East Coast Girls

by Kerry Kletter

  The air lightened. Hannah took the bagel out of the bag, unwrapped it. “Just what I needed, thank you.” She gave half to Maya and then took a bite of the other half. Briefly closed her eyes to savor it. “Mmm, perfectly buttered.”

  “I used your trick,” Maya said. “Remember when you taught me that?”

  “Aww,” Hannah said. “I totally do. We were so little.”

  “It’s stupid, but it’s the only food trick I know. It’s like being passed down a special recipe. And it really does make a bagel taste better.” Maya cleared her throat. She wasn’t saying what she meant. What she meant was that it had felt like mothering when Hannah taught her how to butter a bagel. What she meant was that Hannah was important to her in a way that other people could not be, in the way that only the people who raised you could be. And sometimes friends raised each other. Sometimes they were the only ones who did. But unlike family, there was no shared home to return to for vacations and holidays. As soon as they graduated, they were off on their own, no longer a unit but four divided parts. And this was what she hated most about being a grown-up—not having a gang to experience the world with. Her friends used to be her net. Without them there was nothing, there was falling.

  Don’t go, she thought. But she couldn’t make herself say it. She’d always been good at asking for things—for a couch to crash on or a ride or a job lead. But it was asking for heart things that she had trouble with. It would reveal too much, hurt too much if anyone said no.

  They reached the station. Happy people with weekend bags were stepping out of train cars, reuniting with their already tan family and friends who’d come to retrieve them. Summer joy in their faces.

  Hannah put her hand on the door, turned to her. “I love you,” she said.

  “I love you too,” Maya said over the words stuck in her throat.

  She hugged Hannah hard. “Give Henry a kiss for me.”

  Hannah nodded and climbed out, her slender figure moving toward the ticket booth. She turned and waved and Maya waved back.

  Maya waited until Hannah paid her ticket and disappeared inside the train. She kept waiting as the train pulled away with its loud goodbye, just in case, just in case.

  But Hannah was gone.

  BLUE

  Blue stood on the front porch, leaning against a pillar, smoking a cigarette. She peered out at the grassy yard, the cars passing beyond the fence like a slow-moving train. A large cloud ambled above, washing the color out of the day as if with a sponge. It was way too early for smoking. It was all she could think to do.

  Back in high school if any of her friends were struggling, Blue knew exactly how to fix it. A quick dose of fun with a pinch of recklessness was always the cure. Cut school together or drive just fast enough to cause a little scare or do something a tiny bit illegal—shoplift a candy bar or jump a Metro stall or sneak into a movie theater. Things that said we are young, we are alive, nothing can stop us, none of this matters! It was so easy, then, to move through things, to exist only in the present. Before too many losses had accumulated. Before the world got in.

  But no more. Hannah had taken something with her when she left—not just a piece of the whole of them but some secreted hope that, with time, the damage of that night would lessen rather than root and grow tentacles. Blue felt hollowed out by it and surprised by how heavy a feeling emptiness could be. This was the problem with people leaving. They didn’t just go away—their absence created a phantom presence, a haunt of sorrow in their place.

  She sighed—the body’s effort to expel the ghost.

  Renee was upstairs somewhere, behind a closed door. Which was good. A good thing. They were two soldiers sticking to their respective sides of the border. But why was Renee still here at all? She should just march up there and tell her to leave. Why didn’t she? The thought occurred to her that maybe she didn’t totally want Renee to leave, but that was ridiculous. Of course she did.

  Christ, this trip was a disaster.

  At least before she came, she still had the fantasy of Jack, ridiculous and self-deceptive as it was. Now that, too, was a hollow.

  One last long inhale, letting the smoke linger and burn in her lungs. Then she stubbed out her cigarette, reentered the numb silence of the house. It reminded her of her apartment in NYC, of the too-quietness there as well—like she was walking around in a world on pause. What a desolate thing it was to be the only sound in a room. She couldn’t wait to pull the covers up to her neck, close her eyes. Maybe later would be better. She and Maya could have one drama-free day at the beach, a bit of sun, nothing happening but the fold of waves on sand.

