy taught me the names of all the plants and Liz found ways to surprise us. Sketchbooks and colored pencils one day. A picnic the next.

What are they doing with me? I caught myself wondering. I didn’t know how I could possibly be special enough for them. So I posed on the rocks and let them draw me by the ocean. Once, I spent all the money I’d saved and made us reservations at a fancy restaurant, where the hostess took our jackets at the door and our waiter folded the napkin of whoever went to use the restroom. When it was time for dessert, two men torched the sugar tops of our crème brûlées at the table. We cracked them open with our spoons.

You’re incredible, they said to me. I tried to believe them.

And sometimes we watched the ghosts, and Billy asked me to look closely, but it hurt my eyes if I did it for longer than a few moments at a time. And sometimes I caught Billy and Liz watching me, expressions on their faces that I couldn’t understand. I told myself it was nothing. Tried to believe that, too.