Girl Out of Water(84)

Her words hit hard, piercing my drunken haze. Cassie is scared about the navy? I thought she was excited. My eyes sting with tears. I can’t think of anything to say as Marie pushes past me, so I say nothing.

And then I run for home.

? ? ?

“Anise!”

I’m running through the sand.

“Anise!”

The grains hit my calves and stick.

“Anise!”

I stumble to the ground, hands braced in front of me.

“Anise!”

I right myself and keep running. But I’ve lost my lead.

“Anise Sawyer!” Someone collapses onto to me, her arms around my shoulders. I feel her strained breathing. “Fuck you.” The breathing calms a bit. “You know I can’t run for shit.”

Tess and I stand there together catching our breath.

My pulsing thoughts relax to a dim, inflamed hum.

Then Tess takes my hand and walks me to the water. We sit in the damp sand and let the tide wash over our feet. Surf Break is in the distance, the music more an echo than a sound. Only a few wanderers trail this part of the beach. I lean into Tess. Her shoulder is sticky with beer or saltwater or glow paint, but it doesn’t matter—everything spins less with her by my side.

After a few minutes, she says, “What the hell happened?”

My tongue doesn’t feel thick anymore, but I still struggle to get out the words. “Everyone hates me.”

“That didn’t answer my question,” Tess says. “But continue, who hates you?”

“Cassie, Marie—everyone!”

Tess snorts. Actually snorts. She’s laughing at me. “Dude, you know what Marie’s like. Remember the dance recital thing in seventh grade? She always flips her shit over the smallest thing.”

I guess that’s true. Marie tends to turn most situations into a level ten disasters. Especially if they’re about Cassie. “But,” I say, “Cassie’s mad at me too. Or not mad, worse. Hurt. I hurt her. She’s leaving for the fucking navy, and I stopped talking to her. I’m an asshole. I’m—” I gather a breath. “I’m just like her.”

Tess drops my hand, leans forward, and grabs a thin shred of driftwood. She uses it to draw circles in the sand. When she notices me watching, she breaks the driftwood in half and hands me a piece. We sit there together with our swirls, the tide washing them away as soon as we draw them.

“You’re not your mom,” Tess says after the long stretch of silence. Her words surprise me. She knows I don’t like to talk about her. Even if I accidentally bring her up. “You’re nothing like her,” Tess repeats.

Everything feels wrong—tight, loose, itchy, slick. I don’t believe Tess. I can already feel my mom’s infection crawling under my skin and coming out through my pores, mutating my DNA, turning me into someone who flees instead of fights, like now, when I ran away from Marie because I couldn’t handle a friend telling me the truth. “Then why did I leave everyone behind?” I ask. “Why did I ignore them? Why didn’t I care enough?”

“You didn’t,” Tess interrupts me, then pauses. “Don’t you understand the fact you’re asking these questions means you actually give a shit and are nothing like your mom at all?”

The words make sense, but they still don’t settle. Maybe I do give a shit, but the fact is, my friend needed me, and I wasn’t there. Just like my mom is never there when I need her. What if caring isn’t enough to keep me from turning out like her?

I stand and smudge my toe in the sand. Then I kick the sand. Then I kick the water, stepping further and further into the ocean until it ripples around my thighs, and then I look up at the moon and scream. I scream so loud that my throat feels raw and my head light. I scream so loud that my hands shake and my eyes water. I scream loud so that—even if she’s halfway across the country—my mom might hear my cry.





Eighteen


I wake with a pounding headache and sand in my mouth. No, not sand. The complete absence of moisture. Another reason not to drink, besides it not mixing with surfing—hangovers are the fucking worst. Without moving any of my lifeless limbs, I pry open my eyes and look around.

Tess and Lincoln are also on my bed, sprawled on either side of me. They’re fully clothed, as am I, still in our stained neon and tie-dye.

After Tess calmed me down last night, I found multiple worried texts from Lincoln on my phone. We met him back at the house, where he must have not been that worried about me, because he was making grilled cheese sandwiches with the remainder of the bread and cheese and dancing to a Motel/Hotel song blasting from my computer speaker. He too assured me that my friends didn’t hate me. Apparently he stayed with a few of them after he lost track of me, and they wanted to know where the hell I was so they could hang out—which should relieve me, but Marie’s words keep replaying in my mind.

With the effort only an absurdly full bladder can provide, I crawl out of bed and find my way to the guest bathroom. I flick on the light and glance in the mirror, which is a mistake. My normally hassle-free hair is a tangled rat’s nest, and there are dark circles under my eyes, not to mention streaked neon glitter paint. If I were to judge the success of the night by the look of my face, it must have been a pretty shitty night. I turn the water on hot and scrub my skin until it’s clean. When I glance back in the mirror, I notice something, or rather, the absence of something. The note I left for my mom isn’t there.