  She trudged up the stairs—radar tuning into Renee’s location. The strange tension of sharing a house with an enemy. Halfway up she stopped, listened. Was that retching? Had Renee been drunk last night? Blue hadn’t noticed her boozing, but then again she hadn’t been paying much attention. She was almost at her bedroom door when she heard it again. Yep, retching. At least it was best that Hannah wasn’t here to hear it. There wasn’t enough Purell in the world to get her through that situation.

  The bathroom door flew open. Renee appeared, looking uncharacteristically disheveled.

  “Help! I think the toilet’s about to—oh, you’re right there.” Renee pointed shamefully in the direction of the impending disaster. “Um...yeah.”

  Blue pushed past her. “What did you do?” The room smelled like vomit.

  “Nothing,” Renee said. “I don’t know... I just flushed it and it started...”

  Blue averted her eyes from the toilet, removed the tank’s lid.

  “It must have been something I ate,” Renee said.

  “We all ate the same thing, and I feel fine.” It wasn’t fair to be mad at Renee for getting sick, but then life wasn’t fair. She tugged on the flush lever in the toilet tank and the water stopped running. She started toward the door.

  “Wait. What did you do?” Renee said.

  Blue paused, suppressed an exasperated sigh. “I jiggled this thing.”

  “Oh, right,” Renee said. “I think I remember this happening last time.”

  It had. Only the last time, Maya had been the one to use it and failed to notice the water rising until they all went to the beach and came back to a flood.

  “If I recall correctly, Maya hit on the plumber,” Renee said.

  “Yeah. Who was like fifty,” Blue said. She couldn’t resist.

  “Right. Because she was hoping for a discount.”

  Blue tried not to laugh because laughter seemed like weakness, like opening a door, but she couldn’t help it, it was still funny. It was so hilariously Maya.

  She saw a glimmer of hope in Renee’s eyes. Abruptly she turned, put the lid back on, snapped back into business mode. It was easier when her anger was the barrier between them. But take it away, even for a second, and the underbelly of love and hurt could be exposed. Anger was the Band-Aid, loss the wound.

  “Guess he wasn’t much of a plumber,” Renee said. “If it’s still broken twelve years later.”

  “I’m sure he was fine,” Blue said dismissively. This wasn’t a bonding session—she wanted to make that clear. Though it was admittedly odd that Nana hadn’t bothered, in all the years since, to get it properly repaired. Maybe at a certain point everyone just sort of accepted broken things. Jiggling a lever became a reflex, so integrated into daily routine that it became unconscious. It was actually kind of scary, she thought, how long a person could go without noticing everything falling apart around them.

  She started toward the hall.

  “Do you think Hannah will be okay?” Renee said to her back.

  Blue paused. Like all the other broken things, she’d simply stopped noticing how much Hannah had been damaged, accepted it as if it had always been that way. At least until today. She didn’t have an answer, so she didn’t give one.

 
They both turned at the sound of the front door creaking open downstairs. Soft footsteps approached, and then Maya appeared looking grim. “She’s gone.”

  Blue sighed. “So much for your powers of persuasion.”

  “Every superhero has their kryptonite,” Maya cracked, but Blue could tell her heart wasn’t in the joke and her smile looked jerry-rigged to her face.

  Renee leaned against the open bathroom door. “That sucks.”

  Maya nodded outwardly, Blue inwardly.

  “And I just barfed,” Renee added.

  “Oh no,” Maya said.

  “I’m fine. Probably just a little food poisoning.”

  “Weird,” Maya said. “I wonder why no one else is sick. I guess those clever calamari found a way to escape after all.”

  Blue groaned.

  “What? That was funny.”

  “I hope Hannah isn’t yakking on the train,” Blue said.

  They all looked at one another, and the pall of Hannah being gone fell over them again.

