He pulled back and slapped me.
Then he left.
I never saw him again. I never even knew his name. My mother woke up a few hours later and saw the broken plate and the uneaten eggs sitting at the top of the trash can. She yelled at me for wasting the last two eggs.
I haven’t eaten eggs since that day.
But I’ve slapped plenty of my mother’s boyfriends since then.
I say all this because when I stepped out of the shower a few minutes ago, all I could smell were eggs. The smell is still lingering.
It’s making me sick to my stomach.
There’s a knock at my door as soon as I finish dressing. Sara peeks her head in and says, “Baptismal dinner in five minutes.”
I have no idea what that means. Are they super religious or something?
“What’s a baptismal dinner?”
“Marcos and Samson have dinner with us every Sunday night. It’s our way of celebrating the end of the influx of renters. We eat together and wash away the weekenders.” She opens the door more and says, “That dress looks good on you. Want me to do your makeup?”
“For dinner?”
“Yeah. You’re about to meet Samson.” She grins, and it makes me realize how much I hate being set up, even though this is my first experience with it. I start to tell her I already met Samson, but I keep that to myself and hoard it along with all the other secrets I’ve kept in my life.
“I don’t really want makeup. I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
Sara looks disappointed, but she leaves. At least she takes hints well.
A few seconds later, I hear voices downstairs that don’t belong to any of the people that live in this house.
I stare at the wrinkled sundress I’ve been wearing all day. It’s wadded up on the floor by the bed. I pick it up and change back into it. I’m not about to go downstairs and try to impress anyone. If anything, I’d like to achieve the opposite.
My father is the first to notice me when I reach the bottom of the stairs and make my way into the kitchen.
“You look refreshed,” he says. “Is the room okay?”
I nod, tight-lipped.
Sara spins around and I can see the surprise in her eyes that I’ve changed back into my old sundress. She hides her shock well, though. Marcos is standing next to her, pouring himself a glass of tea. When he makes eye contact with me, he does a double take. It’s obvious he didn’t expect to see the girl from the ferry at dinner tonight.
Samson must not have told him about seeing me sob on the balcony earlier.
Speaking of Samson, he’s the only one who doesn’t look at me. He’s digging through the refrigerator as Sara lifts a hand and waves it toward me. “Marcos, this is my stepsister, Beyah. Beyah, this is my boyfriend, Marcos.” She throws a thumb over her shoulder. “That’s Samson, third wheel and next door neighbor.”
Samson turns around and eyes me for a moment. He lifts his chin in a nod as he pops open a can of soda. All I can think about as he presses the can to his lips to take a sip is how I just saw his mouth on some other girl’s neck.
“Welcome to Texas, Beyah,” Marcos says, pretending he didn’t meet me on the ferry earlier.
I appreciate that the two of them aren’t making a thing of it.
“Thanks,” I mutter. I walk into the kitchen, not sure what to do. I don’t feel comfortable enough to ask for a drink, or to make my own plate of food. I just stand still and watch everyone else move about comfortably.
As hungry as I am right now, I’m dreading this dinner. For whatever reason, people feel the need to alleviate awkwardness with questions no one really cares to know the answers to. I have a feeling that’s how this entire dinner is going to go. They’re probably all going to be batting questions at me the entire meal, and I really just want to make a plate of food, take it to my room, eat it in silence and then go to sleep.
For two straight months.
“I hope you like breakfast, Beyah,” Alana says, walking a plate of biscuits to the table. “We sometimes like to switch things up and have it for dinner.”
My father sets down a pan of scrambled eggs. There’s bacon and pancakes already on the table. Everyone starts taking their seats, so I do the same. Sara grabs the seat between Marcos and her mother, which means I’m left with the seat next to my father. Samson is the last to sit, and he pauses when he realizes he’s seated next to me. He sits reluctantly. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems he’s trying to subtly shift his attention away from me.
Everyone begins passing food around. I skip the eggs, naturally, but the smell is overpowering all the other foods. My father starts in on the questions as soon as I take my first bite of a pancake.
“What have you been up to since graduation?”
I swallow, then say, “Work, sleep, repeat.”
“What do you do?” Sara asks. She asks that in a rich way. Not, “Where do you work,” but “What do you do,” like it’s some kind of skill.
“I’m a cashier at McDonald’s.”
I can tell she’s taken aback. “Oh,” she says. “Fun.”
“I think it’s great that you chose to work while still in high school,” Alana says.
“It wasn’t a choice. I had to eat.”
Alana clears her throat and I realize my honest response made her uncomfortable. If that bothers her, I wonder how she’s going to take the news that my mother died of an overdose?
My father tries to skip over the moment and says, “I guess you changed your mind about summer courses. You starting in the fall now?”
That question confuses me. “I’m not enrolled in summer courses.”
“Oh. Your mom said you needed summer tuition when I sent her money to cover the fall.”
My mother asked him for tuition?
I earned a full ride to Penn State. I don’t even have to pay tuition.
How much did he give my mother that I never even knew about? There was obviously a cell phone shipped to me at some point that I never received. And now I find out she asked him for tuition to an education she never even cared enough to ask me about.
