The Plank

A short story dedicated to Scott Fitzgerald.

I.

Michael Bibens was disappointed that he was disappointed as he stepped off the ferry’s plank onto the main dock at Block Island. He didn’t know until that moment that in addition to his suitcase he had been carrying a small and unreasonable expectation with him, namely that some sort of big deal should be made about his arrival. It was an absurd expectation, of course. Probably it had been conditioned over the many years he came here in his twenties, which he mostly remembered as a continuous, drunken round of applause. Or maybe the part of him that had argued for his coming here, a part not entirely convinced of itself, wanted some validation—as all things that counsel a larger body, it had merely advocated on behalf of its strongest convictions, but could never claim to know for certain.

Either way he walked, head bowed, with the other cargo from the boat, trailing his suitcase behind him. They were all herded immediately from the dock into the parking lot. Family and friends were required to wait there now, since about a decade ago the dock had become so crowded after an arrival that some of the people near the edges were bucked into the water. The incident had taken place just before Michael began vacationing here, but he’d heard it was “a riot” in the good sense of the word. Some of the people who reached down to rescue their loved ones got pulled in with them, as a joke, and one guy who happened to have a safety tube on him threw it out to mock-desperate women, requiring for his efforts only the small price of a kiss. The property lost or damaged everyone chalked up to “Block Island on the 4^th”—a monster demanding its annual sacrifice. But management had feared a lawsuit, even though no damage was done, and so from then on everything had changed. It was the beginning of a series of changes, actually, Michael thought glumly.

Most people were loaded into the cars of those who had come to claim them, while others made their way toward the taxis which had been waiting, sad and mute, in the rain. Others still began walking south toward Ballard’s—there were a few hotels in that direction, though Michael wasn’t sure how many would be open at this time of year. He saw The Harbor was open, an old bar directly across the street that served stiff cocktails; his old itch returned. He made for it, but at the last moment veered to the right and ended up in Rags, just as it began to rain in earnest.

It was an unfortunate choice. The shop sold fine and effeminate things, like custom cards, embroideries, frames, and even, Michael noticed with a sort of grim-luck resignation, a row of dolls on the far wall. As if this weren’t enough, a proud shop-owner jumped up from her seat and met him in front of her display case as he walked in, full of that fake vitality and overbearing busybody-ness that results from a lifetime of selling oneself.

“Good afternoon,” he whispered, feeling foolish. He immediately attached himself to a rotating stand of cards. I ought to buy one just for blundering in here, he thought, and then caught himself. The cards came to a momentary halt before he began spinning them slowly again, gently like swinging a child. But why should I? he asked himself. Have I committed a crime by coming in here? Of course it’s not a crime, another part of him answered. Just a social faux pas. So the polite thing would have been what? Get soaked outside? The polite thing would have been to find a place where you could have purchased something as recompense for their taking you in. But what expense does my presence incur? Well, there are the lights and heat, for starters. Yes, but they would be on either way—whether I was here or not. Ok, but there is the space. Again, that would be here regardless. If anything, my being here will attract more visitors.

The other side of him was growing desperate. She stood up for you! For goodness sake…

It occurred to him that he had been fighting himself the entire way over. It was time to put an end to it. This weekend was about presenting a unified front to this place; otherwise his findings would be compromised. He shook his head.

“Not finding anything you like?”

He started. In all his back and forth he had momentarily forgotten the shopkeeper. She was hovering behind him now, in a position which promised that she would be peering shamelessly over his shoulder if she were tall enough.

“Excuse me,” he backed up, indignation in his throat.

“Oh, I do apologize!” She clasped both hands to her chest and mimicked a swooning. “How rude of me! It honestly must be true what they say, my customers—that I care too much! It’s something I’m working on, my dear, believe me. Well, I guess none of us is perfect.”