  “Well, I should probably hit the road,” Renee said.

  “You’re going to get on a ferry right after you just puked?” Maya asked. “Why don’t you give it a few hours?”

  Renee looked at Blue.

  What was Blue going to say, No, go puke on the ferry? She shrugged. “So...now what?” she asked.

  “I guess we could mope around the house,” Maya said. “Or we could mope at the beach.”

  “Mope and tan?” Renee said.

  “Yeah, like multitask,” Maya said.

  “I could do that,” Blue said.

  “I have an extra bikini,” Maya told Renee. “It’ll be three sizes too big, but—”

  “Actually,” Renee said, “I have one in the car. I didn’t know what the plan was for yesterday so I brought one in case.”

  “Perfect!” Maya said.

  They went to their rooms to change, and Blue considered a quick hit off her vape pen. But first, her bathing suit. Which...ugh. She loved the sun, she loved the beach, she hated its clothing requirements. And the fact that other people had to be there. That she had to be exposed in front of strangers. And she hated that she hated it. It was not an inborn trait to be ashamed of your own body. It was taught. It was learned. That old rage rushed up again. She lit her vape pen, took a hit to squelch it, threw on her suit away from the mirror. She was going to make it a nice day if it killed her.

  It was still a bit cloudy by the time they reconvened on the front porch, but the sun was trying hard and the air was sweet with honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass and the suggestion of the sea. Blue chucked Maya the car keys, climbed into the passenger seat, spotted a book on the floor. She picked it up.

  “Hannah’s,” Maya said. “She forgot it.”

  “I’ll mail it to her,” Blue said. She opened the book—self-help, of course—to a random page and scanned it. Hannah had underlined a quote: “Our consciousness would be broken up into as many fragments as we had lived seconds but for the binding and unifying force of memory.”

  She snapped the book shut. She didn’t want to be made of memory. Didn’t want Hannah or any of them to be made of it either. If only a person could cherry-pick—turn their mind into an Instagram page made up of only the highlights. She wondered if that’s what Maya’s inner life looked like.

  It was a short drive to their preferred beach, and they reached Ditch Plains just as the clouds disappeared. The swarm of cars in the parking lot meant there was a decent swell. Every half-assed surfer came out for a wave over two feet, turned a paddle-out into a contact sport. Blue couldn’t help but think of Jack, of the morning after their first kiss when she’d watched him etch graceful zigzags in the surf with his board.

  Now Maya slipped into a questionable parking spot that may or may not get their tires stuck in the sand and they piled out.

  It had been a long time since Blue had been to the beach. The sun was sharp and white above the cliffs, the ocean tipping and shuffling to the shore, and people were scattered on towels beneath lollipop-colored umbrellas, surfboards lined up like fence posts against the dunes, the smells of coconut oil and salt water and sunshine baked into the air.

  “It looks exactly the same!” Maya said as they stopped at the threshold of sand, taking it in.

  To Blue, Ditch Plains seemed more crowded, a little hipper, no longer a place for old-school surf bums but for wealthy city moms with sand strollers, expensive SUVs in the parking lot, models preening in tiny bikinis. Wealth had taken over, had chipped away a little bit of its soul. Or maybe it was just time that did that, altered the chemistry of things, took away pieces and added others. Still she understood what Maya meant. The bones of the place were the same. It still felt lazy, a beach that had no interest in competing with the more elegant beaches of the Hamptons—a B-personality beach. And maybe there was comfort in that, in the way that some changes rarely went all the way to the bones.

  “Let’s sit by the lifeguards,” Maya said.

  Blue shot her a look.

  “What? For safety reasons, I mean.”

  Blue plopped down where they stood and Maya sighed and joined her.

  A toddler ran past, kicking sand as he waved his small green shovel back and forth.

  “Why do people have children?” Maya asked. “So much work. So much drool.”

  Blue didn’t know either. Sometimes she wondered if wanting to be a mother required actually having had a mother.

