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the arm, far enough away from Tobias so that, even if he reached out, nothing of him would graze any part of her.
    “You’re mad at me.”
    “No. It’s okay.”
    “I’ll pay for it. I’ll tell Louise I bumped it, knocked it over. Whatever. She hates me anyway.”
    She kicked at the broken arm pieces. “It’s fine. Really. I think there’s another arm in the storeroom I can replace it with.”
    “I’ll help.”
    “No. Please . . . go, Tobias.”
    “Molly? What’s wrong?”
    “Nothing.” She backed toward the door, until the dead bolt pressed into her spine, cool through her shirt, hard, menacing. “I just need to get this fixed before Mom gets back. She’ll be here soon.”
    “You look weird. White. Scared.” He pinched his little beard. His soul patch. “Does she hurt you?”
    “What? No. What are you talking about?”
    “You’re practically a prisoner here, and—”
    “I am not.”
    “I never see you go out. You always have some reason why—”
    “Stop it, will you? There’s nothing wrong.”
    “I don’t believe you.”
    “You don’t know anything.”
    He took a step toward her. “Then tell me, Molly.”
    She spun the bolt and, staying behind the door, pulled it open so she was trapped against the corner of the wall, the glass between her and Tobias. “Go,” she said again. It hurt to say it, the word barbed wire in her mouth, because she wanted him to stay, too. She wanted someone to strip off her skin and look beneath, to the tissue and vessel and bone, and see everything that she kept hidden away—to prove she wasn’t wax but flesh. She wanted normal.
    Tobias looked at her through the glass, knocked gently on it with the second knuckle of his middle finger. His breath condensed, a film between them, and then, with his eyebrows crunched into the bridge of his nose, he shook his head and walked across the street.
    She’d lost her only real, living friend.
    When they’d first moved to Dorsett Island, there had beenno lack of curious neighbors; no one can hide in a town of two hundred year-round residents. People wanted to know what tempted the Fisks to move from away to Maine, why Molly schooled at home, and what on earth convinced Louise to work for eccentric Mick Borden. Molly didn’t know exactly what stories her mother fed them, though from snatches here and there she gathered they included fleeing some sort of abusive relationship and a desire to make a new start. People nodded and welcomed them, bringing homemade chowders and jams and neighborly wisdom in their loose-jawed accents. And for a precious short while, Molly thought the island could be home.
    There were a handful of girls her age—newly turned twelve—and they came around inviting her to do twelve-year-old things. Molly tried to join them, but soon the waves outside became too loud in her ears, the wind too rough against her cheeks, and the wildness of it all forced her back through the doors of the museum, safe inside.
    She only left with her mother.
    And then not at all.
    And the girls scattered to do their twelve-year-old things without her.
    Molly didn’t meet Tobias until later. She knew of him, of course—one of the reasons the island girls had been so eager to come around and befriend her had to do with the fact she lived across the street from his family’s restaurant, he being an object of several of their almost-teenage crushes. Tobias had nothing to do with them, too busy working or hanging out with his own friends to take much notice of some girls a couple of years younger, dressed with too much eye shadow and too small bathing suits, strutting for his attention.
    Molly’s Bible had started things with Tobias. She wasn’t quite certain what those things were, exactly—on his side of it, at least. It had been toward the end of last summer, a frantic weekend of tourists trying to cram in a few more hours of carefree leisure, a few more days of sun-induced forgetfulness. The museum was busy enough