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Trina and Damon were an obvious pair. The two cocaine addicts who giggled a lot and were pretty nice to Renny grabbed hands. George, the outcast, looked toward Renny who looked away, realizing there was an odd number; George was paired with Lana, the very quiet, beautiful one who moved in slow motion like she was underwater and never told anyone why she was there.

“Did your math wrong, Jilly,” Renny said, kicking out his boots and running his palm over the smooth splinters of hair poking out of his skull.

“No, you’ll be my partner, Renny,” Jill said. He blanched.

“I don’t want to do it,” he said.

“It’s tonight’s activity,” Jill said. Her eyes were tired from crying about Matthew. “Do you want to go first, or shall I?”

“You go. Get blindfolded,” Renny said. She selected a blue bandanna from the stack. “Do you trust me, Jilly?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, tying the cloth at the back of her head and letting the triangles fall over most of her face. She stood directly in the middle of the room, arms straight down her sides. “Please don’t call me Jilly, Renny. Lead me around. I trust you.”

Her mother had taken her to lunch that day. Jill hadn’t wanted to mention the breakup with Matthew.

“I forget, honey, is he cute?” her mother asked, bright eyes boring into her daughter. Jill had never brought Matthew home to be scrutinized.

“He’s not blond,” Jill said, “if that’s what you mean.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” her mother said, “I’m sure he’s a very nice boy. His parents come from where, again?”

“I don’t know.” Jill wished she could lay her cheek down on her plate and just rest there with the cold porcelain. “Whatever. It’s not serious.” Her voice was fading.

“But do you want it to be?” Mrs. Cohen asked, a piece of French bread stilled in her hand.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it, whether or not I want it to be. It’s not.”

“Well, it could always become serious, right?” She scooped up some white butter with her knife and spread it on the bread. “Does he talk about commitment?”

“We broke up yesterday, Mother,” Jill said finally. “It’s not an issue. We’re broken up. Stop asking questions.”

Jill’s mother took a bite out of the bread and chewed for a moment. “Well, I’m sorry to hear that,” she said, and smiled.

After he got the photo in the P.O. box, Renny painted the inside of his closet door with white paint. He painted slowly up, then down, until the numbers had vanished, and the paint would never flake away. He went into the bathroom and tried to throw up, but he couldn’t. Grabbing the leftover paint, he walked down to the train station. There was an empty cave where his older brother used to fuck girls, or smoke pot, or whatever he did before he left for the army. Renny painted seventeen swastikas, one for each year of his life, all over the cave and then curled up underneath them and went to sleep. The swastikas looked like spider boomerangs that he could fling out into the world. They would clear a path, and then come back, to guide him to safety.

• • •

Renny led Jill through the kitchen.

“Counter’s on your left, fridge on your right,” he said.

“Thanks.” She walked up the stairs and down the stairs and through the back door into the yard.

“So do you like it here, Renny?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” he said. “Step up. Just walk straight here.” They reached the cliffs overlooking the beach, across the street from Ocean House. He could see the distant figures of the other residents, their tentative arms. He heard Trina laugh.

“Are we going too far?” Jill asked.

“We’ll switch soon.”

He stopped her at the edge of a cliff. The ground beneath them crumbled down for thirty feet, and then led into the sand, and then the water.

“We’re at the edge of a cliff, Jill,” Renny said, standing behind her, his hands cupping her shoulders.

“I’m trying to trust you here, Renny,” she said. The wind blew her T-shirt to her skin. She watched the strange colors underneath her blindfold, and pictured Matthew’s back growing smaller and smaller and how the world seemed