“When a person you love dies, it doesn’t feel real. It’s like it’s happening to someone else. It’s someone else’s life. I’ve never been good with the abstract. What does it mean when someone is really and truly gone?”

Belly Conklin struggles with the death of Susannah Fisher, her mother’s childhood best friend and a secondary mother figure in Belly’s life. At the beginning of the text, Susannah has been dead for two months, and this quote illustrates that grief has no time limit or linear structure. Belly tries to distance herself from this reality by observing her grief as an outsider, as if it were happening to someone else.

“If I forgot Conrad, if I evicted him from my heart, pretended like he was never there, it would be like doing those things to Susannah. And that, I couldn’t do.”

Belly rationalizes her inability to let go of her lifelong crush on Conrad Fisher because of how her relationship with him is wrapped up in her relationship with Susannah, Conrad’s mother. Despite their traumatic breakup and Conrad’s unintentional manipulation of her emotions, Belly cannot let go of him because she associates him with Susannah, and she is afraid to lose Susannah’s memory.

“Maybe letting myself forget how good it used to be will make things easier. But when I slept that night, I dreamed of Susannah and the summer house, and even in my sleep I knew exactly how good it used to be. How right it was. And no matter what you do or how hard you try, you can’t stop yourself from dreaming.”

After Taylor suggests that Belly move on from the events of the past few months, Belly tries to envision doing this and wonders if it might actually be better for her in the long run. Belly’s subconscious, however, refuses to let her forget about the Fishers and their summers at Cousins Beach, indicating that they are too intricately woven into the fabric of Belly’s life for her to move on from them.