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Seven
"She probably justdoesn't know how to swim."
It's those words, spoken by Lisa when I said I didn't want to go to the beach, that set me off.
I do know how to swim. I'm not great at it or anything, and I've never been in water that wasn't in a man-made container, but I can swim. I even have a bathing suit with me, although it's been so long since I wore it last that I didn't know I'd outgrown it. My last few foster families didn't take me anywhere, so it's been living in the bottom of my duffel for at least four years. The straps dig into my shoulders, and I swear I hear weird popping sounds in the seams as I walk.
The other girls are in slutty bikinis with sheer cover-ups, making me realize I could have just gone out in my bra and underwear, but it's too late by then. I'm not about to tell them I don't even have a bathing suit that's my size. They don't need to know I've never been anywhere that called for tiny strips of spandex covering the nips and crotch and nothing else.
We walk down the path to the beach single-file, and once we get over the dunes, I see five chairs, five towels, five mats, and five giant bottles of water – the expensive metal ones – plus five umbrellas pushed into the sand but currently closed. One of the men from the plane stands at attention nearby, still and staring out at the ocean, but I get the feeling he's there to open the umbrellas or whatever else we might need.
Everyone else happily discards their cover-ups. Lisa, Paula, and Crystal giggle like school girls as they run down to the water. Addison stays behind because she doesn't take the hint that I don't want to be her friend.
"My first time here, I didn't know everyone else would be in, like, the smallest bikinis ever," she tells me. "I surf, so I brought just my usual wetsuit, you know?"
Not really. I don't know much about wetsuits. I don't know much about surfers, either, but I feel like that should change my opinion of what she is. She's kind of been Too Desperate To Be Real Barbie in my head, but surfers have that calm, Zen, retro stoner vibe. I don't really know who Addison is now.
"We've all had our first times here," she prods. "There's nothing wrong with not fitting in yet."
"I don't want to fit in." I make a face like something smells bad just to make that clear. "I just wanted to make sure it was warm enough to take off my shirt. But it is"–it's like ninety degrees–"so I guess I will."
I hide under my shirt a second longer before giving up and pulling it off, tossing it down, and flopping into the chair.
Addison sits down next to me. I don't know why I hold back my groan of irritation, but I do. She does sit there in silence with me for a good long time, though. We both lean back and watch the ocean do its thing, and it's so foreign to me to sit here like this, but it really does quiet my brain.
Until Addison says, "This is my third time here. I didn't get pregnant the first time, and the second time, I miscarried."
My mom had a few miscarriages before me, it's why there's five years between Gabbie and me and supposedly why Gabbie's father left – but mom's a junkie, so it's hard to know if that's true. Gabbie had her babies just fine, but is this a genetic thing? Am I more likely to miscarry because of my mom?
Mom says that's why she became a junkie, too. That she kept losing babies, so Gabbie's dad left her for another woman, and she was so sad she started drinking and then got tricked into drugs. I don't think she was really tricked, but the rest of it? Would miscarrying upset me that badly?
"Did you still get paid?" I blurt out since that seems like what will make me happiest or saddest.
"Hmm? Oh, there's a thing in the contract. The fifty thousand for this weekend is automatic, of course, and then I didn't make it to second trimester, so BBHH paid me a hundred thousand, but the father gave me another hundred. He didn’t have to, he just did it anyway."
"Why did you come back?" That's a quarter of a million, and we get housing for an entire year during and after pregnancy. Seems like she should have managed her money better if she needed to come back so soon.
She shrugs like she doesn't have an answer, but it's more likely an answer she doesn't want to admit to. She takes a sip of her water, stares at her hands, out to the water, back at her hands again. "Well, why are you here?" she asks.
"I need the money," I snort.
"Well sure, we all do, but why?"
Okay, touché. This question does really suck, and I shouldn't have asked it when obviously the miscarriage did hurt her. I'm not about to give her too much information, but I can at least tell her, "I want to be a tattoo artist. I'm really good – better than this," I say with an awkward laugh as I hold out my arms, "this is just sharpie. But I need training to get my license, and it costs money, and I don't have anyone to help me. This will buy me the time." I lift my water up because yeah, it's really hot actually.
"Will you tattoo me?"
That has me nearly spitting my water back out. "Look at you. You don't have any tattoos."
"Well not yet. I've been wanting them, though. At least one. Something to remember that baby by."
"Fuck. Yeah. Let me get a bunch of experience though. I don't want to fuck up that one."
She beams at me, but then the smile fades as quickly as it appears. "My mom's really sick. Cancer. She had it years ago, and they thought she was cured, but it made it hard for her to get good, affordable insurance, and we didn't have a lot of money. She thought she had an okay plan, but then the cancer came back, and it turned out the insurance was a scam and wouldn't approve her treatments. The money that he, that umm, that . . ."
"The one who got you pregnant?"
She nods. "I was able to pay off most of her medical bills with that money, but now her house is being foreclosed on. That's why I'm here."