Good god, Michael thought. She’s certainly made a science of it: the insult paid to herself, which she really considers a compliment; the endearment she uses on every stranger that walks through the door, tall or short, skinny or wide. Her eyes mocked him from the protection of fat, powdered cheeks, which had survived thirty years in business; her perfume insulted his nose. He couldn’t endure it for another moment.

“Goodbye,” he said briskly.

It was a half-mile before he discovered a card in his hand. It was soaking wet, the lettering smudged and broken. Nevertheless he could make out “Let your dreams fly high” beneath a little girl flying a kite. He recognized the background as Mohegan Bluff and smiled. This could serve as his round of applause for now.

II.

Michael’s parents had taken him to Block Island all throughout his childhood, the most innocent period of life, and as he returned now, almost ten years removed from his last visit and maybe thirty from his first, he realized that perhaps no other place in this world held such a rich and textured history for him. It was hard to grasp while on the mainland, but whenever he came back, certain triggers would remind him how much he had stored here. Buried on the island like landmines or treasure chests were memories of events, places and people, daydreams and ambitions, triumph and disappointment—all waiting to be discovered and relived by an ever-older and more wistful self. A self that was sick, to be honest, for a little of that childhood wonder, that old gullibility.

Objectively, Block Island was a naturalist’s dream. By the time he was seventeen, Michael could identify all the island’s birds and most of its flowers, even extending his knowledge to migratory habits and exact days of bloom. His observations each year were always cut short—his family never stayed longer than a week—but over a period of six or seven years he was able to piece together a fairly good picture of how the summer progressed, using his time on the mainland to study from books and the Internet. Yet instead of meticulously, incrementally, and assuredly uncovering “the great truth” as he aged, using his curiosity in new domains to conquer new unknowns, he eventually began to question the endeavor itself. Well, that was more a reflection of how he thought and felt now. After his teenage years came new, non-naturalist interests; in his twenties he painted over everything with drink and women. That was excusable in his early twenties, at least, but for some reason the habit stuck with him; he became a drunkard and meticulously, incrementally, and assuredly lost every good thing he had going. That was the long story short.

It had stopped raining. Michael hoped in the remaining hours of the day the sun would come out and mellow the sky a little. It was such a beautiful place, here. Beautiful—there was a word that had evolved alongside him, had gone from meaning everything when words were simple, to meaning nothing because it was used too often, to finally meaning what it was supposed to mean. Beauty was everything in this world, and in the summer months, especially around the 4^th, he remembered how the skies were broader and stayed lit longer, and how all those silly, meaningful things representing American independence—balloons, streamers, and flags—would rustle in the faint and welcome breeze that blew always around the island. When Michael and his friends were bent on drinking, they would use the afternoons to recharge, to lay down on cool white blankets which absorbed their heat and let them rise, a little fresher but still foggy, into the night. But it got darker quicker in April—Michael guessed he had a half-hour left.

He passed another old haunt of his, Captain Nick’s. He wondered if the bartender, Nick, still worked there. He wasn’t the Nick who owned the place and so everyone called him Nick at Nick’s—he was almost as popular as Mike at Ike’s. For some reason Michael doubted that Mike was still there, though. The memories of his drinking gang came back to him now with more earnest—Ricky Waits, Izzy Walters, Mike Rupp, Peter Schrodinger, whom they called “The Rod.” That was his main raging crew, three guys and a girl they had all slept with at one time or another. It was strange: they profaned so many things in those days but never touched upon the subject of how Izzy threw herself at every man she met, half the time crying at the foot of the bed when it was all over. Well, he supposed they talked about everything except themselves, except their own vulnerabilities.

On the opposite side of the street Michael saw that a new grocery store had been put in. He wondered if more people were beginning to live on the island year-round. The world was shrinking, after all. In the summer, the population always expanded five or six times over, but it used to be sparse all other times. Who knew now.