“Yeah,” I say, trying to come up with an excuse as to why I’m here in Texas and not in the summer classes he paid for. “I signed up too late. The classes were full.”
I suddenly have no appetite at all. I can barely finish the second bite of pancake I took.
My mother never asked me about college at all. Yet she asked my father for tuition money that probably ended up in a slot machine at a casino, or running through the vein in her arm. And he paid it without question. If he would have just asked me, I would have told him I could have gone to community college for free. But I didn’t want to stay in that town. I needed as far away from my mother as I could get.
I guess that wish came true.
I put down my fork. I feel like I’m about to be sick.
Sara sets her fork down, too. She takes a sip of her tea, watching me.
“Do you know what you’re going to major in?” Alana asks.
I shake my head and pick up my fork, just so I can pretend to be interested in eating. I notice Sara picks up her fork as soon as I do. “I’m not sure yet,” I say.
I poke at pieces of pancake, but don’t actually put a piece in my mouth. Sara does the same.
I put down my fork. So does Sara.
More conversation passes around the table, but I ignore most of it when I can. I can’t stop focusing on the fact that Sara is following my every move while trying to be discreet about it.
I’m going to have to be cognizant of this all summer. I think the girl might need to be informed that she should eat when she feels like eating and not base her food intake around how much I eat.
I make sure to eat a few bites, even though I’m nauseous and nervous and every bite is a struggle.
Luckily, it’s a quick meal. Twenty minutes at most. Samson said nothing the entire time he ate. No one acted like this was abnormal. Hopefully he’s always this
quiet. It’ll be easier to pay less attention to him.
“Beyah needs some stuff from Walmart,” Sara says. “Can we go tonight?”
I don’t want to go tonight. I want to sleep.
My father pulls several one-hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and hands them to me.
I changed my mind. I want to go to Walmart.
“You should wait until tomorrow and take her somewhere better in Houston,” Alana suggests.
“Walmart is fine,” I say. “I don’t need much.”
“Get one of those prepaid phones while you’re there,” my father says, handing me even more money.
My eyes are wide. I’ve never held this much money in my life. There’s probably six hundred dollars in my hands right now.
“You driving?” Sara says to Marcos.
“Sure.”
I suddenly don’t want to go again if that means Marcos and Samson are coming.
“I’m not going,” Samson says as he picks up his plate and walks it to the sink. “I’m tired.”
Well. Now that Samson isn’t going, I want to go.
“Don’t be rude,” Sara says. “You’re coming.”
“Yeah, you’re coming,” Marcos adds.
I can see Samson glance at me out of the corner of his eye. At least he seems as disinterested in me as I am in him. Sara starts walking toward the door.
“Let me grab some shoes,” I mutter, and head back upstairs.
Apparently, there isn’t a Walmart on Bolivar Peninsula, which means you have to take the ferry to Galveston Island. It makes no sense to me. You have to take a ferry from the mainland to an island to do any shopping. This place is confusing.
The ferry takes approximately twenty minutes to get from here to there. As soon as Marcos parked the car, everyone got out. Sara noticed I hadn’t opened my door, so she opened it for me. “Come on, let’s go to the top deck,” she said.
It wasn’t really an invite so much as a command.
We’ve been standing up here for less than five minutes and Sara and Marcos have already snuck off, leaving me alone with Samson. It’s getting late, probably around nine thirty, which makes for a mostly empty ferry. We’re both staring out over the water, pretending this isn’t awkward at all. But it is, because I don’t know what to say. I have nothing in common with this guy. He has nothing in common with me. We’ve already had two less-than-stellar interactions since I arrived a few hours ago. That’s two more than I’d like.
“I get the feeling they’re trying to set us up,” Samson says.
I glance over at him, but he’s staring out at the water. “It’s not a feeling. It’s a fact.”
He nods, but says nothing. I don’t know why he brought it up. Maybe to clear the air. Or maybe he’s entertaining the idea.
“Just so you know, I’m not interested,” I say. “And not the kind of not interested where I hope you still pursue me because I like games. I’m legit not interested. Not just in you, but in people in general, really.”
He smirks, but still doesn’t look over at me. It’s like he’s too good for eye contact. “I don’t remember expressing my interest,” he says coolly.
“You didn’t not express interest, so I’m putting it out there. Just so we’re clear.”
His eyes find mine with a slow turn of his head. “Thanks for clearing up something that wasn’t even confusing in the first place.”
My God, he is good-looking. Even when he’s being an asshole.
I can feel my cheeks burning. I quickly glance away, not sure how to come back from this. Every encounter I’ve had with him has been humiliating and I’m not sure if that’s his fault or mine.
I think it might be mine for allowing myself to get embarrassed by him. You can’t really be embarrassed in the presence of someone whose opinion you don’t give two shits about. That has to mean that somewhere inside me, I give a shit what he thinks.
Samson pushes off the railing and stands up straight. I’m tall for a girl. Five-ten. But even at my height, he towers over me. He has to be at least six-three. “Friends it is, then,” he says, shoving his hands in his pockets.
