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“Lydia, this is fabulous,” her father said.
“It's great,” Krista chimed in.
Carmen felt her father's eyes on her. She was supposed to say something. She just sat there and chewed.
Paul was quiet. He looked at Carmen, then looked down.
Rain slapped against the window. Silverware scraped and teeth chewed.
“Well, Carmen,” Krista ventured. “You don't look at all like I was imagining?”
Carmen swallowed a big bite without chewing. This didn't help. She cleared her throat. “You mean, I look Puerto Rican?” She leveled Krista with a stare.
Krista tittered and then backtracked. “No, I just meant . . . you know . . . you have, like, dark eyes and dark wavy hair?”
And dark skin and a big butt? Carmen felt like adding. “Right,” Carmen said. “I look Puerto Rican, like my mother. My mother is Puerto Rican. As in Hispanic. My dad might not have mentioned that.”
Krista's voice grew so quiet, Carmen wasn't even sure she was still talking. “I'm not sure if he . . .” Krista trailed off till she was just mouthing words at her plate.
“Carmen has my height and my talent for math,” her dad piped up. It was lame, but Carmen appreciated it anyway.
Lydia nodded earnestly. Paul still didn't say anything.
“So, Carmen.” Lydia placed her fork on her plate. “Your father tells me you are a wonderful tennis player.”
Carmen's mouth happened to be completely full at that moment. It seemed to take about five long minutes to chew and swallow. “I'm okay,” was the big payoff to all that chewing.
Carmen knew she was being stingy with her little answers. She could have expanded or asked a question back. But she was angry. She was so angry she didn't understand herself. She didn't want Lydia's food to taste good. She didn't want her dad to enjoy it so much. She didn't want Krista to look like a little doll in her lavender cardigan. She wanted Paul to actually say something and not just sit there thinking she was a stupid lunatic. She hated these people. She didn't want to be here. Suddenly she felt dizzy. She felt panic cramping her stomach. Her heart was knocking around unsteadily.
She stood up. “Can I call Mom?” she asked her dad.
“Of course,” he said, getting up too. “Why don't you use the phone in the guest room?”
She left the table without another word and ran upstairs.
“Mamaaa,” she sobbed into the phone a minute later. Every day since the end of school, she'd pushed her mother away little by little, anticipating her summer with her dad. Now she needed her mother, and she needed her mother to forget about all those times.
“What is it, baby?”
“Daddy's getting married. He's got a whole family now. He's got a wife and two blond kids and this fancy house. What am I doing here?”
“Oh, Carmen. My gosh. He's getting married, is he? Who is she?”
Her mom couldn't help letting a little of her own curiosity creep through her concern.
“Yes. In August. Her name is Lydia.”
“Lydia who?”
“I don't even know.” Carmen cast herself upon the floral bedspread.
Her mother sighed. “What are the kids like?”
“I don't know. Blond. Quiet.”
“How old?”
Carmen didn't feel like answering questions. She felt like getting babied and pitied. “Teenagers. The boy is older than me. I really don't know exactly.”
“Well, he should have told you before you went down there.”
Carmen could detect the edge of anger in her mother's voice. But she didn't want to deal with it right now.
“It's fine, Mom. He said he wanted to tell me in person. It's just . . . I don't even feel like being here anymore.”
“Oh, honey, you're disappointed not to have your daddy to yourself.”
When it was put like that, Carmen couldn't find the appropriate space for her indignation.
“It's not that,” she wailed. “They're so . . .”
“What?”
“I don't like them.” Carmen's anger made her inarticulate.
“Why not?”
“I just don't. They don't like me either.”
“How can you tell?” her mom asked.
“I just can,” Carmen said sullenly, loathing herself for being such a baby.
“Are you mad at these strangers, or are you mad at your dad?”
“I'm not mad at Dad,” Carmen said quickly without taking even a moment to consider it. It wasn't his fault he'd fallen for a woman with zombies for children and a guest room straight out of a Holiday Inn.
She said good-bye to her mother and promised to call the next day. Then she rolled over and cried for reasons she didn't quite understand.
Some sane part of her brain told her she should feel happy for her dad. He'd met a woman he loved enough to marry. He had this whole life now. It was obviously what he wanted. She knew she should want for him what he wanted for himself.
But still she hated them. And so she hated herself for hating them.
Slowly Bridget waded into the warm water. A thousand triggerfish darted around her ankles.
“I want Eric,” she told Diana, who was on team four. “Will you trade places with me?” It wasn't the first time she'd proposed this.
Diana laughed at her. “Do you think they'd notice?”
“He's leading a run at five,” Emily said.
Bridget looked at her watch. “Shit, that's in five minutes.”
“You're not seriously going to go,” Diana said.
Bridget was already out of the water. “Yeah, I am.”
“It's six miles,” Emily said.
The truth was Bridget hadn't run even one mile in over two months. “Where are they meeting up?”
“By the equipment shed,” Emily said, wading deeper into the water.
“See you all,” Bridget called over her shoulder.
In the cabin, she yanked on a pair of shorts over her bikini bottoms and traded her top for a sports bra. She pulled on socks and her running shoes. It was too hot to worry about whether running in just the bra was acceptable.
The group had already started off. Bridget had to chase them down a dirt path. She should have taken a minute to stretch.
There were about fifteen of them. Bridget hung back for the first mile or so until she found her stride. Her legs were long, and she carried no extra weight. It made her a naturally good runner, even when she was out of practice.
She pulled up with the middle of the pack. Eric noticed her. She pulled up closer to him. “Hi. I'm Bridget,” she said.
“Bridget?” He let her catch up with him.
“Most people call me Bee, though.”
“Bee? As in bumble?”
She nodded and smiled.
“I'm Eric,” he offered.
“I know,” she said.
He turned to face the group. “We're doing seven-minute miles today. I'm assuming we have serious runners in this group. If you get tired, just fall back to your own pace. I don't expect everybody to finish with me.”
Jesus. Seven-minute miles. The path led uphill. She kicked up dust from the dry ground. Over the hills the land flattened out again. They ran along a riverbed, which carried just a trickle in the dry season.
She was sweating, but her breathing was in check. She stayed up with Eric. “I hear you're from L.A.,” she said. Some people liked to talk when they ran. Some people hated it. She was interested to test out which type he was.
“Yeah,” he said.
She had just cast him as a type two when he opened his mouth again. “I've spent a lot of time here, though.”
“Here in Baja?” she asked.
“Yeah. My mom is Mexican. She's from Mulegé.”
“Really?” Bridget asked, genuinely interested. That explained his looks. “Just a few miles south of here, right?”
“Right,” he agreed. “What about you?”
