YOU'RE JUST SO BRAVE

The day I left for Lyric, I shaved my head. A prophylactic, if you will.

A week had passed since the Hospital Incident, and the middle of June bloomed in New York City, perfect weather for cones from Mister Softee and imagining your brother in the psych ward. I packed light for exile, ditching my usual leggings and liquid liner for two pairs of my dad's faded jeans, six Hanes T-shirts, one ancient tube of fragrance-free lip balm, and a heap of cotton underwear. Plane reading was Sam's copy of Diving for Sunken Treasure, which I kept on my lap the whole flight, unopened. Inside, I'd slipped the scrap of paper on which my mom had written the address for Sam's treatment facility in Vermont. My plan was to send him a letter, and after drafting in my head all morning, the best I had was, Dear Sam, Sorry I couldn't keep it in my pants after you tried to kill yourself, fixing that now. STEP ONE: NO HAIR! Step two: Bad clothes! ps How's the maple syrup?

My work, needless to say, required some revision.

The plane ride to Portland lasted forty-five minutes, and the flight attendant asked me how I was feeling four separate times. She put ice in my orange juice and slipped me Milanos instead of the off-brand biscuits she'd given to the rest of steerage. As I disembarked, she pulled me aside and told me, tears clinging to her thickly mascaraed lashes — purple, I noticed — that a niece of hers had gone through chemo last year.

"You're just so brave," she said.

I was so stunned all I could do was nod. She pressed two pairs of plastic wings into my hand and told me she'd keep me in her thoughts. As far as reinventing myself went, this did not bode well.

"Your hair!" my uncle Toby bellowed when I met him at arrivals.

He pulled me into a hug, and I bent my knees so I'd be the right height to press my face into his shoulder. Toby's flannel smelled cozy, like cotton and flour and yeast — from the bakery, I guessed — and underneath, the faintest hint of my mom's morning smell, before she left for the hospital (catch her after work and she smelled antibacterial, like Purell and latex). I pressed my face deeper into Toby's shoulder and clutched the plastic wings until they pinched my palm.

"You're okay, kid," Toby murmured. "I've got you."

Eventually, he pushed me back by my shoulders and made a great show of peering at me. Toby was nearly a decade younger than my mother, but his tan face was crinkled like an ancient gnome's, weathered and sweet. He had enough hair for the both of us, sandy, lank, gathered into a sloppy bun at the nape of his neck. He studied me until I looked down, uneasy with the attention.

"Nice kicks," I said. His plaid Converse high-tops were busted along the seams and splattered with coffee, the perfect match for my equally grubby white ones.

"Bad arch support. Save your plantar fascia while there's still time, kid."

I rolled my eyes. My plantar fascia was the least of my worries.

"I like the new 'do," Toby went on. "I like this whole new look, but the 'do, especially. The last time I saw you, you looked like — what's the word? A celebutante?" I grimaced. "Now, though, you look like a seal pup."

"I look like an ogress with alopecia."

"There's that Violet wit. Have you been practicing your scowl?"

"Thirty minutes in the mirror every day."

"Hm. Well. Practice makes perfect, I suppose. Which is exactly why my meringues always collapse. Listen, kid, at the risk of sounding very old," Toby said, "stand up straight."

I winced. The truth was that since the Hospital Incident, I'd been perfecting not my scowl but my slouch: step three of my master plan, after the hair and the clothes. I wanted to take up less space, or just be less: muted, quiet. Shrinking. Not my usual self. I had a lot of height to contend with, but if I hunched, I could pass for five foot eleven, maybe even five foot ten, instead of my real six feet.

Fine. My real six feet and one half inch.

At 72.5 inches, I represented less than 1 percent of the American female population. Growing up, I'd been every basketball, swimming, and volleyball coach's dream until they realized I had zero interest in athletics and zero talent to boot. I was interested only in theater — nay, the theatre, preferably of the musical variety. I tap danced and soft-shoed and sang, dreamed of Broad way in my future. Not that it mattered now. My theater career had gone the way of the dinosaur long ago.

"C'mon, don't waste that height! You got the good genes!"

I straightened up and loomed over my uncle. As if to emphasize the difference in our statures, he stood on tiptoes to rub the fine layer of fuzz on my skull.

I shook him off. "I'm not a dog, Toby."

"But if you were, you'd be a Great Dane."

Count on my uncle to know just what to say.

* * *

Lyric was four hours north, and we inched along the Maine Turnpike through tourist traffic and construction. I cracked a window and inhaled: it'd been three years since our last family visit to Maine, but that briny sharp sea smell was exactly the same as I remembered. So was the feeling, as we got farther north, that civilization was slowly falling away. The tourist spots became dingy fishing towns; roadside buildings grew more and more dilapidated until they were just husks. Lyric was a small town, shaggy around the edges, lost and forgotten. Not to put too fine a point on it, but my parents had sent me here for a reason.

"Think of it not as a punishment, but as an opportunity," my mom had insisted. "With less distraction, maybe it'll be easier to turn off the romance channel."

I was already two steps ahead of her. After the vending machine debacle, I'd sworn off smooching and everything else that'd led to that moment: my wild hair, my love of tequila, my unrelenting insensitivity. My need to be at the center of all things. In Lyric, I'd be less. Maybe I'd even disappear.

"You're quiet, kid. I almost forgot you were here," Toby said.

The plan was working already.

* * *

My phone lost service just as things started to look familiar. We passed the weather-beaten sign for the Lyric Aquarium, the fishing supply store, the harbor. Past town and then into the pines, down the long dirt driveway to my grandmother's — now Toby's — house. I held my breath until we reached the bottom, a habit from an old game with Sam.

The house came into view just when I thought I'd burst. It'd been my grandparents' home originally, a turreted Victorian framed by the boat-dotted gray sea, weathered and damp and plagued by a serious mold problem. A family of raccoons had once lived in the turret's walls and chattered ceaselessly throughout the night. Against the water, though, the house still looked to me like Botticelli's Venus. I exhaled, dizzy.

"You want me to set you up a tent in the turret?" Toby asked.

"Not if the raccoons are still there."

"I believe Maude and her young have finally found greener pastures," Toby said. "You and Sam were so cute up there. Camping. Roasting marshmallows, nearly setting the house on fire ..."

"I'll stick with a normal bed, thanks."

"You've finally grown up, Violet. I'll warn you: getting old is expensive and boring."

"Boring might be a nice change of pace," I said.

I got out of the car and accidentally slammed my...