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dollar pancakes for everyone. I’m good at that. I had an image of me setting the table.
    But the vision was quickly replaced by one of Nina with the colorful place mats that she brought home from Mexico last spring. I could see her hands laying them on the table. I could see the wavy silver cuff bracelet around her wrist. I could see her eyes squinting in a laugh as Jules and I tied the matching napkins on our heads like bandannas. It made me miss her so much I felt like I’d been kicked. I held my breath until the sadness subsided.
    I bought all my summer reading books except one (they didn’t have the collection of Emily Dickinson poems for Mrs. Hart’s class), and stopped to get a Del’s from the cart on the corner. I handed over the dollar bills, soft and crinkled from a whole day in my back pocket, and took the cold little waxy dish of frozen lemonade. One lick woke up my mouth, chilled my sinuses. It would be fun to go alone. I was going to be eighteen in eight weeks, an official adult with the right to vote and join the armed services. I’d have my own paycheck and spend my money as I chose. I’d go to that café I’d heard Jules talking about, the Even Keel. I’d develop a croissant and coffee habit. I’d go running on the beach every morning and cool off in the ocean afterward. Maybe, in the evening, I’d carry a sketch pad. My whereabouts would not be known at all times, and this idea filled me with space: a pleasant, light-filled space.
    I’ll be like a college student, I thought as I stopped in front of a café popular with Brown students. The plastic bag of books strained and started to cut off the circulation in my hand. I switched my grip and peered in the window. A girl in a sundress with a purse slung over her chair was scribbling in an artist’s notebook. I should wear dresses more. I need a notebook like that, I thought, when a cute guy walked in, kissed her, and sat down with a couple of drinks. As he touched her knee under the table and they clinked glasses, the idea of going to Nantucket by myself bloomed like a tropical flower.
    I had to go.

Five
    THE HORN SOUNDED , the ferry launched, and my summer swung open like a saloon door. The engine hummed under my metal seat. I placed my duffel bag on the seat to save it—I had a good one, front row—and leaned on the cold, sticky railing. The breeze was soft, persistent, cool but not cold. I zipped up my hoodie and looked at the ocean. Farther out it was a deep blue, but right here, right under me, it was beer-bottle green and brown with flashes of gold. I lifted my face into the late afternoon sun and inhaled the salty Atlantic air.
    The ferry was crowded with families. They seemed to own the place. Nearby, a little boy resisted the hugs of his mother, wrestling out of her arms to press his face against the grating. A girl in a hot-pink Lilly Pulitzer dress tried to climb up the viewfinder, begging her parents for a quarter. Kids in polo shirts darted around the seats, wanting to be chased. The parents were dressed in clothes as vivid as their children’s. Grown men wore kelly-green pants stitched with yellow whales. The women were in an unofficial uniform: white jeans, bright-colored tops, and Jack Rogers sandals—I recognized the brand instantly because Jules had a pair in blue and another in pink. Six young moms talked in a circle; they looked like a fistful of lollipops.
    “Uh-oh, here come the Range Rovers,” said an old man with a weathered face and a light, sensible windbreaker, as a madras-clad couple walked past with monogrammed tote bags that looked freshly sprung from L.L. Bean. Their three blond kids wore T-shirts that said Nantucket .
    “Why do they have to wear T-shirts that tell the world where they’re going?” the old man’s wife said, shaking her head. “I don’t wear a shirt that says New Hampshire when I go there.”
    The old man saw me eavesdropping and leaned toward me. “To us, it’s home; to them, it’s