The road sloped upward and came to an intersection. Michael took a right and then a quick left, where the road sloped downward again, at the same grade it had just sloped up…and on the right now, visible because of a break in the tall reeds, there was a little salt-pond, Trim’s Pond, where you could rent paddle boats, stand-up paddle boards, kayaks, and other things like that. Past it was the place where they sold “The Island’s Best Donut,” and beyond that was Dead Eye Dick’s, serving lousy food in a great location. All these places were closed now. They would be open and respectably patroned in a month, and a month after that they would be packed to the gills.

Coming into focus on his left now was an old, picturesque white building atop a smooth-flowing, light green lawn: The Narragansett Inn. It was where he planned to stay for the night.

III.

Michael stepped into the Narragansett and found nobody at the front desk, so he proceeded to the bar where he was greeted by an old friend, Davey. In fact, he had a premonition as he stepped over the threshold that something was about to happen, like how adrenaline rushes through your legs and spine when you teeter on a ledge. A moment later he caught Davey’s face and immediately both of them lit up, shaking hands enthusiastically across the bar. Michael had always associated Davey’s broad forehead, healthy tan, and bartender’s quickness not only with good times, but also with good conversation. Yet he was already filling in with disappointment by the time he withdrew his hand, recalling how often Davey insisted that bartending was only a means to an end. He thought he saw this same remembrance flash through Davey’s eyes before they both looked away. But presently they were looking at each other again.

“Jeez, it’s great to see you, Mike,” he said. “How you been?”

“I’ve been great, Davey. You know. And you?”

“Oh, swell. Absolutely swell. Hey, what can I get for you?”

“Coke for now, please.”

Michael tapped the bar with his thumbs and looked up at the wall of liquor. Through the door off to the left, which led to the dinner patio, he could see the fading light playing on both the tranquil, oily water and the dry, April grass. He liked to patronize a bar from time to time, especially one he used to frequent, and order a soda. It helped him feel…a sense of triumph, he supposed. Though just as often it triggered a sense of despair—as in, how could I have? But this, too, kept him from drinking.

“A little something inside?” Davey shook a glass with ice.

“Just Coke at the moment.”

“Not on the wagon, are you?” Davey shot the brown liquid from a nozzle snake.

“No, just having a soda,” Michael explained.

“Well, you came back at just the right time. Should be the first busy night of the season. Although I haven’t seen any of your old crowd.” Davey handed him his drink.

That’s because half of them are dead, Michael thought grimly, and as for the other half…

“Who knows, maybe they’ll show,” he said. “Thanks.”

In the silence that followed, Davey ran a long cloth over the pristine bar-top, apparently just as reluctant as Michael for the next part of the conversation. Yet it seemed that one of them would bring it up regardless, in spite of himself. Thankfully, the owner popped by at that moment, inquiring whether Michael had come for a room. He had, so he followed the man to the front desk, promising Davey he’d come see him later. His soda was left untouched.

It says something, Michael thought as he watched the owner struggle with his new computer system, that catching up with someone is often done so begrudgingly. Is it that we have graduated from who we were when we knew them, and don’t want to be brought back? Are we pressured to make it seem like we have been more than alright since we have seen them last? Or is it just that we don’t really care about the other person at all?—that we haven’t kept up with them for a reason? Perhaps we never even caught up with them when we knew them.

“Follow me, Mr. Bibens.”

Michael followed the manager to 3C. He had requested the third floor because it was the most romantic. There was a fire escape people used to be able to sit on, which because of an incident maybe ten years ago had since been shut; but Michael liked to think that if he really wanted to sit out there, the manager would see that he was responsible now and let him. In any case, it provided the best views of New Harbor, which at this time of year was relatively quiet and sort of peaceful.

IV.

After about two hours in his room, half-dozing and half-staring at the cracked, paper-thin white walls, Michael noticed it was almost eight o’clock. He felt heavy and needed to get out. Plus, his last chance for an acceptable meal and polite society was quickly dwindling, and he was starved. If going to the bar meant chatting uncomfortably with Davey for a few minutes, so be it—he ought to be able to handle it.

