So I swam farther out as the others went in.

I swim like I do everything else—badly, with neither grace nor power—but I felt my feet leave the bottom and labored on out to sea. The horizon sparkled through my speckled glasses and I fixed my eyes on it, pushing through my clumsy and inefficient breaststroke, glad I couldn’t see the others settling happily on the beach talking about . . . what? Old times? Recent triumphs? A new kitchen, even a new house? I doubted Simon could afford a private jet, but a boat was surely within his means. Maybe he already had one. Maybe Marcus was telling them all about the excavations at the palace of King Minos. Or Midas, who turned everything to gold just by touching it. Or maybe he was telling them about Jan and her lies, her dire financial straits and professional failures, Queen Jan whose touch turned everything to shit.

I kept swimming. Someone went buzzing round the headland on a Jet Ski. We’d used a Jet Ski or two when we were here last. I remember seeing Simon on a big blue one, looking like a latter-day Poseidon shooting across the waves, his face dark with focus, his chest and arms braced. He had been—as always—confident, impressive, even when he ran it aground on the pebbly shore on our last day and had to pay for the damage.

“Why you drive so fast, man?” the rental guy had yelled. “Why you not just shut it off? And why you come from over there? I told you, you only go round the rocks that way!”

It should have been funny, but I guess we were tired and stressed about leaving.

The jet skier wasn’t Simon this time, though. Not one of my group, I thought, marveling at the ironic inaccuracy of that my. I had thought Gretchen was the interloper, the hanger-on, but suddenly it seemed more likely that that was how they saw me. Jan the Pathetic, the charity case who had to have her way paid for her.

A horrible thought struck me, and my stroke faltered. What if I was the only one who wasn’t chipping in for the cost of the villa? What if the others had gotten together to help out poor Jan and they were all covering my expenses? What if Gretchen was auditioning to be the group’s new Jan, a better prospect for Marcus: cuter, less of a downer, someone who could be counted on not to lie about what fucking day it was . . .

The Jet Ski whipped past, a good twenty yards in front of me, but the wave from his wake caught me by surprise. It slapped me hard in the face before I could float over it. I came up sputtering and realized immediately that what had been crisp and clear was blurry, a smudge of light and color.

My glasses.

I had lost my glasses. I flailed in the water wildly, but I was out of my depth and couldn’t fix my position as the sea moved round me. I thrust my splayed fingers through the water, hoping to catch the drifting frames, staring down, my face almost under the surface, but I touched nothing, saw nothing.

“No,” I said aloud, hands raking the water desperately. “No!”

It was futile. And stupid. I had lost them. My only pair—of course they were—and I had lost them. I was more than angry. I was humiliated, ashamed even, because this was just so me.

I continued to tread water a little longer where I was, sobbing quietly, my piggy snuffling loud in my ears as the infuriating fucking jet skier zoomed away so that I had the Aegean to myself. At last I began my pathetic splashing back to the shore.

I remembered coming out of the optician’s shop when I was twelve in my first pair of glasses, astonished by the clarity of the bricks in the wall across the street.

People can see like this? I had wondered, amazed to the point of disbelief. It had always seemed to me quite logical that things got harder to see the farther away they were, and I had breezed through the first decade of my life sure in my own mind that there was nothing wrong with my eyes. No one else had figured it out either because I developed ways of hiding the truth, even from myself. I sat at the front of class; I kept clear of sport, professing that I would rather read books; and when other people pointed things out that I couldn’t see, I pretended I could.

More coping strategies. More lies.

But my eyes were terrible. So bad, in fact, that it was only because the beach was largely deserted that I was able to find the others as I splashed my way out of the water. If it had been crowded, my humiliation would have been increased by having to wander from group to group, peering . . .

But I found my chair without a word and braced myself for the questions about what I had done with my specs. But the questions didn’t come. No one noticed. Not even Marcus, and while it was a relief not to have to explain my idiocy aloud, this too felt like a kind of defeat.

I lay in my recliner, eyes shut, angry at myself and at the others for not realizing I was upset. I stayed like that for ten whole minutes, so locked in my own head that it took me a while to note the edge in Simon’s voice.

“I thought the whole point was that we would come to the beach on our way to get them from the airport?”

“But we’re hot and sweaty and covered in salt and lotion,” Melissa wheedled. “It’s over an hour in each direction to the airport, and we’ll just take up space in the car.”

“Kristen and Brad are expecting to see you there,” said Simon. “I’m not the fucking chauffeur, Mel.”

“Come on, Si,” said Melissa. “It’s such a waste of the afternoon . . .”

“For you,” Simon shot back. They were keeping their voices low but everyone could hear. “I have to drive there and back regardless.”

“And I appreciate it,” said Melissa.

“So you say,” Simon snapped. “But you’d rather lie in the sun.”

“Of course I would! Who wouldn’t? Right, Gretchen?”

“Well, sure,” said Gretchen, guardedly.

I kept my eyes shut, determined not to be drawn in.

“Maybe we could call a cab to get them,” Simon mused. “Bring them here, then we all go up to the villa . . .”

“They’re expecting you,” said Melissa.

“They’re expecting us,” Simon returned.

“Come on, sweetie,” said Melissa. “Don’t make us all go.”

“Fine,” said Simon, standing abruptly and snatching up his towel so fast that I felt a faint shower of sand on my legs.

“Simon!” Melissa exclaimed. “Careful!”

“Oh, I’m sorry!” Simon replied with mock politeness. “Did I disrupt your busy day of sitting?”

“Don’t start, Simon,” said Melissa. “I’ve done as much as you to make everything nice.”

“I’m the one ferrying everyone back and forth from the airport! By myself.”

“I’ll go with you.”

It was Marcus. I turned in surprise and opened my eyes, dismayed to find how indistinct everyone looked.

My glasses.

But I didn’t need perfect vision to see that Simon was glaring at Melissa.

“That’s OK, Marcus,” he said. “This isn’t your fight.”

“It’s OK,” Marcus answered, sitting up. “I could use a break from the sun, anyway.”

Simon turned to look at him, and everything about him softened a little, the tension draining from his face and shoulders.

“Yeah?” he said.

“Sure,” said Marcus. “Gives us the chance to do some manly bonding. You know . . . talk football. Boobs.”

“Deal,” said Simon. “I have things to say on both.”

“As do I, brother man, as do I. See you all later.”

I nearly offered to join them, but I couldn’t, and not just because it would feel disloyal to Melissa. Simon walked away without another word.

“Big baby,” said Melissa, pushing her sunglasses back into place and sitting back in her lounger. “I’m ready for another drink.”

I had seen Brad and Kristen less than the others, only once, in fact, since our first visit to Crete, and even then they had been more peripheral to the group, though I suppose that was true of everyone but Melissa. She was the sun at the heart of our little solar system, the gravity that drew us in and held us together. Simon was next, of course, a giant planet like Jupiter or Saturn, though with the looks of Apollo, as I’ve suggested, and the personality of Mars. I said this once to Marcus and he had agreed, though he’d suggested that since we were in Greece, we’d be better off thinking of Simon as Ares rather than Mars. He had said it half to himself, as if he was making a point, but when I asked him why he had corrected me when he knew it had just been a mental slip on my part, he replied, “Oh, you know me. Always the teacher.” He had said it miserably, with a kind of low-grade contempt for himself that bothered me.