“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” Owen said.
  “It made you think I needed a gun?” she asked. Her face went blank.
  She looked down at her feet for a moment. Then, she glanced up and looked him in the 
eye. “What’s been going on between you two?”
  “Nothing,” Owen whispered.
  “Owen, what’s going on?” she said.
  He looked at her and said, “Jenna, I want you to be safe. That’s all.
  Look, I know you don’t care for me, and that’s fine. I can’t make you like me.
  And I know I can’t make you…care for me…in a way I happen to care for you.
  No one is magician enough for that. I’ve thought about you since we were both little 
kids. I’ve always considered you someone special.”
  “What?” she asked in a voice that was barely more than mouse squeak.
  “I know that you’ll go on to some really great college and you’ll meet lots of guys 
like Jimmy and you’ll come back to the island during the summer and be friendly with me 
but you’ll see me as the island townie who paints houses for a living, or perhaps works 
on boats. And you’ll have a different life.”
  “What is this all getting to —” Jenna gasped, and then her eyes lit up.
  “You lost the island accent. You talk like one of us now.”
  She said it as if it was one of the most dreadful things imaginable. As if the “one of 
us” was the worst thing that could happen.
  “That isn’t true,” Owen said. Then, he glanced away from her, at the house and the 
beginnings of the roses his father so lovingly tended. “Look, I know I’m nothing to you. 
Just consider the gun some kind of protection. He's dangerous.”
  He walked away from her, his body barely dry from the swimming pool.
  She called after him, but he didn’t turn. He walked from the pool to the back lawn, and 
then disappeared down the path.
  4
  Another morning, he helped Mr. M with his golf clubs and luggage, driving the truck up 
from the ferry. Mr. M had almost missed the summer on the island. “Business takes a man 
over,” he told Owen on the way up the hill to the house. He was the biggest man Owen had 
ever seen — like a bear, but slick, too, and shiny. He had on dark glasses and a rumpled 
blue oxford cloth shirt; his skin was like pink snow. When Owen got to the door with the 
last of the bags, Mrs. M (he had to start thinking of her as Cathy if he was going 
to ever grow up) kissed her husband lightly on the nose.
  “How’s the summer?”
  “Quiet,” Mrs. M said.
  “Where’s that boy?”
  “Which?”
  “McTeague,” Mr. M said.
  “I think it’s over. She’s gone to Dr. Vaughan three times in two weeks.
  That’s a record for her,” Mrs. M said, and then turned to Owen. “Sweetie, can you go 
grab the mail?”
  Owen nodded, feeling far too obedient, feeling his heart beating too fast, feeling too 
much within his frame, as if his muscles were about to twist and untangle and he was 
afraid for a moment that he had not heard what he thought he’d heard.
  5
  Owen sat by the koi pond, absorbing the last of an afternoon sun on one of his days off 
— the weather had gone back and forth, between brief bouts of showers and then sudden 
sunbursts. He was about to reach for Dagon beneath the placid green water, when he 
noticed a shadow reflection move across the water.
  He didn’t turn, but knew that Jimmy had come up behind him.
  “Aren’t you ever going to talk to me again?”
  Owen shrugged.
  “I thought…I thought we could…we could at least be friends,” Jimmy said. “I think about 
you. All the time.”
  “Don’t come here again,” Owen measured his words carefully. The shadow withdrew, and 
Owen had the sun again.
  6
  Owen lay back in the grass and closed his eyes to the sun. As the violet darkness of 
his inner mind grew, he began to see the shadow sea of Dagon's realm. From the dusky 
waves, a form emerged, a magnificent sea god, its eyes round and without mind, like those 
of a shark, its body slick as oil with thousands of fins sprouting along its back; and as 
it grew, Owen knew what the god asked of him.
  7
  “I said peel the potatoes,” his mother said, but he could see the look in her eyes. His 
mother was afraid of him. A little. Just a little fear. That was good.
  “Don’t use that tone of voice with me,” Owen said almost politely, as he lifted the 
first potato and brought it to the small sharp knife.
  “Something’s missing in the house,” she said, but his mother had begun saying strange 
things for the past few weeks — sentences that didn’t go together, phrases that meant 
something only in her mind.
  “You probably misplaced whatever it is,” he told her almost nonchalantly. “You’ve 
always been like that, haven’t you?”
  8
  And then, the storm came.
  When storms come to Outerbridge, they usually have lost most of their power, they 
usually have been downgraded from hurricanes by the time they hit Bermuda to Tropical 
Storms when they reach Long Island, and by the time they make it past Block Island and 
start heading to the Avalons, it’s usually high winds and warm rains but not much damage. 
The islanders who are over sixty remember the storm of ’53 that “took the hats off 
houses,” as they said, and generally made a mess of the summer homes.
  The storm that arrived the last week of August was not a terror, nor did it threaten to 
take the hats off houses. It was a warm palace of rain and wind and it changed the 
geometry of the island with its shifts and movements.
  The sky became a hardened gray, and the rain was constant, and the koi pond overflowed. 
Owen ran outside with his father, newspapers curled over their heads, to try and save the 
fish as they flip-flopped along the mud and grass, their patchwork colors seeming to melt 
beneath the downpour.
  9
  Owen was on his way to work, using his father’s truck to get to the Salty Dog, when he 
saw the figure standing in the pouring rain of afternoon down by the docks. Owen pulled 
the truck to the edge of the road and parked. He got out in the rain, opening his dark 
umbrella. The smell of fish was overpowering — it was a stink he was used to, but with 
the storm it was worse.
  Jimmy looked otherworldly: he wore a shiny parka, and his face was pale beneath it. He 
nearly galloped over to Owen, and reached out to touch him on the shoulder, but Owen 
pulled back. Owen slammed the truck door shut.
  “I’m going to work,” Owen said.
  “Mooncalf?”
  “Leave me alone.”