He threw on his best Connecticut look and walked down the stairs. One of the full-year housekeepers was moving silent as a ghost between bathrooms on the second floor. Or at least he thought he heard a small noise and saw a tight bun disappearing around a corner, but he couldn’t be sure. The jaunty girls, the ones who let you see a little more of them—the ones from Eastern Europe—would be here in about a month. He was glad they were not here. He was glad to be surrounded by quiet efficiency, not beauty, this time around, at this time of year.

He sat down at the bar and asked Davey for another Coke.

“Now we can finally catch up,” Davey said, sliding it over to him. He grabbed a bottle of whiskey and tipped it slightly in the direction of Michael’s drink, essentially asking if he wanted a hit.

“Not tonight,” Michael said, feeling a surge of pride. Davey flipped the bottle and put it back on the shelf.

“So…” he said.

“Well,” Michael began. “Where to begin?”

There were only three other customers at the bar—an older couple to his left and then an even older, single man at the end, just before the turn, who was shaking his head in slow-motion as if trying to rid himself of an image. The couple’s soft tones, meanwhile, took on the background quality of a fan: there was nothing secretive about it, they were just polite New Englanders. These three customers, plus Michael, filled half the seats at the bar, which was strange because Michael remembered this room as somehow bigger and more liquid, adaptable to many more people. He doubted if he had ever secured a place at the bar, though, or had ever wanted to.

“Last time I saw you,” Davey mused, “must have been around ten years ago. God, has it been that long?”

“Not quite,” Michael replied, “but close.” He remembered the exact date because he had had his last drink here, at this very bar. The support groups that helped him achieve his sobriety always made sure he knew exactly how long he had been sober—and that he was still an alcoholic no matter how long it had been.

“Place has changed since then,” Davey confided, looking around.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Not as…festive…these days, to be honest.”

“Well, it’s early in the season.”

“Even still. I mean, even when the season begins.”

The man at the end of the bar raised his empty glass, so Davey excused himself for a moment. Michael watched him twirl another concoction together. It was undeniable: the kid had a natural talent for the bar. Perhaps that’s why he stuck with it—we all like doing something we’re good at.

Davey returned and asked how long Michael would be staying.

“Just a few days, I think.”

“In for an early vacation, or what? And what’ve you been up to these days? Goodness, has it really been ten years?”

“Not quite ten, but close,” Michael said. “And nothing much has changed. Living and working on the mainland, same as always.”

“The whole gang stopped coming, though, just like that,” Davey snapped his fingers. “One year, bang. Gone. What happened?”

It was because Mike Rupp had died—from alcoholism, basically—and since none of them except Izzy had gone to the funeral, it seemed inappropriate to meet after that. But Michael skipped over this.

“I think we just all decided we were getting too old for it,” he laughed. “I guess it was time to settle down.”

“Kids or a wife?”

Michael shook his head.

“I hear you, though,” Davey continued quickly. “I’m thirty in about six months, and the day I turn—” he lowered his voice and looked around, “I’m outta here.” He picked up a rag and scrubbed the counter a little. “Right after the season,” he nodded confidentially.

“Good for you,” Michael said. “Know what you’re gonna do?”

“Oh, anything,” Davey said easily. “You know, just beginning my life, basically. Get a real job, start the grind. Maybe find a wife, manufacture some kids.” He smiled that infectious smile of a good bartender, full of a shared pathos with his interlocutor, as if every moment they were hurtling through a hard life together in essentially the same way—a way that could be softened with a drink and good company.

Meanwhile, Michael was floored by how Davey seemed to think you could start your life at thirty with the same flexibility and promise as a twenty-year-old. As if you could just abandon overnight all the habits you had formed, all the skills you had acquired, and all the contacts you had made. Well, the decision is half the battle, to be sure, but that other stuff—it would take some time, and he would be the subject of not a little judgment and suspicion in the world he was hoping to join. But maybe he had thick skin. Michael reminded himself that he had no cause, no right to judge. After all, it was sort of a stupid thing that he should have expectations for this person he only knew in a single, extremely specific context. Obviously his expectations for Davey were some sort of shrapnel from the expectations he had for himself.

