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 pouty 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.”
She nods with a small smile, and for the first time, I feel like there’s some connection between us. “I am so fucking hungry right now it’s unreal.”
I laugh when she says that. “That makes two of us.”
I walk into the dressing room and change back into my clothes. When I walk out, I grab Sara’s hand and pull her up. “Come on.” I throw the clothes into the cart and turn toward the grocery section.
“Where are we going?”
“To the food section.”
We work our way to the bread aisle. I stop the cart in front of the boxed pastries. “Which is your favorite?”
Sara points to a white bag of mini-chocolate donuts. “Those.”
I grab a bag off the shelf and open it. I take a donut and stick it in my mouth and hand her the bag. “We’re gonna need milk too,” I say with a mouthful.
Sara looks at me like I’m insane, but she follows me to the dairy section regardless. I retrieve two individual chocolate milks and then point to a spot over by the eggs. I move the cart and then I sit down and lean against the long floor cooler that holds all the eggs.
“Sit down,” I say to her.
She looks around us a moment, then she slowly lowers herself to the floor next to me. I hand her one of the chocolate milks.
I open mine and take a big drink of it and then grab another donut.
“You’re crazy,” Sara says quietly, finally taking a donut for herself.
I shrug. “There’s a fine line between hungry and crazy.”
She takes a drink of her chocolate milk and then leans her head against the cooler. “My God. This is heaven.” She stretches her legs out in front of her, and we sit together in silence for a while, eating donuts and watching shoppers give us strange looks.
“I’m sorry if anything I said about your weight offended you,” Sara finally says.
“It didn’t. I just don’t like seeing you compare yourself to me.”
“It’s hard not to. It doesn’t help that I’m spending the summer on the beach. I compare myself to every girl in a bikini.”
“You shouldn’t,” I say. “But I get it. It’s weird, though, isn’t it? Why do people judge other people based on how tightly their skin clings to their bones?” I shove another donut in my mouth to shut myself up.
Sara mutters, “Amen,” right before she takes another swig of her chocolate milk.
A store employee walks by and pauses when he sees us sitting on the floor eating food. “We’re gonna pay for it,” I say, waving a flippant hand at him. He shakes his head and walks away.
Another stretch of silence passes between us, and then Sara says, “I was really nervous to meet you. I was scared you hated me.”
I laugh. “I didn’t even know you existed until today.”
My comment looks like it hurts Sara’s feelings. “Your father never talked about me?”
I shake my head. “Not because he was trying to hide the fact that you existed. We just…we don’t have a relationship. At all. We’ve barely spoken since he got married. I actually forgot he was even married.”
Sara looks like she’s about to say something, but she’s interrupted.
“You two good?” Marcos asks.
We both look up to find Samson and Marcos looking back and forth between us.
Sara holds up her chocolate milk. “Beyah told me to stop obsessing about my weight and made me eat junk food.”
Marcos laughs and reaches down into the bag for a donut. “Beyah is right. You’re perfect.”
Samson is staring at me. He never smiles like Marcos. Marcos always seems to be smiling.
Sara pushes herself off the floor and helps me up. “Let’s go.”