The firepink flowers on the shore were purple in the dying light. I looked at them so that I didn't have to look at him.

              "It's almost time," he said, and pointed up at the sky, at where the moon was about to cover the sun in a total eclipse. It was our third date, and I already knew it was going to be our last.

              The clouds were drifting across the sky and they were lit strangely, from underneath, from the side, instead of from the top like usual. I couldn't stop seeing that, watching them instead of looking at the sun through the little plastic glasses he'd given me. He hadn't taken them off for half an hour. I couldn't keep them on.

              It was supposed to be such a switch, and I could see the dimness of the day already.

              There were college students drinking and shouting on the lakeshore, skipping stones into the water and cheering when they managed it. In college I'd been loud too. In college I'd skinny-dipped in a different lake, in a different place, with the only boyfriend I'd ever been serious with.

              That relationship had died in the fire that killed my sister.

              "One minute!" he said excitedly, peaking under his glasses to check his phone, then looking back at the sun. "Put on your glasses, babe, you've got to see this."

              "I thought you said I could take them off when it was a full eclipse."

              "You can. Hey, aren't you pumped? This is a once in a blue moon kinda thing!"

              "Yeah, I am." I'm sure my voice was apathetic, which I'd long since gotten used to but which still made him draw away from me. The apathy, more than my grief, was what had driven my college boyfriend away.

              The crowd gathered started counting down. He yelled with them. Three! Two! One! 

              They were a second off, so they had to repeat One. 

              It went dark, so I looked up at the sun. There was a halo around it, a corona of light, like an invisible angel in the night.

              In the distance, far away, I could still see the sunshine, and it felt as jarring as the repeated One, felt as jarring as the firepink gone purple.

              My sister Daria told me, back in college when we roomed together, that I was fragile like purple gold. This prompted research and obsession the way these things always did and then it faded away like these things always do. I never bought any jewelry made of purple gold to test how it broke because I was flat broke myself, but I saw a video of it once online.

              That was what the firepink was reminding me of, and I couldn't stop thinking of her words.

              "Babe, are you looking?"

              "Do you see the light in the distance?"

              "Yeah."

              "I thought it would be all dark." It was such a strange sort of night.

              "Well, of course not. The path of totality is just a few miles, and we can see further than that."

              He started talking science, and I tuned him out. It was like a fire in the distance, like the fire years ago.

              Sometimes I wish I'd argued with Daria. Told her I wasn't like purple gold at all, that I wouldn't shatter at the first hit. I wish I'd argued not because I would have won, but because at least it would have been another memory to remember, and maybe I'd have been able to find some dark humor in it now. But I never quite fought with her, because she never quite let me. Most days I'm thankful for that, in the rare instances in which I'm capable of feeling gratitude.

              When he saw I wasn't listening to him, he got angry and left, going to join some other group. He never had any trouble making new friends.

              I went to the lakeshore and picked up a stone. I tried skipping it like the college kids. It hit the water a couple times and then sank, barely making a noise. The college kids weren't paying attention to the stones anymore; they were taking videos of the eclipse on their cellphones.

              I guess in college I would have done the same.

              If enough people skipped stones into the lake here, would it change the shoreline? Was that possible? If so, how long would it take?

              It was starting to get brighter. The sun was getting blinding again, and people were starting to put on their glasses again, or leave.

              He left with some people he'd met, telling me he'd see me later. I didn't think we'd meet up again. I guess I should have felt regret, but mostly, these days, all I feel is hollow. Daria was right. I burned in that fire, and I'm burning now.

              It got sunny again slowly, and when the darkness left so did the people, until I sat by the shore, and thought of Daria, and the boy I'd once loved before everything, and that other lake so long ago. I skipped another stone that made it one jump further than the first one, and wondered what it would take to build a bridge across the water.

              On the shore, the firepink was red again, and it waved in the breeze like a flame.