*
This time, when I wake, the room is completely dark. The phone reads 8:07 pm. The dining hall is closed. I put on my coat and gloves and slip the phone in my pocket. I should eat, but I don’t feel like eating. Instead, I walk the side streets to the river, follow the curved spine of Memorial Drive west to the boathouse. Around me, the trees are the shadows of impossible ghosts. I think of Quentin: I will row all the way to the ocean. To the sea and the caverns and the grottoes of the sea.
The door to the boathouse is locked. I test it anyway and cup my hands to peer through the arched windows. My eyes adjust to see the smooth, ordered shells in their racks. I inhale, imagining the familiar dank, waxy smell, and can almost feel the river sliding beneath me.
I give up on the boathouse and walk the downstream side of the Anderson Bridge, running my fingers over the burnished surface of Quentin’s plaque. In the middle, I lean out as far as I can and peer down into the river, which feels farther away than I remember. The current passes under the bridge like a snake, a dark rope of muscle snapping through the water.
I dig my phone out of my pocket. It blinks a single red eye at me, like the keypad at the exit in my grandmother’s wing of the nursing home. Five missed calls, two new voicemails. My mother’s voice muddled between anger and fear. Lila, are you there? Lila? Please pick up the phone. Are you punishing me?
I hold the phone over the water. Its clock marks time in a constellation of pixels instead of the clicking of tiny gears. Silently, an eight is replaced by a nine. I let go and listen for the splash. Then the Charles closes over it like a mouth swallowing a bullet, a bottle of pills.