“I’m serious!” she said. “Not a lot for kids to do on an island of farms, and it’s not always easy to take the ferry into the city because everyone’s parents have damn Find My Friends and if you turn your phone off…”

“Francine wants to get me a phone.”

“You should let her! I could text you cat GIFs all day.”

“Terry Johnson would never forgive me.”

“Fine, dog GIFs, then.” She pulled off to a wide shoulder and parked. A light bobbed toward us.

“Hey,” Kira called to the light.

“Hey,” Sean answered, and aimed a hiking headlamp like a flashlight. “You’re here! Hi, Muiriel!”

I heard his smile in the dark. The black pants suddenly felt too small. Was this sweater trying too hard? And the updo-hair nonsense—I was not Audrey Hepburn. I was me, dressed like an administrative assistant on employee-evaluation day.

“Thanks for getting us in,” I said.

“No problem, it’s a free-for-all.”

“Oh, Sean,” Kira sighed. “How you can be so completely unaware of your place in the social strata of this school is baffling.” She turned to me, aimed her thumb at Sean, and said, “INFP. Light on the P.”

“Patience?”

“Perception.”

He had a knit hat over his dark hair.

Oh my God, why did I let Kira put this makeup on me?

Above the thick stand of evergreen trees between us and the bay, sparks spun and flew. Wood and pot and vape smoke mixed in the sea air, and I followed Kira and Sean along a path into the trees. We walked together, following Sean’s headlamp through the dark until the path opened to the wide, fire-lit beach. Dark forms moved, silhouetted against flames reaching into the sky. I closed my eyes and breathed in the woodsmoke, now mixed with sand and seaweed.

“We had bonfires all the time in Huntington Beach,” Kira said. “Surf all day, light a fire, drink beer, smoke a bowl, fall asleep, miss school, get suspended. Good times.”

Sean put one arm around her.

Her face in the firelight was wistful. “I miss it so much.”

I stepped near her. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now. And sober you is delightful. For what that’s worth.”

She bumped her shoulder against my arm.

“Sean!” someone called from the fire, and jogged to us. Tall, whitish-looking guy in a hoodie with a camera—an actual camera with a long lens—on a strap around his neck, trying to see our faces in the dark, and then he brightened with recognition. “Kira!”

“Elliot.”

“I’ve wondered where you are. You not taking art this year?”

“No,” she said. “I am…not.”

“Why?” He turned to me and put his hand up in greeting. “Hey. I’m Elliot.”