I unintentionally let out a dry laugh. “People like you aren’t friends with people like me.”
He tilts his head a little. “That’s a bit presumptuous.”
“Says the guy who assumed I was homeless.”
“You ate bread off the ground.”
“I was hungry. You’re rich, you wouldn’t understand.”
His eyes narrow a bit, then he looks out at the ocean again. He stares so hard at it, it’s like it’s speaking to him. Giving him silent answers to all his silent questions.
Samson eventually looks away from both me and the water. “I’m going back to the car.”
I watch him disappear down the stairs.
I don’t know why I’m so defensive around him. After all, if he really did think I was homeless, he didn’t ignore that. He offered me money. There must be a soul in there somewhere.
Maybe I’m the soulless one in this situation.
SIX
To say I was relieved when Marcos and Samson split apart from us when we arrived at the store is an understatement. I’ve only been in Texas for a few hours and too much of that time has been spent in Samson’s presence.
“What else do you need besides clothes?” Sara asks me as we walk through the health and beauty section.
“Pretty much everything,” I say. “Shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, toothbrush, toothpaste. All the things I used to steal off maid carts every Saturday.”
Sara pauses and stares at me. “Is that a joke? I don’t know your humor yet.”
I shake my head. “We couldn’t afford necessities.” I don’t know why I’m being so blunt with her. “Sometimes, when you’re poor, you have to get creative.” I turn down the next aisle and Sara takes a moment to catch up to me.
“But didn’t Brian pay child support?”
“My mother was an addict. I never saw a penny of that money.”
Sara is walking next to me now. I’m trying not to look at her because I feel like my truth is stripping away her innocence. But maybe she needs a dose of reality.
“Did you ever tell your father that?”
“No. He hasn’t seen my mother since I was four. She wasn’t an addict back then.”
“You should have told him. He would have done something about it.”
I drop a can of deodorant in the cart. “I never felt it was my duty to let him know what my living conditions were. A father should be more aware of what’s going on in his child’s life.”
I can tell that comment bothers Sara. She obviously has a different perspective of my father than I do, so maybe planting that one little seed is enough to get her to see outside her protective little beach house bubble.
“Let’s go look at the clothes,” I say, changing the subject. She’s quiet as we make our way through the clothing section. I grab several things, but I’m honestly not sure what will fit me. We make our way to the dressing rooms.
“You’ll need a bathing suit, too,” Sara says. “A couple, actually. We spend almost every day on the beach.”
The swimsuit section is near the dressing rooms, so I grab a couple and head into a stall with the rest of my clothes.
“Come out after you change, I want to see how everything fits,” Sara says.
Is that what girls do when they shop? Pose for each other?
I put on the bikini first. The top is a little big, but I hear the boobs are the first place you gain weight, and I’m sure I’ll be gaining weight this summer. I walk out of the stall and stand in front of the mirror. Sara is sitting on a bench looking at her phone. She glances up at me and her eyes widen. “Wow. You could probably even go down a size.”
I shake my head. “No, I plan on gaining weight this summer.”
“Why? I’d kill to have a body like yours.”
I hate that comment.
She’s staring at me in a pou
ty way. It makes me think she’s internally comparing our bodies, pointing out things about herself she deems as flaws.
“Your thighs don’t even touch,” she whispers, almost wistfully. “I’ve always wanted a thigh gap.”
I shake my head and walk back into the stall. I put on the second bathing suit and pull a pair of jean shorts over it to make sure they fit. When I walk out, Sara groans.
“My God, you could pull off anything.” She stands up and positions herself next to me. She stares at our reflections in the mirror. She’s only about two inches shorter than I am, fairly tall herself. Sara turns to the side and rests her hand on her shirt, right over her stomach. “How much do you weigh?”
“I don’t know.” I do know, but telling her my weight would only give her a goal she doesn’t need to chase after.
She sighs, sounding frustrated. She plops back down onto the bench. “I’m still twenty pounds shy of my summer goal. I just need to try harder,” she says. “What’s your secret?”
My secret?
I laugh while I stare at myself in the mirror again, running a hand over my slightly concave stomach. “I’ve spent most of my life hungry. Not everyone has food in their houses all the time.” I look directly at Sara and she’s staring up at me with an unreadable expression.
Her eyes flitter away before landing on her phone screen. She clears her throat. “Is that true?”
“Yeah.”
She chews on her cheek for a moment and says, “Then why did you barely eat tonight?”
“Because I’ve had the worst twenty-four hours of my life and I was sitting at a dinner table with five people I don’t know, in a house I’ve never been in, in a state I’ve never been to. Even hungry people lose their appetites sometimes.”
Sara doesn’t look at me. I don’t know if I make her uncomfortable with how blunt I am or if she’s grappling with the fact that our lives are so different. I want to bring up what I noticed at dinner earlier—how she only ate when I ate. But I don’t. I feel like I’ve already wounded her enough tonight and we just met.
“Are you hungry?” I ask her. “Because I’m starving.”
Heart Bones Page 5