I appreciate that the two of them aren’t making a thing of it.

“Thanks,” I mutter. I walk into the kitchen, not sure what to do. I don’t feel comfortable enough to ask for a drink, or to make my own plate of food. I just stand still and watch everyone else move about comfortably.

As hungry as I am right now, I’m dreading this dinner. For whatever reason, people feel the need to alleviate awkwardness with questions no one really cares to know the answers to. I have a feeling that’s how this entire dinner is going to go. They’re probably all going to be batting questions at me the entire meal, and I really just want to make a plate of food, take it to my room, eat it in silence and then go to sleep.

For two straight months.

“I hope you like breakfast, Beyah,” Alana says, walking a plate of biscuits to the table. “We sometimes like to switch things up and have it for dinner.”

My father sets down a pan of scrambled eggs. There’s bacon and pancakes already on the table. Everyone starts taking their seats, so I do the same. Sara grabs the seat between Marcos and her mother, which means I’m left with the seat next to my father. Samson is the last to sit, and he pauses when he realizes he’s seated next to me. He sits reluctantly. Maybe it’s just me, but it seems he’s trying to subtly shift his attention away from me.

Everyone begins passing food around. I skip the eggs, naturally, but the smell is overpowering all the other foods. My father starts in on the questions as soon as I take my first bite of a pancake.

“What have you been up to since graduation?”

I swallow, then say, “Work, sleep, repeat.”

“What do you do?” Sara asks. She asks that in a rich way. Not, “Where do you work,” but “What do you do,” like it’s some kind of skill.

“I’m a cashier at McDonald’s.”

I can tell she’s taken aback. “Oh,” she says. “Fun.”

“I think it’s great that you chose to work while still in high school,” Alana says.

“It wasn’t a choice. I had to eat.”

Alana clears her throat and I realize my honest response made her uncomfortable. If that bothers her, I wonder how she’s going to take the news that my mother died of an overdose?

My father tries to skip over the moment and says, “I guess you changed your mind about summer courses. You starting in the fall now?”

That question confuses me. “I’m not enrolled in summer courses.”

“Oh. Your mom said you needed summer tuition when I sent her money to cover the fall.”

My mother asked him for tuition?

I earned a full ride to Penn State. I don’t even have to pay tuition.

How much did he give my mother that I never even knew about? There was obviously a cell phone shipped to me at some point that I never received. And now I find out she asked him for tuition to an education she never even cared enough to ask me about.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to come up with an excuse as to why I’m here in Texas and not in the summer classes he paid for. “I signed up too late. The classes were full.”

I suddenly have no appetite at all. I can barely finish the second bite of pancake I took.

My mother never asked me about college at all. Yet she asked my father for tuition money that probably ended up in a slot machine at a casino, or running through the vein in her arm. And he paid it without question. If he would have just asked me, I would have told him I could have gone to community college for free. But I didn’t want to stay in that town. I needed as far away from my mother as I could get.

I guess that wish came true.

I put down my fork. I feel like I’m about to be sick.

Sara sets her fork down, too. She takes a sip of her tea, watching me.

“Do you know what you’re going to major in?” Alana asks.

I shake my head and pick up my fork, just so I can pretend to be interested in eating. I notice Sara picks up her fork as soon as I do. “I’m not sure yet,” I say.

I poke at pieces of pancake, but don’t actually put a piece in my mouth. Sara does the same.

I put down my fork. So does Sara.

More conversation passes around the table, but I ignore most of it when I can. I can’t stop focusing on the fact that Sara is following my every move while trying to be discreet about it.

I’m going to have to be cognizant of this all summer. I think the girl might need to be informed that she should eat when she feels like eating and not base her food intake around how much I eat.

I make sure to eat a few bites, even though I’m nauseous and nervous and every bite is a struggle.

Luckily, it’s a quick meal. Twenty minutes at most. Samson said nothing the entire time he ate. No one acted like this was abnormal. Hopefully he’s always this quiet. It’ll be easier to pay less attention to him.

“Beyah needs some stuff from Walmart,” Sara says. “Can we go tonight?”

I don’t want to go tonight. I want to sleep.

My father pulls several one-hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and hands them to me.

I changed my mind. I want to go to Walmart.

“You should wait until tomorrow and take her somewhere better in Houston,” Alana suggests.

“Walmart is fine,” I say. “I don’t need much.”

“Get one of those prepaid phones while you’re there,” my father says, handing me even more money.

My eyes are wide. I’ve never held this much money in my life. There’s probably six hundred dollars in my hands right now.

“You driving?” Sara says to Marcos.

“Sure.”

I suddenly don’t want to go again if that means Marcos and Samson are coming.

“I’m not going,” Samson says as he picks up his plate and walks it to the sink. “I’m tired.”

Well. Now that Samson isn’t going, I want to go.

“Don’t be rude,” Sara says. “You’re coming.”

“Yeah, you’re coming,” Marcos adds.

I can see Samson glance at me out of the corner of his eye. At least he seems as disinterested in me as I am in him. Sara starts walking toward the door.

“Let me grab some shoes,” I mutter, and head back upstairs.

 

Apparently, there isn’t a Walmart on Bolivar Peninsula, which means you have to take the ferry to Galveston Island. It makes no sense to me. You have to take a ferry from the mainland to an island to do any shopping. This place is confusing.

The ferry takes approximately twenty minutes to get from here to there. As soon as Marcos parked the car, everyone got out. Sara noticed I hadn’t opened my door, so she opened it for me. “Come on, let’s go to the top deck,” she said.

It wasn’t really an invite so much as a command.

We’ve been standing up here for less than five minutes and Sara and Marcos have already snuck off, leaving me alone with Samson. It’s getting late, probably around nine thirty, which makes for a mostly empty ferry. We’re both staring out over the water, pretending this isn’t awkward at all. But it is, because I don’t know what to say. I have nothing in common with this guy. He has nothing in common with me. We’ve already had two less-than-stellar interactions since I arrived a few hours ago. That’s two more than I’d like.