I thought about getting up from the table and walking out the door and simply not stopping. Leaving all of this. My few run-down possessions, old sketchpads, canvases, paint cans unused for so long the lids were glued shut. A strand of Christmas lights bordering my bed and the photos taped above it. Me and Ellis, when we were happy. When we were us.

Mementos from someone else’s life.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know, dear. I’m sorry, too.”

I looked at her lined face, wrinkles filling with afternoon shadow. The older we get, the more shadows we let in.

There was nothing left in me that shone. If I could still do a self-portrait, all I’d draw would be a silhouette.

Mrs. Mulhavey fetched something and set it before me. Tissue box. One firm pat on my shoulder, then she left me to sit in dignified silence, crying.

Friday night I got dolled up and let Curtis take me to a house on the ocean. We split a joint on the drive down the coast. Spruce towered to either side of the road, black bristles merging with black night, our headlights and a handful of silver dust scattered across the sky the only illumination. He drove past the bridge where Ryan’s Jeep had collided with Elle’s car, where the three of us crashed into each other’s lives and only two walked away and then those two walked away from each other. I felt nothing. Do you know how much blood is soaked into every mile of asphalt, how many graves you drive over each morning on the way to work?

This world is so thick with ghosts it’s a wonder anyone can breathe.

The house stood on a bluff over the water. Mixed crowd, some early twenties and rowdy and drunk, others older and chill, smoking weed or eating shrooms. Curtis walked around with me on his arm and introduced me as his girlfriend. I didn’t correct him. When people looked at us, they didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just a girl and a boy. Pink and blue. Skirt and slacks. Normal. They asked about my major, where I worked. They didn’t blink and say things like, Wait, are you two together? Are you a couple? Are you dot dot dot?

It felt so good, being seen for who I was, instead of what.

A girl kept catching my eye. Pixie-slim, dark brown skin contrasting sharply against an ivory dress. Her curly hair bounced with each step. No matter where we went she appeared after a few moments. A guy hovered at her side, lean and blond, wearing an open-throat Oxford.

“Know them?” Curt said.

“Nope.”

“I think they want to know you.”

He tried to introduce us but I ducked away, pretending I had to pee. And then I just . . . didn’t come back. I wandered through the house, through conversations, stopping to listen to someone discourse on a film or a book, laughing at their jokes, moving on before anyone asked me personal questions. For some reason I didn’t want that elegant couple seeing me with Curt. There was something about them, something honed, hard. Something too much like me.

Weed made me restless, hyperaware of the shift of light and shadow. I sketched scenes in my head: a woman and a man arguing, glimpsed through a window, their voices mute but their breath clouding in the chill, steam serpents circling, lashing. A girl in runny mascara sitting on the dock, her hair a dark tempest whirling around her face. A couple kissing in a doorway, her hands twisting his shirt as if crumpling a drawing. Human beings connecting in anger and longing and lust.

I felt queasy and I hadn’t even drunk anything. If loneliness has a physical manifestation, it’s nausea.

Where are you? Curtis texted.

I thought about meeting him at his car. Getting in and running a hand up his leg. Blowing him, but not letting him come. Going home with him and fucking him in his dank apartment that smelled of marijuana and coffee and then, in the afterglow, telling him how Mulhavey was tossing me on the street and how grateful I’d be if he spotted me some cash for a new place.

Never in my life had I traded sex for money. But was this really a life anymore?

meet me, I started typing, and the black girl in the white dress swept through the room. The blond guy strolled after her, pausing at my side. I’m tall like my mother. I had a couple of inches on him.

He smiled at me, a twinkle of mischief in it, a dare, then trailed in her wake.

I pocketed my phone and followed without hesitation.

This was what I’d been missing for so long:

Mystery.

The two of them waited in a sitting room. Instinctively, I closed the door after I entered. It was empty save for us. Low light, tinged sepia from a nicotine-stained lampshade. Sagging sofas and nicked wooden chairs, salt- and sun-bleached, that typical Maine look, as if everything was a found object washed ashore in a storm. The guy leaned against a wall, arms folded. The girl stood at the center of a hemp rug and gazed at me.

“Come here.”

Her voice was deep and commanding.

I’d been in bad situations plenty of times. These two didn’t set off my threat meter. She was clearly in control, and whatever she wanted, it was up to me to consent.

I went to her.

Sometimes people sing out to be drawn. She had the kind of face I could draw again and again without growing bored. Gazelle-like, large doe eyes, fine bones tapering to a neat mouth. Something haughty and proud in it. Queenly.

“How did you find me?” she said.

“Who are you?”

“Who are you?”

Alice in Wonderland, apparently.

“I’m just here with a friend. I don’t know who you are.”

The girl studied me, skeptical. “You’re not a client?”

“Client of what?”

The guy laughed. “Of who,” he amended. Tenor voice, soft and melodic.

“Who?” I echoed, confused.

The girl finally relaxed. Her smile was wry. “She’s clean.” She touched my face, traced my cheekbone, and I was so startled I didn’t move.

“Name?” the guy said, approaching.

I don’t know why I said it. I hadn’t planned to lie, but some instinct kicked in and said, Be someone else. “Morgan.”

The two of them exchanged a look, hearing the fakeness.

The guy circled me, not menacing, merely . . . appraising. Baby blues scanned my body without lingering or smoldering with want. The way you’d look at a horse, an animal you meant to buy and use.

I knew what my body did to men. This one wasn’t fazed.

“Age?” the girl said.

“Twenty-three. Today.”

She smiled brilliantly. “Happy birthday.”

First person besides Mamá to wish me a happy birthday, and it was a beautiful stranger about to pull me into some Eyes Wide Shut shit. How sad was that?

And how sad was it that I half hoped this might end up as some bizarre sex thing? Truth was, no one had made me come in months. Part of why I felt subhuman was the fact that I was young and horny and alone with my left hand every night. If Blondie here wanted to watch me fuck his smoking-hot girlfriend, I was down. And if she wanted to watch me bang him, fine. I’d even do them both. I wasn’t picky.

I just wanted to be touched. So badly.

“Morgan,” the girl said, “what do you do for a living?”

“Survive.”

“Want to make some money?” the guy said.

They wanted to fuck me. Kinky shit, BDSM or something. I was lonely, but maybe not that lonely. They read the hesitation on my face.

“He’ll leave,” the girl said. “Just you and me. Five minutes of your time. Fully compensated.”

What could a girl do to me in five minutes?

Everything.

“Okay,” I said, surprising myself. There was a glimmer of knowing in her eyes. I didn’t think she’d hurt me, but also I didn’t much care if she did. Sometimes you get so sick of a familiar hurt you’d prefer anything else, even new pain, just for the sake of it being new.

The guy made a mocking bow and left the room.