“I’m with you,” Michael returned his confidential nod.

Just then a fifth person entered the bar and sat in the stool to Michael’s right, looking a bit sleepy and disheveled. Michael caught her out of the corner of his eye as an attractive female—merely out of habit, as if he were breathing—but when Davey went over to serve her, he looked more closely and nearly jumped: it was Izzy.

“Oh!” She looked straight up at Davey first, gasped, and then in the same moment turned toward Michael, and squealed. “Oh my god!” she said, fluttering her hands and moving into his arms for a hug, which he responded to in a delayed manner as if being hit in the knee; and as he held her close a new memory, one which hadn’t been triggered yet, washed over him, making him terribly sad. Then she clasped both of Davey’s hands: he had already made her a Shirley Temple with whiskey, her favorite drink.

“Shirley with whiskey, for my Izzy,” Davey said. “I’ll never forget how I remember that.”

“First off,” Izzy said, motioning Michael to scooch closer, “it’s Isabella now. Secondly, I was so hoping to find you two here!”

Izzy—Isabella. What were the chances she arrived here the same night as he? They all exchanged a warm, open smile, reminiscing and at a loss for words, before Davey picked up the thread again, like a good bartender should.

“You came back just to see us, or what?”

“Yes, to see you two specifically!” she replied enthusiastically, and wrung her hands. Then she put up her finger and began rummaging in her purse.

“Well, I’m flattered,” Davey was saying. “All the m—people you knew on the island, and you come to see us two specifically.” He gave Michael a “how about that?” look and then followed a wave from the lone older man at the end of the bar, who had finished another drink.

Isabella looked up tragically as he left. Then she leveled her gaze at Michael. He almost laughed to remember how intense she was.

“I must have left it in my room,” she said mournfully.

“I’m sure it can wait,” Michael said. “I’m just so happy to see you. Goodness, it must be ten years!”

“Almost ten,” she agreed. She resettled herself on her stool so as to more fully face him. Across her face now vanished the worry that had attended the ramshackling of her purse, and Michael felt her eyes penetrate the distance of time that should have at least separated them a little.

“How have you been, Michael?” she asked. It then occurred to him that Izzy might get drunk off her single drink. Davey made them strong and she had always been a lightweight, even in her prime. And once drunk, if any of the old Izzy remained, she would without question make an advance. He wasn’t sure how this sat with him yet.

“I’ve been great—fine,” he said. “You know, pretty much the same as I was…few minor changes here and there.” He hadn’t bargained for two conversations about himself, so he was trying to give her nothing to latch onto. Unfortunately, he was unsuccessful.

“Like what?” she said, keeping her eyes on him and reaching for her drink with her tongue.

“Well,” Michael lowered his voice and then peered over his shoulder, but Davey was engaged for the moment with the old man at the end of the bar; probably an old sailor with a yarn. “I’ve quit drinking.”

“Have you!” Isabella brightened. “That’s terrific of you, Mikey. Truly wonderful.”

“Yes,” Michael said, wincing as the couple looked over. “Yes, it was the right move for me, especially after…”

Isabella looked at him without judgment. “He went to a better place.”

“Well, right.”

Isabella continued looking at him openly, as if she had a right to do so—as if she had nothing to hide herself. He could not understand this. Instinctively he cowered, then rebelled in a small way and fired back at her—“And well, what about you?”

“Mikey,” she began. “I have so much to tell you—”

But Davey was back now, and true to his form and responsibility, he began the grand tour of their past, recounting it from the somewhat removed, but never superior, perspective of the man behind the bar—the man serving the poison. Even when he was speaking, this consummate bartender was listening.

Izzy seemed to delight in these stories, even though Michael recognized multiple instances where the story was cut off short—from her perspective. Stories that ended with her naked and sobbing at the foot of a bed. He was not enjoying them, meanwhile, and grew more uncomfortable throughout. But he pretended to enjoy himself until just before nine, which is when he rose with the excuse that the kitchen would be closing any minute, so he was going to place his order and just have it in his room.