  Renee sat down next to them, wrapped her arms around her knees. “I bet you guys’ll want them eventually.”

  It was always so annoying when people said that. Like somehow they knew you better than you knew yourself. Blue never wanted kids. She’d screw them up rightly.

  “Who was it that used to say they wanted to adopt high schoolers?” Renee asked. “Hannah?”

  “Blue,” Maya said. “But only so she’d have someone to pick up her dry cleaning.”

  “Ha!” Renee said. She turned to Blue. “Does Jack want kids?”

  Blue tensed. With all the drama that went down last night, she had completely forgotten about her lie.

  “Jack?” Maya said. “How would Blue know something like that?”

  Shit.

  Blue jumped to her feet. “Not everyone wants kids, you know. And it’s kind of sexist to assume Maya and I don’t know how we feel about it.” To Maya she said, “I’m going down to the water.” She marched down to the shore, making a show of it, hoping her feminist outburst would distract Maya from pursuing her question. Stupid Renee. Why did she always have to remember everything? If Renee mentioned it to Maya, she’d need an out. She couldn’t very well fake going on a date, could she?

  If it came to that, she could say she was sick. That it was just so disappointing, but she couldn’t possibly go out on a date with a stomach flu. She’d have to fake vomiting, but whatever, she was an old pro at that from all the times she tried to get out of going to school. Renee had inadvertently set the whole story up. She was good for something after all.

  How sad though. That she had to cover one lie with another. How pathetic.

  She stepped into the water, let the shock of it jolt her out of her self-pity. It had been a while since the Atlantic had rolled cold and welcoming over her feet. The tide was rising, gathering higher and higher around her ankles. The fortepiano of waves crashing and retreating sounded like cars swishing through rain. This was where she’d first met Jack.

  She closed her eyes, breathed in the salt air. For a moment she imagined him coming up behind her, turning to see in his face that same expression—the look of a man who found her attractive. And oh, that look. It could hold you like a parent, make you feel as wanted as a newborn. She’d never known it before she met him, how aligned those pathways were in the brain. She knew only that whatever she’d experienced was a thing she’d been mis
sing her whole life without knowing it. For years after, she’d forgotten what it felt like, her heart in hibernation until she’d nearly convinced herself that love didn’t matter, not really. But she could see now that it did. That it always had.

  If only she knew how to get it. If only she were capable.

  She pushed away the thought, went back to the towels. Maya lowered her sunglasses, eyed her warily, then returned to her gossip magazine. Blue relaxed. Clearly Renee hadn’t mentioned anything about her having a date. Otherwise Maya would be harassing her for details. She went to grab a water from the cooler and, finding none, glanced up at Maya. “Wine coolers and beer? Really?”

  “I picked them up on the way back from the train station. You’re welcome.”

  “It’s barely eleven.”

  “And...?”

  Blue sighed. “I’m gonna get some water at the Ditch Witch.”

  “Ooh, I want a treat,” Maya said, jumping up.

  “I’ll come too,” Renee said.

  Oh yay, Blue thought with an inward eye roll.

  The food truck was a staple of Ditch Plains Beach. When Blue was younger, she believed that running the Ditch Witch would be the ideal job. Days spent overlooking the bucking sea, the air sweet with suntan lotion and hot dogs, happy wet-haired kids shoving their parents’ crumpled dollars over the counter, hungry surfers stopping to chat her up about some tropical storm that would bring waves their way.

  It made her wistful to think about how logical such work had once seemed, when money meant little and she dreamed only of being happy, of extending the easy pace of childhood indefinitely.

  They waited at the end of a long line of sun-mellowed surfers and packs of kids and overburdened mothers. Maybe her dream hadn’t been so impractical after all—this place must really make a killing. Maya moved closer to read the menu scrawled on an old surfboard.

  “You’re paying, since you skipped out on dinner last night,” she called to Maya.

  “You should’ve told me before we left!” Maya said. “Who brings their wallet to the beach?”