The sun had set long ago, the flaming color of a kumquat sinking slowly below the horizon. Henry looked out over the expanse of the lake. When he was bright-eyed and innocent, it had seemed so much larger. But now it looked like a tiny gouge in the surface of the earth, a crater filled with reflective black ink.

He smiled bitterly as he recalled their final conversation.

“You’ve always got your head in the clouds, Henry,” she’d said in frustration. “You’re never gonna fly away from this place, Henry. Starships don’t exist. Why can’t you see what you’ve got, right here, right now?”

She’d looked at him for a long moment, but the truth was that he had no answers. He’d always felt like he belonged somewhere else. Sometimes he felt like a platypus – he didn’t fit sqarely into any one category the way most people seemed to.

She’d left her favorite plaid flannel shirt. It still smelled like her. Henry wrapped his only remnant of her tightly around his shoulders and tried not to cry.