“Go place it and come back here, Mikey,” Isabella said.

“Goodness, let me place it for you,” Davey said. “And what’s this? Just the one soda, no whiskey? I thought the night was just getting started?”

Isabella caught Michael’s eyes and stretched her arms out wide, yawning.

“You know what? I bet Mikey’s tired from his trip—I know I am. I’ll probably just finish this and head back up myself.”

“Well…tomorrow?” Davey offered.

Everyone agreed that tomorrow night would be the night.

V.

At about nine-thirty someone knocked gently on Michael’s door. He had been staring at the walls again, lost in thought. He opened it and found the old, ugly, and efficient housekeeper holding a tray of his food. He thanked her and took it to his bed.

Five minutes later there was another knock at the door. He went to open it. There was Isabella, standing on one leg with her hands behind her back and a big smile on her face.

“Mind if I sit while you eat?”

“Not at all, come in.”

She slid past him at the door and plopped herself Indian-style on the bed separated from his by a dresser with a lamp. Michael returned to his own bed and sat Indian-style, too, but he could not face Isabella directly because there would have been nowhere to put the tray, so he asked her permission to eat at a ninety-degree angle from her.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve interrupted you.”

“No no,” he said. “It’s such a nice surprise to see you, I’m just starving.”

Izzy surveyed a room layout that hadn’t changed in decades, a layout that must have stored memories for her, too. A mirror above the dresser between the beds; opposite that, a clock high on the wall. A sink in the corner of the room; a window next to that, facing the back lawn or the harbor, depending. Laced curtains, old wooden floors that creaked when you breathed.

For a while they sat in comfortable silence. The only sounds were the clock on the wall and the muffled chewing of food. Izzy sighed pleasantly and looked at Michael. It was then that he realized what was off about her. She was—protected—somehow, by something. No longer as vulnerable as she used to be, which is how men took advantage of her. But how? He had no idea who or what was providing her the support, but he figured he would soon find out. She had the glint of a proselytizer in her eye, instead of that hunger for companionship which usually drove any chance of companionship away.

“I’ve thought about you a lot, Mikey,” she began.

“Of course I’ve thought about you, Iz. You and the whole gang. It’s a shame we never…” he trailed off.

“I’ve thought about them, too,” she admitted. “But not as much as I’ve thought about you.”

In the old days it would have been clear what she was driving at, but this was different.

“Apparently you’ve thought about Davey as well—since you came to see us specifically. What’s that all about, Iz? I mean, you came to see only the two of us, and voilà, here we are?”

“I said that to be polite.” She fluttered her legs like a butterfly, touching them to the bed. “It’s really you I wanted to see.”

Michael had to laugh. “You came out here to see me and caught me on the only trip I’ve made in the last ten years? That’s ludicrous. Come on, tell me why you really came out. Have you been coming back often?”

“I’m serious,” she said, eyes wide. “I haven’t been out since we were all here together.”

“Well, neither have I…”

“I just had a feeling you’d be out here this weekend.”

“A feeling?” he laughed again. “Jesus, Iz. Who do you think this is?”

“It’s no coincidence, Mikey, I swear. I don’t believe in them anymore.”

He ignored this last comment and laid his fork down. “Alright,” he said. “Let’s say you did come out here to see me. Why wouldn’t you call to confirm? Why go through all that effort with no guarantee? Or even better, we could have met somewhere else, somewhere on the mainland. That would have saved you a lot of time.”

“It had to be here.”

“Why?” Michael asked this but he already sort of knew. Hadn’t he made the same somewhat inexplicable choice to come here on his own, in search of something? He picked up his fork and shook his head. He would have been on guard if he didn’t know Izzy so well, but since he knew her too well, he was more annoyed than anything. “So what’s the purpose of this…mystical trip?” he asked.

“I came to see you,” she said, “because I think you have a lot of potential.”

