“Beyah, go put on your bathing suit, we’re going to the beach.”

My father looks relieved by the interruption. He gives his attention to his computer. I stand up and pop another chip in my mouth. “What’s at the beach?”

Sara laughs. “The beach is at the beach. That’s all you need.” She’s back in her bikini top and shorts again.

“I’m really tired,” I say.

She rolls her eyes. “Just for an hour and then you can go to bed.”

 

When we make it past the dunes, I deflate. I was hoping more people would be out here so I could be invisible, but it seems the crowd that was here earlier dissipated and the only two people remaining are Samson and Marcos. Plus a couple of people out in the water swimming.

Marcos is sitting by the fire, but Samson is sitting alone in the sand several feet away, staring out at the dark ocean. I know he hears us approaching, but he doesn’t turn around to look at us. He’s either lost in thought or making a concerted effort to ignore me.

I’m going to have to figure out a way to be at ease in his presence if this is how the summer is going to go—him always being around.

There are six seats set up around the fire, but two of them have towels draped over them and beers on the armrests, so they appear to be taken. Sara sits next to Marcos, so I take one of the last two empty chairs.

Sara looks out at the water, at the two people swimming. “Is that Cadence out there with Beau?”

“Yep,” Marcos says flatly. “I think she’s leaving tomorrow.”

Sara rolls her eyes. “Can’t wait. I wish she’d take Beau with her.”

I don’t know who Beau and Cadence are, but it doesn’t sound like Sara and Marcos are big fans.

I try not to stare at Samson, but it’s hard. He’s about ten feet away, sitting with his arms wrapped around his knees, watching the waves claw at the sand. I hate that I’m wondering what he’s thinking about, but he has to be thinking about something. That’s what staring at the ocean produces. Thoughts. Lots of them.

“Let’s go swimming,” Sara says as she stands up and shimmies out of her shorts. She looks at me. “Wanna come?”

I shake my head. “I already showered tonight.”

Sara grabs Marcos’s hand and pulls him out of the chair. He swoops her up in his arms and runs toward the water. Sara’s squeal breaks Samson out of whatever trance he was in. He stands up and wipes sand away from his shorts. He turns to walk back to the fire, but I notice the pause when he sees I’m sitting over here alone.

I keep my eyes on Sara and Marcos, if only because I don’t know what else to look at. I certainly don’t want to look at Samson as he walks over here. I still feel embarrassed by the part of my conversation he overheard earlier. I don’t want him to think I hate Sara because I don’t. I just don’t know her all that well. But what he heard probably sounded worse than what it was.

He quietly takes his seat and stares at the fire, making no effort to speak to me. I look around us, at the incredible amount of space there is on this beach, and wonder how I can possibly feel like I’m suffocating right now.

I inhale a slow breath, then release it carefully before I speak. “I didn’t mean what I said earlier. About Sara.”

Samson looks over at me with a stoic expression. “Good.”

That’s all he says.

I shake my head and look away, but not before he sees me roll my eyes at his response. I don’t know why, but even when he’s defending his friends, he comes off as an asshole.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“Nothing.” I lean back in my chair and look up at the sky. “Everything,” I whisper to myself.

Samson grabs a stick that’s sitting in the sand by his chair. He starts poking at the fire, but says nothing else. I lean my head to the right and look at the houses that line the beach. Samson’s is by far the nicest one. It’s more modern. It’s stark white with deep black trim, boxy with lots of glass. But it seems cold compared to Alana and my father’s house.

It also seems lonely, like he’s the only one who lives there.

“Do you live in your house alone?”

“I don’t really consider that my house, but yes, I’m the only one who stays there.”

“Where are your parents?”

“Not here,” he says.

His clipped responses aren’t because he’s shy. He’s definitely not shy. I wonder if his conversations are like this with everyone or if it’s just me.

“Are you in college?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Taking a gap year.”

I laugh under my breath. I don’t mean to, but that answer is so out of touch with my reality.

He raises a brow, silently questioning why I’m laughing at his answer.

“When you’re poor and you take a year off after high school, you’re throwing away your future,” I say. “But if you’re rich and you take a year off, it’s considered sophisticated. They even give it a fancy name.”

He stares at me a moment but says nothing. I’d like to drill a hole in his head so his thoughts can pour out. But then again, I might not like them.

“What’s the purpose of a gap year, anyway?” I ask.

“You’re supposed to spend the year finding yourself.” He says that last part with a hint of sarcasm.

“Did you? Find yourself?”

“I was never lost,” he says pointedly. “I didn’t spend my gap year backpacking through Europe. I’ve spent it manning rent houses for my father. Not very sophisticated.”

It sounds like he’s a little resentful about that, but I’d give anything to get paid to live on a beach in a nice house. “How many houses does your family have here?”

“Five.”

“You live in five beach houses?”

“Not all at once.”

I think he might have just smiled a bit. I can’t tell. Could have been a shadow from the fire.

Our lives are so incredibly different, yet here we are, sitting on the same beach in front of the same fire. Attempting to have a conversation that doesn’t prove how many worlds apart we are. But we’re so many worlds apart, we’re not even in the same universe.

I wish I could be inside his head for a day. Any rich person’s head. How do they view the world? How does Samson view me? What do rich people worry about if they don’t have to worry about money?

“What’s it like being rich?” I ask him.

“Probably not much different than being poor. You just have more money.”

That is so laughable, I don’t even laugh. “Only a rich person would say that.”

He drops the stick back in the sand and leans back in his chair. He turns his head and makes eye contact with me. “What’s it like being poor, then?”

I can feel my stomach drop when he throws my own question back at me with a spin. I sigh, wondering if I should be honest with him.

I should. I’ve told too many lies in the past twenty-four hours, karma is sure to catch up with me. I give my attention back to the fire in front of us when I answer him.

“We didn’t receive food stamps because my mother was never sober enough to make her appointments. We also didn’t have a car. There are children who grow up never having to worry about food, there are children whose families live off government assistance for various reasons, and then there are children like me. The ones who slip through all the cracks. The ones who learn to do whatever it takes to survive. The kind who grow up not giving a second thought to eating a slice of bread they pulled out of a discarded loaf on the deck of a ferry, because that’s normal. That’s dinner.”