If he wasn’t on the defensive before, he sure was now. He could hear the shutters of the abandoned Shack, where the Eastern European girls would stay in the summer, slam gently in the wind. He reached for his wallet and found it was still in his pocket.

“Potential for what?” he demanded sharply. “What are you trying to sell me?”

“To be happy,” she said simply.

There was a knock at the door. The housekeeper had returned to take his tray. Michael wasn’t done but passed it to Isabella anyway, who passed it to the housekeeper. The housekeeper shut the door with a white smile. Michael narrowed his eyes.

“Iz, I…” He stopped, heavy with how well he knew her. “Look, Iz, I know it’s been a long time and everything, but this doesn’t add up. You seem so…so sure of yourself. I feel like I’m talking to a new person.” He would have added “no offense” here, but she was beaming for the compliment it was. “But what are you even talking about?”

“It’s not what I want from you, it’s what I want for you.” She produced the pamphlet she had been carrying behind her back, presumably the one she was rummaging for in her purse earlier, and handed it to Michael. It read:

Pathways:

Directions To Your Better Self

and had a picture of a man standing on top of a mountain, staring off into the sunset.

Michael was angry but tried not to look it.

“What’s wrong?” she asked quickly.

“Oh, I just…I’ve heard of these guys before.”

“Well of course you have—they’re worldwide.”

“I’m sure they are…”

“What have you heard?”

Michael stared at the sink in the corner of the room. “I don’t even know…”

“It’s not what you think, I promise.”

Michael put the pamphlet on the bed softly, and kept his eyes on the sink.

“Look, I know what you’re thinking, but this is really…Mike?”

Begrudgingly, he looked over at her.

“I had my doubts, too,” she said in a lower voice, reaching over for the pamphlet. “But now that you’ve seen me—”

She smiled at him—God! Like a dog who has retrieved a bone she smiled, hopefully expectant that he would throw it back out again. What was he to do? On his skin he felt anger and annoyance surging; he felt the truth bursting to establish itself in this room. But at the bottom of his chest he felt a weight, a sad, pathetic weight, at the sight of what pain will do to a person, how much it will force them to compromise.

“Iz,” he said softly. “I’m afraid that this has become a crutch for you.”

He did not intend to hurt her, so he threw his eyebrows up and made a small, meaningless thing of his mouth. For a moment the horror of those powdered cheeks flashed before him, superimposing themselves on Izzy’s still young, fully watered ones. But the eyes that peered back at him were pure and unregistering; there was no hint of calculation in them, no hardness associated with, well, hardship. They were simply the eyes of a whole convert, speaking to someone who hadn’t been saved—someone she cared about and wanted to be happy. She had always wanted to save the world, but she had to save herself first. It seemed she had gone and done it.

“It’s Isabella now,” she said softly.

He had been on the island for a few hours, passed many of his old places, seen Davey, etc., and yet here was what he came for, sitting on the bed opposite him—Izzy, who was entirely, ignorantly happy. It had nothing to do with the island and almost nothing to do with his past, yet if this didn’t prompt him to get on with his life, he didn’t know what would. Not through Pathways, of course, but through the same gut-wrenching dedication with which he had quit drinking.

Izzy was symbolic of something that had been broken down and rebuilt—why couldn’t he do the same thing, albeit in his own way? What did it pay to hang on, to relive and remember? Nobody cares about the past; the world is too drunk on the future. So long as a person was happy, life had the chance to be worthwhile. The foolish thing was to believe in something that hurt you, that didn’t go out of its way to cater to you and make you happy—especially if you held on because you thought this thing more “true” than something else. But he was not ready, and perhaps never would be ready, to become as pathetic as the person smiling in front of him:

“There’s no trick, Mikey. No scam. It’s simply the power of people…of their love, support, and kindness. So what if you have to pay a little money for it?” she addressed him sincerely. “Isn’t it worth it? Your life, I mean—isn’t it worth a little money to be happy?”